Restaurant Review: The Well House, Fowey, Cornwall

This week I was in Cornwall for a few days visiting the other half’s family, as we do every summer, and this year I decided I needed a proper Cornish cream tea. So I took to Twitter and asked for the best places around; I haven’t ever had a Cornish cream tea and I’ve never had a gluten free cream tea. Anywhere. Ever. Well, unless you count me making gluten free scones myself and having them with a steaming mug of tea at home… But it’s not really the same is it…

So, having been recommended a few places around Cornwall (three of which were in Fowey, I might add – go Fowey!) I wanted to visit them all – perhaps next year we’ll try another one… – but we only really had the time to trek to one 😔. So The Well House it was: not too far away from us, sweet and cheese gluten free scones on offer as well as a variety of gluten free cakes.

We didn’t pre-book, but got there at pretty much dead on 12, after we arrived tables around us started filling up quickly so I would recommend getting there early (I’m not sure if the tea room takes bookings…) to avoid disappointment. I had already directly contacted The Well House via Twitter asking about their availability of gluten free options – gluten free options available every day – but asked the waitress who seated us as well, just to be sure. She was very knowledgeable about their gluten free products, pointed out the things on the menu that were gluten free and told me the gluten free scones were kept separate to the gluten-containing scones, as with all their gluten free items. She also informed me that they had gluten free bread as well as the cakes and scones so they could make any sandwich of my choosing gluten free if I wished. Result!

And so I came to perusing the menu…

Oh lordy! The amount of choice I had was incredible!! Any sandwich I wanted, or scones, or cakes!! I had to ask the poor waitress to come back it took me so long to choose; I’m just not used to having that much choice so when I’m confronted with it, I take forever. Once I’d finally decided to have what we’d specifically gone to The Well House for (a gluten free cream tea), I had to do my usual overbearing coeliac routine which our table waitress didn’t really appreciate. I don’t know if it was defensiveness on behalf of the tea room, thinking I was criticising how things were prepared (which I definitely wasn’t meaning to do, obviously), or maybe she was just having a bad day, or maybe… well I don’t really know, there are (I’m sure) several reasons why she was less then happy to answer my questions about how the scones were prepared and baked – I did explain that I have coeliac disease and that I am medically very sensitive to the tiniest, tiniest amount of gluten – but maybe she just wasn’t feeling it that day. And we all have days like that, I’m not judging, but it didn’t leave me in the greatest of confidence when my question of “Are the gluten free scones prepared separately to the normal scones?” was met with “Well, they’re made in the same place, soo…”. Not helpful. I asked her a few more questions and based on that, coupled with the Twitter recommendations and the previous waitress’ knowledge decided to order the scones despite her seemingly bad attitude.

Boy am I glad I ordered them anyway. I mean just look.

Look. At. That. Mmmmmm. Tasted just as good as it looked too.

My mouth is watering now thinking about them… Just look……

So, anyway… They tasted great. Like, more than great, amazing, incredible. You get the picture. The thing I liked the most about these scones is that they honestly tasted exactly the same as normal scones, they looked pretty similar to the other half’s mother’s glutenous scones too. I didn’t feel like I was missing out one single bit, like I often do when I go out for a meal, because I could eat pretty much everything they could (just my own version of it) and it tasted the same as it would have done if it had been ‘normal food’. What I also liked was that other tables who ordered two sets of cream teas got four scones and larger pots of jam and clotted cream (so the same amount, but a ‘sharing platter’, if you like) but for our table, the staff understood that putting gluten free scones on the same plate as the glutenous scones is a big cross-contamination no-no and so we got our own separate plates. Everyone else’s food was great from all accounts too, so excellent all round!

I was honestly thoroughly impressed with the amount of knowledge the staff clearly had surrounding gluten free and cross-contamination issues at The Well House and will be pleading my case to be allowed back there every time we visit Cornwall.

Jx

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