These U.Okay. spots are finest for native seafood—this is why

A restaurant-led seafood scene

In July 2026, Newlyn seafood restaurant Argoe turned 5. Named after a swashbuckling lugger — a kind of conventional Cornish fishing boat that plied native waters within the 1800s — the restaurant was additionally impressed by proprietor Rich Adams’ journeys to northern Spain and Portugal. The Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded spot serves a menu of seasonal, domestically caught fish cooked merely, over a charcoal grill, evenly wearing olive oil and vinegar or lemon. Vegetable sides comply with the identical guidelines of simplicity and considerate sourcing.

Most of the seafood on the menu is landed on the identical harbour onto which the restaurant appears out. Daily choices change with the rhythm of the ocean, serving up John Dory, entire hake, megrim sole and monkfish. St Austell mussels are a staple, whereas cuttlefish is served in a soupy Portuguese-style seafood rice. Lobster and spider crab, completely in season throughout early June, are picked out metres away from a harbourside honesty field system. The kitchen selects one and texts the fishermen a weight in change for a value. 

At Argoe, a coastal-minded tradition is being constructed. Throughout the yr, workers are taken on boat and harbour excursions to assist their understanding and information. The restaurant stays open past vacationer season in order that the area people can nonetheless eat there, placing on occasions all year long the place a extra informal, reasonably priced eating providing is on the market for individuals who dwell close by. In collaboration with the Cornish Sardine Management Association, final yr Argoe hosted a part of the inaugural Cornish Sardine Festival, grilling sardines and serving a butterflied sardine pizza.

Although Rich doesn’t use the phrase ‘sustainability’, a time period so typically missing nuance and trapped in a perceived binary of excellent and dangerous, it’s tough to think about a extra energetic illustration of the phrase. “We have this nostalgia for doing these things on holiday [overseas] — smoky sardines over a grill cooked whole — and it seems like the thought doesn’t enter our minds to do that here [in the UK],” says Rich.

“Sardines are so abundant here for us in Newlyn,” he continues. “The boats sometimes just go to the other side of the harbour walls. If you walk across the road towards Mousehole, or to Penzance across Newlyn Green, every night between July and December, you’ll see seven or eight boats searching just around the bay. It doesn’t get more local than that, and to be able to cook and serve that right here in the harbour is a very special thing.”