Andrew Unsworth takes a two-hour drive for lunch at Rick Stein's restaurant

Going to celebrity chefs' restaurants is a bit like going to KFC and hoping that you might, just, bump into Colonel Sanders. It ain't going to happen because they are usually on the other side of the world chasing a TV camera or a new bit of skirt.

Nevertheless I did it in June, I travelled two hours and back just to have a lunch in The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall, the first of Rick Stein's apparently growing chain.

Why? Of all TV chefs I like Stein; he comes across all ordinary and blokey, no airs and graces (Gary Rhodes) or affected vulgar language employed for shock value (Gordon Ramsay). Above all, I think he can cook because his recipe books work. A friend and I have both been cooking out of his Far Eastern Odyssey book for months and every recipe is a winner.

Besides, I was in Devon, the county next door to Cornwall, and it was my birthday that weekend. On the actual day my hostess Pat had decided that I should do some garden work to earn my keep, and that involved a protracted battle with a climbing rose bush growing in a direction which deeply offended her. I deserved a treat, so booked lunch for the next day.

Despite being lumped together as part of the West Country, Devon and Cornwall are rivals who distrust each other and argue over everything from who has the prettiest seaside villages to whether you put jam on top of or under the cream on your scones. These things are important, and while Devon still passes for part of England, the Cornish are different, with roots in a Celtic past. They even have their own flag, a black cross on a white background. My mum came from Cornwall and made great Cornish pasties, (in Devon, they now have to call them Devon pasties), so I know who I have to back.

I am not great at navigating in England, because everything is closer than you think and it takes longer to get there than you expect, so I keep missing the turn-offs. There is just too much packed into that island for anyone who has driven to Calvinia.

Despite my worst efforts, we got off the main road and to Padstow through the narrow lanes of Cornwall in good time to park and look around before lunch. The parking was packed and the harbour was packed. If Padstow was once a sleepy fishing harbour, some locals probably feel that Steins salvation has all but ruined it. Steins Fish and Chip takeaway was doing brisk business and his deli next door was teeming with people. I cringed at the beers on sale: Chalky's Bark and Chalky's Bite, also the Chalky mugs and bowls. The late Chalky has clearly joined Lassie in the doggie hall of irritating fame. I bought us pasties for dinner that night; knowing they would soon be sold out, my friend bought me a little jar of ras al-hanut, a very Cornish spice mix from Morocco blended in the UK.

We were the first in the restaurant at noon, and an hour later it was packed. Any illusions of a little seaside bistro with harbour views were soon dispelled: this is a huge restaurant, bigger than most in London, with modern decor, a great collection of paintings, and a host or waiters storming in and out of swinging doors into an equally huge kitchen full of chefs.

The menu has 21 first courses two of which were vegetarian, and 12 main courses, one a steak. The rest was gloriously seafood from hake and chips up. The most expensive item was the Fruits de Mer for £45.50: having seen Stein on MasterChef Australia - he set contestants the task of making this seafood platter on ice and proclaiming the winning dish worthy to be served in his restaurant - I was amused to see one on the counter which looked less impressive than the one which won on TV.

The set lunch menu of £37 spared both the wallet and the agonising selection process, which we still botched. Letting her order first, my guest/driver was convinced that I was ordering dishes simply to compliment hers and promptly changed her mind to be kind to me, so that in the end we ate what the other had ordered.

A bottle of water set us back £3.10, three glasses of pino grigo Villa Fiore from Venezia Guilia cost £17.85.

Pat started with fish and shellfish soup with rouille and Parmesan, served with rounds of toast for the rouille. I had a warm salad of seared monkfish and tiger prawns with a fennel butter vinaigrette. The soup, which came in its own little white ceramic tureen, was smooth and tomato based rather than lumpy, but "excellent". The salad was good, even if monkfish is a creature best not seen and the cute little "tiger" prawns would have had the Maputo marketplace in a riot of laughter.

The baked fillet of hake with Iberico ham, pimentón and pardina lentils also came in its own earthenware pot which proved difficult to eat out of, topped with a pesto or purée of fresh herbs. The finely chopped ham was in the lentils, along with carrots.

I had halibut with dill, carrots and celery - a mirepoix of the vegetables made into a sauce with muscadel wine and butter. It was also excellent, served with a bowl of buttered mixed veggies which I swear had been counted and which were meant for the halibut, not the hake. The fish portions were just adequate, not generous.

For dessert Pat had a vanilla panna cotta with poached cherries, I had a rum baba with rum and raisin ice cream. The panna cotta was brilliant, a far cry from most I have tasted, and just firm, not a jelly. The ice bream was great, as it should be in Cornwall with all that cream, the rum baba was alarmingly tiny but tasty enough, although Pat said it was a disgrace - "like a flattened poached egg and tasted like it wanted to be a choux pastry when it grew up".

Espresso coffees (£3.30) came with a chocolate truffle and little biscuit.

The verdict? Good food and just enough for lunch if you were counting on dinner later; even the bread slices looked as if they had been weighed in. Thankfully I'd bought those pasties.

Lunch for two cost £101.55 excluding the tip, and was worth the experience. You can take a menu from a basket outside the door as a keepsake and leave a pound, but the waitress gave me three: the main, the lunch and the kiddies.

• Unsworth was in the UK as a guest of British Airways but travelled to Cornwall independently

. The Seafood Restaurant

• Riverside, Padstow, Cornwall
• Tel: +01841532700