Address: 6 Middle Street, Padstow, Cornwall PL28 8AP
Award: One Michelin star, 4 AA rosettes
Visit: 17 June 2025, dinner for two
Price: ***
Website: https://paul-ainsworth.co.uk/number6/about/
Review:
Located in a Georgian townhouse in the heart of Padstow, Paul Ainsworth at No 6 serves modern British food with a focus on locally sourced Cornish produce. There are two dining spaces – the dining room with a view into the passè, where you can watch the chefs at work, and the Florence Parker room which is a private dining space that can seat up to six guests.
Paul opened Paul Ainsworth at No 6 in 2009 and was awarded a Michelin star in 2013. Mason Winwood is the new head chef, recently taking over from Chris McClurg who is opening his own restaurant in Northern Ireland. Mason has been with No 6 for the past ten years.
There are two menus. The tasting menu, “Experience 1”, is £185 pp. and an a la carte menu, “Experience 2”, with two courses for £85 and three courses for £105. Prices have risen since my previous visit.
The food and service are excellent. Please see my previous reviews for more details of the restaurant and my visits there:
We chose the Experience 1 tasting menu. This started with a canape of an aerated potato crisp, like a Quaver, coated with Cornish seaweed and malt vinegar, served with a chickpea and aubergine cream dip. This was very simple and slightly disappointing when you are paying for a meal at this high price point.
Our first course was named “Soup and scones”. This consisted of soup of pea, mint and Fine Fettle Yorkshire cheese (an English feta style cheese), with a few fresh peas on the bottom of the bowl and a mint foam on top. This was served with a No 6 signature scone made with Davidstow cheese, and homemade, cultured and aged Guernsey cream butter. This was a lovely dish, the pea and mint soup had great flavour.
Next was a course named “Land & River”. This consisted of a base made with a caraway seed taco, Devon smoked eel, blobs of whipped, smoked cod’s roe, raw Granny Smith apple, topped with spiralised and savoury-glazed Crapaudine beetroot, and a spoonful of N25 Golden Oscietra caviar, aged for three months, that was added at the table. This was a very successful dish, with great flavours and textures, and the combination of the smoked eel and earthy beetroot was very enjoyable.
The hand dived Orkney scallop was inspired by the elements of a “BLT”. The bacon for the “BLT” was Guanciale (an Italian salt-cured meat prepared from pork jowl), the lettuce was sea lettuce (a bright green and translucent seaweed), and the tomato was a Datterino tomato jam (a red plum tomato variety, from Sicily, with a date-like shape and a sweet taste). This was served with a crab bisque and a tomato and butter “sauce tomat”. The natural sweetness of the scallop was enhanced with the sweet tomato. The bisque and sauce were velvety with deep flavours. This was another superb dish that we really enjoyed.
Our next dish was veal sweetbread. The sweetbread had been roasted in brown butter. It was served with a yuzu and lemon citrus condiment, pearl barley risotto which had a touch of ham and parsley in it, and a Manzanilla and almond sauce. The rich sweetbread was perfectly cooked, slightly crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, and the risotto and sauce were perfect accompaniments.
The main course was wild Cornish turbot, pan seared on one side to give it some caramelisation, then rested and gently cooked over coals. It was served on a mussel fumet sauce, with a trout roe and smoked leek vinaigrette. A separate bowl of grilled St. Austell mussels, topped with creamed leeks and a Vermouth velouté, was served on the side. This was a substantial course. The turbot was precisely cooked and had good flavour. I very much enjoyed the smoky fume sauce it was served with. The side dish of mussels and creamy leeks was sensational. This was my favourite dish of the dinner.
Then we moved onto the desserts. We started with a pre-dessert called “Yesterday’s scone”. This was frozen buttermilk topped with Cornish strawberries that had been poached in Champagne, Sauternes and hibiscus, covered in a crumble made from the leftover cheese scones from yesterday, and a frozen granita made from some of the maceration liquor. It was served with a small glass of the strawberry liquor topped up with Pol Roger champagne. This was a refreshing pre-dessert that had great flavours. I very much liked the idea that the leftover buttermilk, scones and maceration liquor where being used in a dish and not going to waste.
Our main dessert was chocolate pudding with three styles of Valrhona chocolate. The puff pastry tube was made from cacao, and it was filled with olive oil cake, Sicilian pistachios, and 75% dark chocolate, sitting on a 50% dark chocolate sauce, finished with a hazelnut liqueur. It was served with a bowl of roasted Madagascan vanilla gelato. This was also extremely enjoyable, with a variety of textures and temperatures that worked very well together.
Next was an optional course which was cheese (for two people) with Eccles bun, Fig di ligo, and honey. This was a supplement £20 per person.
At the conclusion of the meal, we were asked if we wanted to see the kitchen and meet the chefs. We were handed a bag containing copies of our personalised menus, some tea bags, and a small box of homemade cookies, named “Until we meet again”. Cookies are baked before every lunch and dinner by the No 6 pastry team for customers to enjoy the following day with a cup of Jing tea. These fruit and nut cookies where made with Valrhona hazelnut gianduja (a mixture of toasted hazelnuts, cocoa beans and sugar roasted over several hours before being very finely ground), Marcona almonds, and preserved cranberries. There were extremely tasty.
Service throughout the meal was very good. The staff were friendly and took time to explain the dishes to me.
No 6 is a delightful restaurant, serving very good food that showcases the considerable talent in the kitchen. This was an enjoyable experience and I will be returning next time I’m in Padstow.
The Menu:
The Food:
The Kitchen:
Inside upstairs kitchen:
The Fridge:
