The Winking Prawn

The Winking Prawn

Booking the Winking Prawn is a ritual that we now undertake in early June. So popular is this beach front establishment that leaving it any later always results in disappointment. A visit to the Winking Prawn is a night off for the blogger and I try to have one of these at least once a week - we all need a holiday...

Every seaside resort should have a place like this. The Winking Prawn is a restaurant inside serving both lunch and dinner. But outside it's a beach cafe during the day and a BBQ at night.



Drinks and take-aways can be ordered from the bar and taken to the beach. If you want Salcombe Diary Ice Cream this is available from the (non-mobile) ice cream van and buckets, spades, crab lines, lilos and kites are available from the beach-store caravan. With 50 covers inside and 160 outside it's now a big place. We've watched it grow from the start when everything was crammed into the original building.

Salcombe harbour entrance is a deceptive piece of water. Although there seems to be almost 1/2 mile of entrance opposite Sharp Tor beneath most of this width is a very shallow sand bar made famous by Tennyson's poem 'Crossing the Bar'. Tennyson crossed the bar in the steam yacht Sunbeam but today most of the traffic is smaller. Nevertheless I could watch the entrance for hours and the Winking Prawn provides a perfect view point.

North Sands is a cove right opposite the mouth of the harbour and the restaurant nestles at the bottom of the valley and at the head of the cove. It's a perfect spot and there is really nothing else around at sea level except a large beach car park and the tennis club. But the beach is a big draw for families and with ample parking, safe water, rock pools and smooth sand it has everything a family beach could need. The Winking Prawn is the icing on the cake.

First and foremost it's a family restaurant. Whilst we've moved beyond the need, there's even a big dressing up box for the younger diners and youngsters can be left to play outside in a small play/sandpit area visible to the adults whilst they dine inside. The variation we use, which works when there are plenty of teens, is where they eat BBQ outside leaving the ageing 'rents to enjoy the à la carte menu inside. Last year the young man had five friends staying for a week and this proved a popular option for the independent-minded newly-teens. The restaurant is decorated like a Cape Cod beach house with muted Georgian colours and beach paraphernalia wedged between the rafters

We came here on Friday with another family - a friend of the young man and his parents and sister. Eight of us started dining at 7.30 and were still enjoying conversation at gone 11.00. We enjoyed the food too. The Winking Prawn does not aspire to the culinary heights of the Porthminster Beach at St. Ives or the Riverside Restaurant in West Bay but it produces reliable food reliably.

Three adults chose scallops to start, but the young man and I chose mussels. The adults all enjoyed monkfish wrapped in bacon, and the young people enjoyed steaks and lamb rumps. The young people followed this with Salcombe Dairy ice cream of various flavours whilst the adults chatted over coffee. I was too tired and emotional to remember to photograph the food! Perhaps during the next visit...Thank goodness it's only 10 minutes from the house. A good night off for the blogger.