We had a lovely, convivial evening on Wednesday 22nd November. It went mostly really well apart from a couple of missing questions and a couple of extra questions in some of the rounds due to a cut-and-paste-disaster on my part! The winners, Team Uglow from Falmouth, won by a narrow margin. They are pictured below with the winning PNYC Quiz Trophy:
£190 was raised for PN Regatta along with a number of PN Calendar sales.
Can’t quite believe it has been two months since we opened – and we are approaching the start of the summer season and all it brings! Now open four evenings (Thursday to Sunday), we are offering a bar menu from 4 pm each day and the full menu from 6 pm. Kitchen closes at 9 pm so don’t hesitate to call last minute for a table if you don’t feel like cooking! Sarah has been preparing a new menu each week – and melon, nectarines, tomatoes, basil, burrata, prawns and sashimi are featuring heavily. A particularly more-ish rosé cava has been the winner by the glass. And beers from all over the world (and some brewed right here in Ponsanooth) are being enjoyed in the golden sunlight. Bookings can be made either via email (book@pnyc.co.uk) or call us on 01326 340065. Or just pop in – outside tables are available for walkins, and perfect for a late afternoon drink and nibble. Kayak, drive or walk over – we look forward to seeing you soon!
Melissa, Sarah and the team.
Melissa and Sarah had their first evening serving food and wine yesterday. We were blessed with beautiful sunshine and a lovely turn out. Despite not having a working oven – see below – a range of fabulous small dishes were produced, along with an increased wine selection, and we all had a great evening. The bar and restaurant will be open from 4pm every Thursday, Friday and Saturday going forwards. And once the oven is fixed, for Sunday lunches from 12-6pm and then will open more days as we move into the Summer.
Please book your table by emailing book@pnyc.co.uk
Our very first hello to all the PNYC members – and thrilled to be typing out our inaugural announcement!
We are very much looking forward to meeting you all at the bar and restaurant in the coming weeks, and as Tom has mentioned bookings can be made on book@pnyc.co.uk.
A couple of curveballs (quite the norm during set-up of hospitality venues!) have occurred – the most major being an unexpected replacement of the gas stove…and a switch to an electric one. We will therefore be serving drinks and substantial bar food for the first weekend of trade – Thursday 20th to Saturday 22nd from 4 pm. We will kick off as a fully fledged restaurant on Thursday 27th including Sunday roasts from the 30th.
We feel incredibly lucky to be working in such a special and beautiful place, and a big thank you to Tom and Ant for inviting us to a part of it.
Warm wishes, Melissa and Sarah
It is with HUGE delight that we can announce that Sarah Conway and Melissa Morrow will be taking over the lease of the bar and restaurant from Thursday 20th April. Sarah (chef) and Melissa (front of house) have some 35+ years experience in hospitality between them. They worked together in New Zealand for some 12 years before returning home to the UK and settling in Falmouth. For the last couple of years they have worked at places like The Meudon Hotel, The Muddy Beach Cafe in Penryn and Kernowine in Falmouth. This will be the first time they have owned the tenancy of a bar and restaurant and we are sure that you will give them every support! They live in Falmouth.
Initially they will be open:
Every Thursday evening for a fixed menu
Every Friday and Saturday evening for a full menu
Every Sunday for Sunday Roast – two sittings – from 12 noon to 6pm. (We have already booked a table for Sunday 23rd April )
And in the very busy Summer months – July and August – they will open 6 days a week.
You will be able to book tables using a new email address – book@pnyc.co.uk
Back in August we announced that Brendon and Sarah where taking on the Bar and Restaurant in January following Nigel and Mike stepping down after 5 years. We are sorry to announce that they have sadly pulled out. We are very sorry not to have them and wish them well with The Oyster Catcher shop in Mawnan Smith.
We are planning a communal Beer, Rugby and Pasty event for the following matches:
These will be a fixed price including food and need booking in advance via admin@pnyc.co.uk
I am afraid that we have been faced with a massive increase in electricity costs. From 17th November 2022 our electricity bill has gone up 655% !!!! And that includes a 10% loyalty discount. Obviously the Government scheme has reduced that by about half but we have yet to hear from our suppliers about the standing costs and it is literally impossible to contact anyone at their call centre. So after Government aid, about a 340% rise in electricity costs. And gas for cooking has also massively increased.
This has sadly impacted on Brendon and Sarah’s plans to run the bar and restaurant. With a huge increase in electricity and gas, and in the face of rising costs across the board, Brendon and Sarah have pulled out of opening the bar and restaurant in January. We totally understand this decision. We know that the current climate is affecting a lot of the hospitality industry across the board and opening up a new venture in this environment is extremely challenging. We are looking at ways of reducing our electricity bills such as installing solar panels, reducing the usage of power (such as running the waste treatment plant 3 hours on and 3 hours off instead of 24/7) and investing in some more efficient machinery.
We will continue to talk to Brendon and Sarah but at the moment the bar and restaurant faces an uncertain future next year. We will keep you posted.
As we enter our final three months at Port Navas we thought we should just send out an update of our opening times and exit plans.
We are currently open every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings from 6pm. As usual, if you wish to book a table for restaurant food, please book in advance. The limited bar snack menu will continue to be available for a quick bite to soak up the beer. Incidentally, we are very sad to hear of the demise of Skinners Brewery who have supplied us with our draught ales for the last five years and given us great support at the regatta and always got us out of a hole when necessary. Let’s hope someone buys them out of administration and runs with the ball. In the meantime, we’ve had to act fast and will be offering Sharp’s Atlantic Pale Ale over the next two weeks at least.
We will be closed on the weekend of November 17, 18 and 19th. Mike and Helen jet off to Boston and Nigel and Debs are in London for a rock concert twice postponed over COVID.
As Tom stated in his last newsletter our final weekend will be the 15, 16, and 17th of December when we will be offering a much-shortened menu, with pre-ordering obligatory to avoid food waste. We are already fully booked for the 16th and 17th. The Club will then be closed until Brendan and Sarah open up in 2023.
Many thanks for your continued support.
Mike & Nigel
As most of you know, Mike and Nigel are ending their tenancy of the Bar and Restaurant this December. Their last night will be Saturday 17th December. They will have been at the club for 5 years and Ant and I would like to thank them publicly for helping us to keep PNYC going and growing. We couldn’t have done it without their help and support and it has been a pleasure working with them and their families for the last half a decade!
We are delighted to formally announce that Brendon and Sarah Howson will be taking over the lease of the Bar and Restaurant from January 2023. Brendon and Sarah run The Oyster Catcher gift shop in Mawnan Smith. Prior to coming to Cornwall with their two teeenagers, they ran a very successful National Trust tearoom and restaurant in Devon. What was particularly nice for us was that they approached us the moment they heard that Nigel and Mike where hanging up their tea towels. They would describe themselves as cooks rather than chefs. They plan to be open more hours in the Summer season and are looking to open for Sunday lunches in the off season.
From Sarah and Brendon:
Hello! We are so excited to be taking on The Bar and Restaurant in early 2023. For us it is a privilege to be continuing on from Nigel and Mike. We wish them a very happy future. We are Brendon and Sarah (some of you may already know us from The Oystercatcher gift shop in Mawnan Smith). We both come from catering backgrounds and we set up and ran a very busy tea room as National Trust tenants for 10 years before our move to Cornwall. With the help of our two teens, we can’t wait to welcome you all with open arms to the Bar and Restaurant.
We have so many plans and ideas and we’re looking forward to serving you delicious meals, snacks and drinks from the beautiful and unique setting we all love in Port Navas. We’re busy sourcing the best of Cornwall’s produce from local suppliers for new and seasonal menus to serve to you in a warm, welcoming setting. Hope to see you join us in the New Year!
If you can keep out of the Easterly winds, it certainly is very spring like this week. You could even catch the last of the sun on the outside tables on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. To make it more attractive, we will be resuming a bar snack menu for outside this week, so if you are pining for Mike’s dirty fries with beef & chorizo chilli, or a bowl of crayfish fries, then this is the place to be.
Mike and Debs will also be bringing some lighter Spring dishes onto the restaurant menu over the next couple of weeks so have a look at this week’s menu and give us a call if you would like to book a table.
To book a table please email nigel@pnyc.co.uk with your requirements, or leave a voice message on 01326 340 065 and he will get back to you.
Here’s to a brighter and less disrupted season.
Many thanks for your continued support.
Mike & Nigel
Cor blimey, Guvnor, where have the last three weeks gone! Time to gird the loins and get ready to re-open the bar and restaurant again from Thursday 20th January. Our thanks to Fran and Ant for bravely holding the fort with Frantic Fridays over the last two weeks.
Mike and Debs will be back in the kitchen preparing menu items anew on Wednesday and Thursday, so we are happy to take bookings for dinner from Thursday 20th January.
Please email nigel@pnyc.co.uk with your requirements, or leave a voice message on 01326 340 065 and he will get back to you.
Here’s to a brighter and less disrupted season.
Many thanks for your continued support.
Mike & Nigel
From Nigel:
With Christmas coming up we thought it would be fun to offer a few of our favourite PNYC Wines of the Year at normal retail prices. Despite being out of the wine trade for nearly four years we still have useful contacts with some of our old key suppliers.
Nigel has 8 wines on offer with a 5% discount on orders of 12 bottles and over before 7th December. Wines can be delivered to you locally but in this instance the discount will not apply to cover delivery. For a list of wines and the prices email nigel@pnyc.co.uk
We have finished painting the dining room. Hopefully it’s a bit fresher than it was. What the painting has done is make the swirly carpet stand out even more! The carpet is going and will be replaced with a wooden floor – probably in the New Year. We are also adding a little more lighting to the dining area so that you can see better who you’re sitting with. That obviously has some pros and cons. FYI – the lights will be fitted with a dimmer switch so you’ll be able to ask for the lights to be turned down if you wish to eat in obscurity.
Thanks to our membership fees, we have been able to re-cover the seats and stools in the clubhouse with new blue leatherette. No-one has so far commented so we’ll take that as a positive that we haven’t drastically changed the character of the club!
Over the next couple of weeks we will be re-decorating the inside of the club. New cushions have been ordered for all the benches and stools and we will be re-painting the restaurant area (as opposed to the bar area). We also plan to replace the old dining room carpet with a wooden floor but lorry delivery prices and availability are delaying this.
Autumn is nearly in full swing and, as happens at every summer’s end, there is a migration of staff away from their holiday jobs back to their places of study or even new places of work. So it is this week, and with some other stuff going on in the background, we are having to postpone opening the bar until 6pm each evening this weekend.
Should the weather be clement enough, we will run our bar snacks menu outside from 6pm as well.
The restaurant is fully booked on Thursday and Friday, with one table left on Saturday. Please leave your details on the club ansafone if you are interested and we will get back to you.
Many thanks for your continued support.
Mike & Nigel
Friday 28th was the first time the bar was open outside. And we had some 60 people enjoying the beautiful late afternoon sun. PN looked at it’s best with the tide in, the spring flowers in bloom and the lovely buzz of lots of people enjoying a drink and a bite to eat. Really great to see. Can I just ask that you do make sure to abide by the social distancing rules – it’s not for much longer hopefully.
Apologies that the roof for the outside seating area has not been fitted yet. Will get that done asap.
Work is well underway to improve the outside areas at the front of the club. It’s been beautifully rendered by Lawrence Kay (I would recommend him) and once dry will be painted white.
Meanwhile I have followed Peter Goad’s design and added more posts over the outside eating area so that we can put a roof on it and make a covered seating area. Much to my surprise, it’s come out quite well. Mostly straight and actually very solid. Peter, I hope you approve. A new resin and stone floor will be added to the seating area and the area outside the front door. This will be finished for the opening up of the Bar and Restaurant on Friday 16th April.
We have decided to change the membership fee for next year, increasing it to £25 for the year. This reflects the fact that, at £15, it costs almost £2 a year in postage just to send out application forms and then membership cards to each member. I hope that this is acceptable. Mooring prices will not change for 2021 with the exception of charges for kayaks, paddleboards and inflatables which will be tweaked.
We have also made the decision to change the structure of memberships slightly for 2021. There will now be three kinds of membership:
At the moment, people can join the club for £15 for the year and then launch as much as they want. This has led to an increase in traffic and parking. So we are making the following changes:
Our aim is a) to reduce the traffic to the club of people just wanting to launch small craft b) charging them properly if they do want to do this. The public slip in the village, of course, remains a free alternative.
We have decided to serve twin markets as we go on to the next exciting stage of lockdown lottery. There are a good number of you who are tentative about going out to dine and there are some who cannot wait. We have therefore decided that we will continue to do a weekly takeaway, initially on Thursdays, and we will open a restricted restaurant on Fridays and Saturdays. These are temporary arrangements which may change at any time.
The menu for the takeaway will now be published on Monday morning and orders will be taken from 8am. A similar menu, with a few tweaks will then be used in the restaurant over the weekend.
I am afraid there are certain rules and regulations that must be adhered to by both us and you in order to safeguard both us, our staff and you, the customers.
There are 5 tables available to book in the restaurant and three tables available to book outside.
In the restaurant we can take three tables of two people only alongside the window with partitioning between them. There is a further table at the far end of the room and a table in the bar area which can accommodate up to a maximum of 6 people from a maximum of two households. Only diners with a reservation will be admitted to the inside areas.
The three tables outside can seat a maximum of 6 people from numerous households.
At all times, at all tables, both food and drink can only be ordered through a member of staff, and payment will be taken at the table, not in the bar.
In addition to these tables there are two small seating areas accessed from either end of the site which can be used by drinkers.
In order to maintain social distancing of two metres there will be markings laid on the ground outside. Within the building we can reduce this to one metre+ through mitigation. Staff will wear face coverings to protect themselves and you at this closer level.
There will be hand sanitising stations at each of the toilets and inside the restaurant entrance. Everybody must use them.
We cannot allow any congregating in pinch points at the site, so please use common sense and listen to any instructions from staff members regarding your safety.
We are told by Government, albeit with scant detail, that we will be required to take and keep personal data from all customers. There will be no slackening of this requirement and failure to comply will result in a refusal of service. Sorry! Members must bring their membership cards with them please.
Finally, in the unlikely event that we should experience inclement weather, tables booked outside may be subject to cancellation at short notice. Shelter cannot be taken inside.
We will endeavour to make the experience as enjoyable as possible. Many thanks for your continued support. For reservations please call the restaurant on 01326 340065 or Nigel’s mobile 07779712457.
Mike & Nigel
