5 Best Restaurants in St. Ives, The West Country

This dining-focused pub with bright, homey furnishings and a relaxed vibe looks past green fields to the ocean beyond. The frequently changing fixed-price menus (£40 or £48) feature fresh, inventively prepared meat and seafood dishes—look for hake with imam bayildi and garlic yogurt or lamb loin with potato and cheddar croquette and tender-stem broccoli. Leave room for some enticing desserts. Eight smallish rooms provide guest accommodations. The inn sits near the curvy coast road 6 miles west of St. Ives.

This tiny backstreet joint with limited seating consistently draws enthusiastic crowds for its delicious burgers made of pure Cornish beef or vegan and vegetarian ingredients. The lightly toasted buns are baked with sesame seeds (there are gluten-free alternatives), toppings include field mushrooms and wilted spinach, and the skin-on fries are hand-cut. Wines, local beers and ciders, and soft drinks are also available, some of them organic. There's normally a line outside, and phoning or emailing ahead with your order is highly recommended, whether to eat in or carry out. One option is to enjoy takeout at nearby Porthminster Beach—watching out for the marauding gulls.

Unbeatable for its location alone—on the broad, golden sands of Porthminster Beach—this sleek, modern eatery prepares imaginative lunches and evening meals that you can savor while you take in the marvelous vista across the bay. The accent is on Mediterranean and Asian seafood dishes, and typical choices include pan-fried skate wing with spider crab, samphire, and a caper and herb butter sauce; lobster tagliatelle with fennel and zucchini; and Indonesian vegetable curry. There's a beach bar and outdoor kitchen, too—a tempting stop in summer for breakfast, a snack lunch, an evening barbecue, or just a drink—and two sister restaurants (Porthminster Kitchen on the harborside and Porthgwidden Beach Café in the Downalong neighborhood) have smaller and cheaper menus that are equally strong on seafood.

One of Cornwall's oldest pubs serves simple lunches as well as evening meals in wood-beam rooms that display the work of local artists. The traditional menu includes fish pie, salads, and burgers, as well as Cornish crab linguine. There's also a separate, quieter restaurant upstairs, and you can eat at the tables outside at the front or on a rooftop terrace for excellent harbor views.

Seasonality and local provenance are the guiding principles of this mellow, minimally decorated café–restaurant tucked up a side street between the harbor and Porthmeor Beach. You're encouraged to share the tapas-style dishes, which include St. Austell Bay mussels with shallots, garlic, white wine, and cream; hand-dived Dorset scallops, with cauliflower and hazelnuts; or turbot with anchovies, tarragon butter, and cider. The menu also includes some choice vegetarian options, and booking ahead will enable you to enjoy the restaurant's famed fixed-price "Sunday feast" lunches (£38; not served during peak summer months).