Restaurant review: Silco, St Ives
Did Silco just become my favourite restaurant in St Ives? Absolutely it did! It was the best meal of our holiday, and is somewhere you need to try if you’re in Cornwall.
We hadn’t been down to St Ives for a couple of years so this was our first visit to Silco, which opened last year. It has a prime location on the harbour front, and if you can get a window seat, it's a great place to sit and look out across the bay.
The menu is small plate vibes. Everything is made in their kitchen from scratch, and they use the best quality ingredients, from local freshly caught fish to seasonal fruit and veg grown in the UK.
First up… drinks. I ordered a Pentire Adrift & tonic. Pentire make a range of non-alcohol spirits, and they are based in Cornwall too. I’m a big fan of their drinks, and I’ve written a blog post about them which you can read here.
The Menu
-
What we ordered
Lebanese hummus, with za’atar, roasted nuts and olive oil
Fries with Cornish sea salt & rosemary
Flatbread with garlic & coriander butter
Lebanese spiced lamb, with toasted almonds, sumac yogurt, & burnt tomato
Tamarind & coconut fish curry - local fish with coriander & onion salad, lime pickle & jasmine rice
Sri Lankan lentil fritters, with pol sambol, coconut yogurt, crispy curry leaves & all spice chilli jam
The menu was great for Nick’s dietary requirements (he’s gluten and dairy free) and it's quite rare that we can go to a ‘small plates’ restaurant and actually be able to order more than 1 or 2 dishes to share. The amount of choice here was excellent.
I have to say though that the bread wasn’t gluten free, but I couldn’t resist ordering this for myself. The garlic and coriander butter on top of this soft flat bread was so moorish, and it was delicious dipped into the hummus.
The highlight of our meal was easily the tamarind & coconut fish curry. This was just incredible! It wasn’t spicy, although the lime pickle did add a nice little bit of heat, and there was so much flavour packed into this little dish.
We loved all the other plates too, and the chefs kindly swapped the sumac yogurt in the lamb dish for coconut yogurt so it was dairy free for Nick.
And the bitesize lentil fritters were so tasty too, these came with a coconut yougrt topped with pol sambol, which is like a coconut relish made of small pieces of coconut, finely chopped onion, chillis and lime juice. This was a nice light and fresh dip for the crispy fritters.
The crunchy toasted nuts added a nice texture to the smooth hummus. Unfortunately they didn’t have any gluten free bread for Nick to have with this, but the chips dipped into the hummus was a winning combination.
Our meal came to £75.90 which was great value for money, with the quality and the amount of food. And this included a 10% service charge too.
I can’t recommend Silco enough, the service was excellent, the small restaurant had a really nice chilled vibe, and the food was so good that we were talking about it for days afterwards. If you eat at one restaurant in St Ives, make sure it's Silco.
Is Siclo gluten free friendly?
It certainly is! The gluten free options are clearly highlighted on the menu, and there’s enough dishes to choose from. Everything we ordered (apart from the bread) was gluten free.
Is Silco vegan / vegetarian friendly?
There are lots of vegetarian options across the menu, but I’d say vegan dishes are slightly more limited. There are lots of vegan snacks, but less to choose from on the small plates menu.