Porthminster Beach Cafe

We went here in July for dinner as it had been recommended. It turned out to be our favourite meal in Cornwall throughout our week holiday, a wonderful place! We struggled at first for parking, however the most convenient place to park is the St Ives Station Car Park nearby. The restaurant itself is very relaxed, with beautiful views of the beach at dusk through the large windows throughout. We ordered the starters of trout pastrami, fish pate, and steak, and mains of lobster tagliatelle and the fish and chips. It was all so delicious, accompanied by fantastic service from our very attentive waitress. You also get a postcard to post to a friend during the meal which was a lovely touch! All in - an amazing experience at a reasonable price. Definitely somewhere we will be recommending to all our friends who visit St Ives.

Birthday meal here for 8+, staff were friendly, their customer service was excellent really made us feel special... Food was also excellent as was the atmosphere.... Glad we booked to eat here.... One of the highlights of our trip... Big Thank you to the staff who looked after us.... Brilliant.

Absolutely can’t fault anything, staff, service and food were outstanding. Dog friendly which is what we also needed …. In summer this place will be packed and for a quiet Autumn lunch this was perfect, staff were so friendly and with a view to die for, what more could you want? P.S the Cornish white wine was amazing 😍

I love everything in this place! The ambience, tasty food and the view from the glass window. Dining here is worth it. I find all the food there is delicious.

So happy to have found this place on short notice on a UK bank holiday. Very friendly service, fantastic food. Location directly by the beach with a view on the sea cannot be beaten. Next time we are in Cornwall we’ll be back. Top recommendation is the Trout Pastrami with Horseradish.

All three courses were amazing. The butterfly sardine special for my starter was beautiful - simple looking but with the olive and fennel underneath it was so tasty. Hake was the fish of the day and a very generous portion with sumptuous olive mash. Desert was gorgeous - pavlova. I wish we'd been before. We'll definitely book again.

Excellent food, we all enjoyed every dish. Definitely recommend the Burrata and the Squid for starters, then we enjoyed the pan-fried Skate and Duck for main. Very friendly staff, but hasn’t quite fine-tuned the service - we ordered Champagne and was left to top-up our own glasses, which isn’t typical etiquette (but this is a picky minor detail).

My partner Hannah and I, had two amazing meals the weekend 16aug24 - 18aug24. The food, the service and the price are all great and reasonable. We were fortunate enough that a fresh local tuna was landed, it was unreal. We would like to give an extra special shout out to Guy, who was front of house at lunch time today (18th aug 24) .. we enjoyed our lunch and needed to make our way back to our Airbnb, the walk back is 40 minutes all up hill.. my partner is heavily pregnant and we had no phone signal, so he happily called a taxi for us. After making numerous calls to many taxis, understanding it's not possible for hannah to walk back, and having the fastest taxi state 45mins, guy took it upon himself to offer a lift, in his own car. A testiment to this restaurant, the food, and service. We look forward to returning with our bigger family! The numerous staff were all amazing, friendly, and couldnt do enough. This is a top restaurant! If you visit St Ives, for sure, this is your number one place. Thank you for everything. Dan & Han

food is not bad but the service lady is rude, annoying, impatient, immature, unprofessional. doesnt look like the waitress was there to serve but there to get served. this is UK anyways.. so should have reasonable expectation regarding the civilization here and not too much complaint... a "poor" rating is fair. definitely does not deserve the Michelin recommendation. well probably the same case with most of the restaurants there. anyways, avoid going there if you can.

Every time we come to St Ives we visit this place for lunch-it's just down the steps from the train station, so easy to get too but away from most of the crowds. the dining room is quite large, but the terrace is too, so sit out if it's a nice day. -For our most recent visit we booked online but didn't seem to have a choice of table. We arrived to find our table inside, but luckily there was space outside so we moved. Our orders were taken quickly but drinks took a while to arrive-they couldn't find the wine! Nevertheless our food was very good. The vinegar was a bit too strong on my warm beef salad, but everything else was great. They do separate vegan and gluten free menus too.

Lovely dishes, great ingredients, courteous, prompt, and lively service, and a nice luminous space made our wedding anniversary dinner very special. We had the fish soup and fried white bait appetisers, both delicious, and fish & chips and plaice dish as mains, both very tasty, both fish cooked to perfection, tender, and moist, and a handmade yogurt and blueberry sorbet to close. We'll be back.

Came here for a lovely romantic dinner with Erin and was not disappointed! The stunning view out over Porthminster Beach and the bay is a delightful backdrop to first class service and a solid, yet highly original and inventive menu. To start, Erin had a tasty crab cake with chilli sauce, and I had the perfectly fried squid with a miso dipping sauce. Then for main, she had line caught wild sea bass with a ponzu and I went for the local half lobster extravaganza which comes with a mound of fresh greens, perfect baked potatoes and a home made mayonnaise. We left no room for dessert and left feeling sated but thankfully not overdone!

Yum....I love the goats cheese tart, the squid, the fish soup and all of the local fish dishes i have eaten here. Quality is great. I am not too keen on the crab linguini but that may just be personal preference. The view is to die for.

Perfect view of the beach, lovely warm service from staff, prompt delivery of delicious food with a wide variety on the menu (not too big though). Brilliant, but does get busy. They're also very warm and welcoming to even little kids :).

You won't find pasties here. This is the seaside restaurant that had me reconsider Cornwall cuisine, and service, too. The waitstaff even made custom cots for the exhausted little ones dining with us this eve. After dinner I snapped a pic of the Haloumi salad w beetroot puree vinaigrette recipe in the cookbook for sale at the register. Highly recommended (if you can get a reservation).

A reservation was hard to get so we were happy to take a table for 5 at 6 o'clock. We were told they had another booking for 8 so we would need to be done by then. So far, so acceptable. However, on arrival at the restaurant the greeter also told us this, then the waitress who seated us and took our orders also told us twice. At this point we felt we were there under sufferance and they couldn't wait to see the back of us but the food was lovely and brought in relatively good time, so things were moving along well. Then a different waitress came to ask us if we were interested in dessert but then stopped to ask us if we had time to eat it! This was at 7.15/7.20 - plenty of time to eat dessert and have a coffee. We vented our feelings and told them we felt very unwelcome all evening. Apologies were made and the desserts arrived. We were finished, had paid the bill and were out of there by 7.55pm. There was no manager to speak to, no one in authority came to smooth things over. In many restaurants a manager would have comped the wine or something to apologies but this was not the case. It was not a relaxing evening and we all felt our night out spoiled by their constant nagging. The view was lovely,the chef obviously creative - what a shame the front of house let him down like this.