About Us
In the beginning
The Shellfish Pig began life in 2014, when husband and wife team, Nick and Nikki Archer, began bringing fresh sustainable seafood and tasty Primrose Herd pork to the streets, beach-side pitches, festivals and events of Cornwall.
Nick is a trained chef with a degree in Marine Science and a real passion for great, unpretentious food, travel and the ocean. During a stint in the USA and Canada in 2007, he developed a real taste for street food and the idea for the Shellfish Pig began to form (although he was probably more of a “Greedy Pig” at this time!). After focusing his dissertation on sustainability in the seafood supply chain during his degree in Falmouth, his eyes were opened to the amazing shellfish and seafood available on his doorstep. And in 2014, the Shellfish Pig served it’s first portions of Cornish mussels and smoked pulled pork rolls on the seafront in Falmouth.
Meanwhile, Howard Sellers was fast gaining a reputation for his incredible freshly rolled sushi and handmade dumplings, serving them at various pop up locations around Falmouth, and regularly hosting sell out 6-course Bango Banquet evenings.
At the Porthleven Food Festival, Howard was enjoying one of the famous Shellfish Pig Scallipops and mentioned to Nick that he had a pop up sushi joint in Falmouth. Over lots of lunches at Bango’s pop up, and many beers, Nick and Howard became firm friends and started teaming up or pitching alongside each other at various events and festivals in and around Falmouth and loosely began contemplating a joint venture.
And Now…
After a few years, we eventually decided that we’d join forces in an equal partnership when the right place came along, keeping the Shellfish Pig as our outside catering company and giving Bango Kitchen a permanent home as our canteen-style pan-Asian inspired kitchen & event space.
In 2018, we found our home in Merchants Wharf on Commercial Road in Penryn and set about converting the 200+ year old former granite warehouse into a space we could prep, cook and host events in. It was no small task, whilst we were in love with the character and history, the walls were collapsing, we needed new floors and complete re-wiring (and let’s not even think about the fire escape, plumbing etc). It was a stressful, steep project management learning curve and a real labour of love!
But it was worth it. After we’d stripped back the building to its bare old walls and floor, we realised we couldn’t possibly modernise it too much, so instead, we decided to celebrate that character and design the interior around the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi – a philosophy that teaches us to appreciate the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
And after four months, we’d transformed the space into a 42-seater restaurant and event space with a banging sound system, beautiful open kitchen, lots of storage and extra preparation space, and back doors that open out onto the Penryn River. And we couldn’t be happier or more proud of what we’ve created!
The Future…
We want to continue to build on the success of The Shellfish Pig by catering for even more weddings and private events and developing the menus and cooking styles to bring an even higher level of food and service to our clients! At Bango Kitchen we want to continue providing a vibrant, buzzing environment to eat the best Sushi, Ramen, Bao Buns and Dumplings and drink the best coffee in Cornwall every lunchtime. We also want to build on our evenings offerings; more late nights, gigs, banquet evenings, Sunday Brunch days and feasting events.
Meet our amazing suppliers
We proudly source as much of our produce and ingredients from local suppliers as possible. Everything else is as seasonally, carefully and responsibly sourced as can make it. (It was a tough job to sample lots of food from amazing Cornish growers, producers and suppliers, but we were up for the challenge!)
Pork
The Shellfish Pig only uses Primrose Herd for all of our pork, it’s always free range and Cornish. If you ever take a drive to their farm you will see a whole bunch of happy pigs! They also cold smoke our pork shoulders for 12 hours which adds an extra tasty dimension to our pulled pork!
Seafood
The majority of our seafood comes from our favourite local fishmonger, Seabourne Fish, who are just across the road from us here on Commercial Road in Penryn. Their fish and seafood are Cornish and sustainably sourced and usually landed just a few miles from our front door.
Fruit and Veg
A lot of our fruit and veg comes from West Country Fruit Sales and their network of small Cornish growers, farmers and producers. We also source direct from lots of other small, local suppliers, and we love freshly-picked allotment produce – so let us know if you have any spare!
Meat
At Bango Kitchen we use a range of suppliers for our meats including Primrose Herd, RJ Trevarthan, Etheringtons and local farmers.
Bread, Baked Goods & Eggs
Bread, Baked Goods & Eggs come from Baker Tom (8 miles away) and Da Bara Bakery (13 miles away).
Eggs come from St Ewe (13 miles) and Colin Carter (4.5 miles away).
Coffee
Expertly roasted by Ol Factory roasters just one mile up the road in Penryn