Serving up a nine-course tasting menu full of treats and surprises, Number 6 is a restaurant perfect for special occasions.

In the kitchen, chef Paul Ainsworth is known for his fresh and imaginative dishes, and here blends fashionable ingredients and techniques with familiar, comforting touches and well-sourced fine foodstuffs. The restaurant draws the crowds during high season and has won praise from many quarters – with Ainsworth’s own profile rising due to TV appearances and published recipes.

Elegant, airy and comfortable, providing an understated contrast to the slightly rococo gift emporiums to be found elsewhere in Padstow, the restaurant can be packed to the rafters during the summer – so plan ahead. Scrubbed wooden fireplaces, comfortable grey and wood furnishings and attentive service all add to the refinement; the food ranges from the familiar to the playfully inventive, there’s a bar with a list of cocktails and drinks to be proud of as well.

Ainsworth’s skill lies in taking unusual and voguish ingredients and serving them in a way which removes some of their mystique through familiar and well thought-out touches. Pig’s head, for example, has been served with salad cream, smoked eel and crackling in a light and fresh dish; elsewhere on the menu you may find goose and pickles served with light liver parfait and pumpkin seed toast, or Cornish lamb with salsa verde, sweetbreads and beetroot. Seasonal ingredients are highlighted alongside techniques and flavours from the leading edge of food fashions, and the desserts are lauded particularly enthusiastically by visitors and critics, with the famous ‘Taste of the fairground’ now a staple on menus.

A bespoke Number 6 cocktail is offered as an ideal pre-prandial livener, and the wine list proudly features wine from both Old and New Worlds; as well as with your dinner, you can enjoy summer drinks in the restaurant’s courtyard, from the cocktail menu.