When in Padstow it does often seem that everything food wise gravitates towards Rick Stein and to an extent that is true, you cannot wander the streets without finding one of his emporiums.

I do love looking around Stein’s Deli down by the harbour as there is loads of great produce on the counters and lots of lovely bits and pieces to tempt.

I had not though until now tried one of their Cornish pasties. I had convinced myself that only ones in my Padstow heart were from the Chough Bakery.

Today on a mission we thought that for balance we needed to test, try and compare

PASTY MENU

It was good to see that there was no messing around with fancy options. The board said Freshly Baked Steak Pasty and the only choice was regular for £3.95 or large for £5.95

PASTY COUNTER

The pastie in the counter all looked pretty good and uniform, I could not see any size differences so we just ordered medium as they looked big enough to me

STEAk PASTY

From the outside things were looking good, perhaps not as golden as I would like, but certainly a decent colour on the bake. I always like to see the dribble of juices from the crust where it has been poked per-bake, not sure why but it seems to make it seem more homemade.

I liked that I could see the cracking of the pastry case and that it was about to flake off. It told me it was nicely baked or at least made me think that it was.

Once inside we got a good look at the fillings and my first thoughts were how organised it was. A think layer of steak meat topped with potato, swede and onion. I could see a bit of mixing in there but mostly it was all neatly laid out.

Eating wise it had a nice flavour and texture, good seasoning and it was also quite moist. The pastry did seem a bit thick once I broke into the pasty and was better cooked at the edges. I was sure that I had read that they use cream as well in the pasty and wondered if that made it moist, but since I came back home I could not see that was the case, so perhaps I just imagined that

All in all it was a good pasty and better than expected as people I spoke with were a bit sniffy when I suggested getting one. They all said I should stick to Choughs. but I pointed out that I had eaten about 5 of those already this week, and anyway I like Rick and wanted to try one. So I did!

There is a lot more to Rick Steins Deli than just the pasties, but if you want a snack as you pass through well you could do a lot worse that picking up a couple from here.

Steins Deli is located at 2-5 Padstow Quays, Station Road, Padstow, Cornwall, PL28 8DA

It is next to his Fish and Chip shop (read a blog post about that here) and near the Lobster Hatchery in the car park when the bus terminus is