We caught up with Elliot Kett of Kelp Canteen ahead of the 2026 Porthleven Food Festival to chat about the harbour-side pop-up, Cocktails & Crustaceans. From his passion for locally caught seafood to the art of pairing it with creative cocktails, Elliot gives us an insider look at what festival-goers can expect – and why this is one experience not to miss.

Tell us a little about yourself and how Kelp Canteen came to be

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved going to seafood shacks on the coast and getting a pot of cockles, oysters and some smoked fish – there’s something wonderfully British about it. Setting up and running a food truck had always been a dream of mine, and so the idea for Kelp Canteen was born. I scoured eBay for food trucks and ended up falling in love with a beaten-up old ice cream trailer with holes in the roof and floor. I spent 5 months converting it into a fully functioning kitchen and we opened our hatch in 2024 on Custom House Quay, Falmouth.

What can visitors expect from your pop-up at Porthleven Food Festival this year?

Great local ingredients. We’re running a short but mighty menu:

• Native Fal oysters, rhubarb dressing
• Crab croquettes, mustard mayo
• Fire roasted scallops in the shell, seaweed and miso butter
• Fire roasted half lobster, wild garlic butter

How do you select the seafood you’ll be serving? Is it all local?

Sourcing amazing local ingredients is integral to what we do at Kelp Canteen. We’re serving native oysters from the Fal estuary which are harvested using sail boats which employ the same traditional techniques that have been practiced for hundreds of years, served with a rhubarb dressing from a local market garden. We enrich the Cornish crab croquettes with roasted crab shells and fish stock for extra flavour – a good bite with a beer. The scallops are all from the Fal Bay and we pick the seaweed for the butter ourselves. We’ve spoken to some of the lobster fishermen from Porthleven and will be buying directly from them for the festival.

When it comes to pairing cocktails with seafood what are your personal favourites?

I love any vermouth-based cocktail with seafood – the floral, bitterness from the vermouth goes really well with fish. Not quite a quite a cocktail, but hard to beat a beer and a croquette.

What do you love most about Porthleven and its local food scene?

Porthleven has an amazing food scene for a place of its size. I’m a big fan of Feechi’s in the covered market – it’s really delicious and authentic northern Thai food. I also love a trip into Pengelly’s to get a pack of sliced ox tongue – it makes the best sarnies!

Any tips for first-time festival-goers wanting to make the most of their visit?

Eat lots, drink lots, wear suncream (hopefully you’ll need it!)