The Rum & Crab Shack
Wharf Road St Ives Cornwall TR26 1LG
Walking into The Rum & Crab Shack is a bit like stepping into a boat: nautical memorabilia bedecks the room, port holes and bay windows look out to sea, the bar is well stocked with rum, and much of the food served is fished from the ocean in view. In the harbour-front line-up of fine dining and fish and chip joints, St Ives needed a place like The Rum & Crab Shack to shake up the mix with something fresh, fun and quirky. With its cool, boaty décor and an extensive rum menu (as well some decent beers on tap), this is most certainly a good spot for a tipple at the bar or in a cosy sea-view nook. However, far from being just a cool location to test your sea legs, the seafood is even more impressive. Unsurprisingly there’s an emphasis on crab – spider and brown crabs, crab cakes, crab salad, shack crab burgers, rum and crab soup – but there’s also plenty of other fishy delights including Cornish mackerel, Jambalaya (a bit like paella) and Gumbo (French seafood stew). And by no means is this only a domain for grown-ups: fish finger sarnies and treasure chests of toys mean that there’s plenty to entice trainee pirates too.
