Home cooking, but idealised: 2 Fore Street reviewed

The restaurant 2 Fore Street lives on Mousehole harbour, near gift shops: the post office and general store have closed, leaving a glut of blankets and ice cream, the remnants of Cornish drama. It’s a truism that Mousehole is hollowed out – tourism changes a place, and no one knows that better than Mousehole. Eating at 2 Fore Street gives the visitor the opportunity to examine what they have done with what they call love.

Mousehole is one of those cursed villages that gather in the south-west: haunted in winter and glutted in summer, to paraphrase ‘The Pirates Next Door’. Darkened cottages have Q codes, not families, and only the postman knows the true number of year-round residents, a question that offends them. There are benefits if you are selfish. Driving through a storm to drink at the Old Ship is a bleak pleasure, because no pub has a blacker granite floor: it is a mirror made of part of a mountain.