Restaurant review: Talay Thai, St Ives

We go on holiday to St Ives every year, and since Talay Thai opened a few years ago, it’s always on our list of places to eat when we’re there. Situated on the harbour front, this restaurant offers incredible views so it's always worth trying to get a window seat!

When we visited St Ives last month, we headed to Talay Thai on Sunday night. One point to note is you can’t book here, and when we arrived at 7:30pm there was a long queue down the steps and out the door. But don’t let this put you off, their food is well worth the wait, and the queue went down really quickly so we only ended up waiting for 15 minutes.

One thing I love about Talay Thai is their tapas style menu, with all their mains available in either a full portion size or tapas size. If you can’t decide what to go for, you can just order several smaller dishes instead of struggling to pick one main.

To start we went for prawn crackers with a sweet chilli dip, a must have at the start of any thai meal. And then I went for a few items from the tapas menu: scallops pad cha, vegetable tempura, chicken massaman curry and some sticky rice. These were all delicious, especially the spicy scallops! The tempura had a nice light batter, and the massaman was creamy and full of flavour.

Nick is gluten free so there weren’t a huge number of things for him to choose from, but the waitress was really helpful in advising on what he could have, and they also had an allergen menu. He went for the thai beef salad starter (which I ate a lot of because it was so delicious!), followed by the weeping tiger beef sirloin. The steak was cooked perfectly, and came with a hot & spicy dipping sauce, sticky rice and a cucumber and tomato salad with a chilli dressing.

This really is a must visit if you’re in St Ives, the restaurant has a great atmosphere, the service is always excellent, and the food is delicious!