New 'fine dining' restaurant in Cornwall: Petty Fours, Truro

It’s behind everything he serves at his new Truro restaurant, Petty Fours – a play on the post-dinner treats of petit fours, while referencing his surname and the fact he is one of four brothers.

The restaurant, based in Old Bridge Street (where Chorley’s used to be) will open this Tuesday after a series of soft launch tasting nights.

Alfie wants to make ‘fine dining’ accessible to all – and note the inverted commas, as it’s a term he shies away from.

“The word ‘fine-dining’ is such a scary word – it alienates people,” he explains.

Instead, he describes the feeling he wants to create as “casual plus the extras” – and there certainly are a few treats and surprises along the way: “I want everything to feel a bit special.”

The set menu is priced at £36 for two courses, plus canapes, bread and petit fours, while three courses with the extras is £45.

It’s around a third of the price you might expect to pay for a similar dining experience from someone with Alfie’s calibre and background – and he’s choosing to arguably downplay what he brings to the table, in order to keep the cost lower for diners and open it up to people who may never have experienced this level of dining before.

“It’s everything you will get from a £150 to £200 menu,” said Alfie. “The skill level we bring doesn’t add a cost to it – it’s just what we choose to charge. If I bring the same level, everyone can have it then.

“If the majority of people say, ‘I’ve never had this kind of food, and I love it’ then I’ll be happy. I’d like to be the doorway for them to go off and have another meal like it.

“I want people to leave and think, ‘I would have paid more for that’.”

Chef Alfie Petty wants to open up quality dining to everyone (Image: Falmouth Packet) There is also a regularly changing tasting menu that will cost between £50 and £70 depending on what it features.

Meat comes from Etherington’s, fish from Matthew Stevens – he wants it to be a celebration of what Cornwall has to offer, right here on its doorstep.

“You can get Cornish crab in London. It’s the same crab we have here, just a day older!” jokes Alfie – although he’s not wrong.

Alfie most recently worked at award-winning chef Adam Handling’s restaurant Ugly Butterfly in Carbis Bay, while his cheffing CV also includes The Longstore in Truro, Clover Club in Newquay, and Merchant’s Manor in Falmouth – under Hylton Espey, who has gone on to open Michelin-starred Culture.

There was also a brief period, circa the ‘pandemic period’, in which he opened his first solo restaurant, in Essex. “I made probably every mistake I will make in life!” he laughs.

The experience, however, helped refine his vision for what he wants to achieve with his new venture.

Bringing Petty Fours to life has been a real family affair. Dotted around the intimate, 20-cover restaurant is chess-themed artwork (“I love chess” explains Alfie) created by his wife Tareg – who is also behind the Monopoly-themed art in the bar and toilets.

I was lucky enough to be given a preview of the five-course tasting menu, which I am happy to confirm delivers everything Alfie hopes to achieve.

What we ate

Canapes

Canapes begin the tasting menu (Image: Falmouth Packet) First up were two canapes – a garlic and herb cheese tartlet with thinly sliced grapes, and a chicken liver parfait and onion jam pastry cone, which came served stood up in a bowl of barley.

Topped with a single green leaf, they reminded me of carrots growing out of the ground – while eating it was a little like consuming a savoury ice cream. Fun, whatever the comparison, and the punchy liver flavour was nicely softened by the sweet onion jam.

Meanwhile the tartlet was made up of wafer-thin filo and equally wafer-thin grapes atop the nicely garlicky soft cheese.

Bread and butter

Bread, butter and ham hock (Image: Falmouth Packet) So far so tasty, and then the bread and butter came. Can bread and butter be your favourite course? That is not to demean in any way all the other stunning courses, but the BREAD, and then the BUTTER!

Onion focaccia with a good bite of salt, and a (subtle) Marmite scone came with small cubes of ham hock with wholegrain mustard, and two types of homemade butter – a simple salted pat and a sweet mulled one.

Mulled butter – who knew? I could have quite happily eaten that straight off a spoon. I didn’t. But I would have.

Fish

Delicate hake with fondant potato and a white cream with caviar sauce (Image: Falmouth Packet) Delicate hake was served with a white cream sauce with caviar, which was set off by leek, roasted to bring out the sweetness and counter the saltiness of the sauce. A tiny hint of samphire gave it bite.

This was served with a flavoursome round of fondant potato.

Meat

Short rib and wild mushrooms with a pancetta and red wine jus (Image: Falmouth Packet) Braised short rib, served pulled and off the bone, came with a Jerusalem artichoke puree and wild mushrooms, with a pancetta and red win jus.

The rib simply fell apart in the mouth, with the pancetta giving a smoky kick to the sauce and the selection of wild mushrooms each providing a slightly different addition of flavour.

Parmesan swirls accompanying the meat course (Image: Falmouth Packet) The earthy notes of the artichoke worked to balance the richness – and there was an additional surprise of a blackberry, which on paper wasn’t the obvious go-to but worked, giving that hint of sweetness.

Served alongside all this was a parmesan swirl – a kind of cheesy Chelsea bun!

Dessert

The chocolate and caramel delice with creme fraiche ice cream was a favourite (Image: Falmouth Packet) Chocolate and caramel delice, with a chocolate biscuit crumb and crème fraiche ice cream, moved the palate on to something sweeter.

Silky smooth chocolate loveliness, with a hidden heart of caramel, the delice was balanced by the freshness of the crème fraiche ice cream cutting through, with subtle citrusy notes.

‘Delice’ translates to ‘delight’ – and indeed it was.

Petit fours

Petit fours at Petty Fours (Image: Falmouth Packet) As if that wasn’t enough, the meal ended with petit fours – how could it not?

A ‘hazelnut pillow’ (a pop-in morsel of cannoli pastry with a ricotta and hazelnut filling) was joined by meringue with glazed apple end on a sweet note.

All this was washed down with a glass of Primativo from Old Chapel Cellars, which are within walking distance of the restaurant.

The only thing that matched the quality of the food was the standard of the service from Edgard and Scarlet – giving that eagle-eyed quiet attentiveness you would expect from somewhere of this calibre.

While it may not be ‘fine dining’ in the traditional sense, it certainly is a fine way to dine.