As the bus pulls in, I realise I haven't ever been in Kingsbridge before. It's a market town overshadowed in voguishness by Salcombe, a little more accessible, surrounded by the undulant farmland of the South Hams. From my billet at the top of the rising A381, touching hands with the outlying village of West Alvington, I can see for miles. The sun is corrosively hot, pollen invisibly clouds the air, a crowd of youngsters sit in what looks like a roofless gazebo, shouting-drunk at 5pm. A raggy chorus of 'Happy birthday' strikes dread into the corpuscles.
The location of Wild Artichokes is something else again. It's sort of in the middle of town, but found by slipping through a narrow pass called Mill Street, past a bookshop and an Indian restaurant, then on to a back-pass which itself fizzles into a depressed wilderness of motor repair shops. The paved road becomes a potholed, gravelly dirt track. There is nobody about.
Yet by a shabby entrance, a defiantly large sign announces that, yes, this really is where the restaurant is. Two greeters, Samantha Miller and a young waiter, await. As I'm the only single, they already know who I must be before I give my chosen name. I'm shown to an already crowded table, and take my place at the end. The last time I sat at a refectory-style table was in the early days of Coombeshead Farm, when they thoughtfully put me next to the only other single, an American lady travelling Devon and Cornwall alone. This was altogether different. An interesting cross-section of British humanity, all spilling life-stories – the divorces and remarriages, the unexpected pregnancies and conflicted siblings. One neighbour once walked along a country road butt-naked, holding a rabbit. That story got two outings.
A large kitchen obtrudes into the dining-room. The tables are rough wood, heavy-duty, with long backless benches on either side – a bit of a torment over a long evening. We can all see a headscarfed Jane Baxter, accompanied by one young woman, at work in an unhurried, entirely serene manner. Much of the cooking is done in advance, but still, it's an impressively calm and assured operation.
Dishes are served to the whole table, and passed around, everybody helping themselves as at a domestic dinner party. What this means is that everybody politely underhelps themselves, which is as well, as an awful lot of food will be served. The waiter pleads with us at the outset not to fill up on bread. As it's a laden platter of thick focaccia slabs like bathroom sponges, glistening with oil, the crusts embedded with tiny tomatoes, it's sound advice, but why provide the temptation, and why countenance the wastage? As it is, everybody behaves, and a pile of untouched bread is abstemiously ignored at my end of the table. Presumably you could take it home.
The drill is four courses, roughly Italianate in structure. Six or seven antipasti (actually starters more than appetisers), a primo, a main course with three vegetable sides, and then three desserts. The pacing is judged to perfection, just enough time to digest, but not so much that you start realising you might have eaten enough already.
The first courses comprised: fantastic smoked cod's roe topped with shaved bottarga; a set of fritters, some containing stuffed green olives, some splots of mashed anchovy in whole sage leaves, in translucent crisp cases, a little oily but delicious; then a magnificent dish of baked crab, predominantly (if not entirely) the brown meat with tiny snippets of spring onion, bits of chilli and a heavenly assertive note of anise, as rich as thermidor but without the glopping cheese; then a serving of fried fresh small squid with an earthy and emphatic aïoli; another bunch of fritters, this time of salt cod; and a shallow dish of twice-baked goat cheese soufflé, this slightly less appealing, the flavour a little missing, garnished with thick sticks of marinated beetroot and some leaves. These were nearly all superb, the flavours strong and honest, and with an assured polish to everything raising it above the domestic tone of the setting.
The intermediate course was a version of vincisgrassi, the Marchese version of lasagne, made properly with minced veal, a riot of porcini and other mushrooms, onion and strong seasonings, certainly a little clove in there somewhere, sandwiched in sheer thin sheets of pasta. One of the women thought it was over-salty, which it technically was, but I felt the dish carried it. There was only enough for a large spoonful each, but it was quite seductive all the same.
For main, we had tuna, served in bright red slices, almost as rare-red as steak tartare, crusted with a topping of finely chopped courgette, coriander and mint. (I know – mint. I could have done without it, but it worked surprisingly well.) The pregnant lady had been told to avoid anything raw, but decided not to worry about the barely cooked tuna. It was as softly luxurious as lokum, and as flavourful as rare sirloin. With this came a gratinated cheesy dish of fennel and spinach, glorious; a baked dish of Italian beans with shards of very lightly cooked asparagus; and another complicated roast of baby artichokes, small potatoes, slivered onion and young wet garlic. Any slight disappointment I'd felt on discovering we weren't to have a meat main was soon banished.
The trio of desserts were a shallow dish of unspeakably beautiful baked custard, as fragrant with vanilla as if the scent had been created by Dior, adorned with shards of al dente rhubarb and slivers of strawberry; a baked cheesecake of miraculously delicate texture, served with a dun-coloured ice-cream singing with zesty orange; and one of the very greatest frangipane tarts I have ever tasted, set with apricot, moist with butter and ground almond, the pastry crumbling readily under the spoon, an unalloyed triumph.
I had a fairly trad negroni to start then stuck perforce to the only two wines by the small glass, apart from prosecco – Sicilian house varietals, a Fiano and a Frappato. These are underpowered for the cooking, the red in particular too light and redcurranty for meats (though not bad of course with the tuna). It's a single-page list with some nice choices on it, but more of a glass selection is sorely needed.
This is a magical place, as warmly hospitable in its approach as the setting and style demand. It's a fairly nimble-paced three hours, and though there is a lot of food, I don't think anybody was overfaced by it, which is quite a feat of appetite management when one considers. There wasn't a single dislikable dish, and the cooking, although full of the domestic virtues of rich rounded flavours and luxurious textures, favourite ingredients and seasonings cranked up to ten, is several cuts above the domestic in execution.
Incidentally, having mentioned Coombeshead, I enjoyed this much more. Everything looks like something you want to eat. There are no importunate lectures, no interrupting the exercise of sociability that passing round dishes and sharing naturally invite. I just wish I'd been luckier in my tablemates. By the time my cover-story was unravelling, I'd taken some time off from a heavy work schedule, but was now fretted with worry over the health of my boyfriend's father, on which pretext my lad was stranded in Kolkata and unable to return to his job teaching infant classes. 'Whereabouts?' one of the ladies asked. 'Erm, oh, you know, somewhere in Devon.' Nobody believed a word of it.
