The Best Sunday Roasts In South West England
Published 19 November 2024

Readers love the ‘imaginative, beautifully presented food’, excellent service and ‘exceptional value for money’ on offer at this cool, independent sharing-plates diner, adding that it's a ‘welcome addition to Totterdown’. Once inside, the modernist decor – all shiny hard surfaces, high ceilings and spotless white walls – feels a world apart from the noise and traffic of the city. It's not too cool though. This is a neighbourhood joint where you're welcome to drop in for a snack and an early-evening cocktail, while Sunday means roasts for lunch – although these are given highly distinctive, ‘experimental’ treatment (think smoked short rib with wasabi mustard or Middle White pork belly with black garlic and miso).

Chef Jack Briggs-Horan's inventive and constantly changing menu is a head-spinning mash-up of eclectic global flavours and surprising textures. Dishes such as 'daikon piccata' with green beans, tomato/peanut sauce and green harissa may sound wacky but they (mostly) taste delicious. Care is taken to use local, seasonal ingredients and the kitchen boasts an open fire, where smoked and charred components add an extra dimension to dishes ranging from burrata with chicory, pickled blackcurrant and 'wonderful' smoked beetroot to larger plates of smoked goat with tandoori carrot, blood-orange pickle and black garlic.

Snacks and desserts also get the open-flame treatment – from charred olives to a whipped, burnt Basque cheesecake served with charred strawberries and Szechuan syrup. The short, keenly priced wine list is augmented by an enticing selection of unusual cocktails, local beers and ciders. Visit at lunchtime or early evening to take advantage of the good-value fixed-price menus.

The stone-built St Kew, dotted with hanging baskets, and with an expansive trestle-tabled garden full of mature trees behind, dates from the reign of Edward IV, and aims to cover as many of the requirements of a village pub as possible. There are four dining areas, all imbued with an infectious air of country-inn conviviality, and the kitchen also works to the principle of broad choice.

In between the chicken Caesar salad, beer-battered haddock and short-rib cheeseburgers with pickles and fries, there are some more speculative options for the adventurous: raw scallop with ponzu, brown crab emulsion and apple; beetroot gnocchi with courgettes, romesco and feta; pork chop with pea and bean fricassee, Cornish new potatoes and cider sauce, for example. 

Desserts cover a lot of ground, from sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce, ginger crumb and clotted cream to poached pineapple with coconut ice cream. There's usually some Cornish cheese too (perhaps Trelawny from Whalesborough Farm Foods in Marhamchurch), while Sunday roasts might bring apple-smoked sirloin and rare-breed pork belly with their time-honoured seasonal  accompaniments – all cooked with consummate care and attention to detail. Local beers and ciders are the jewels in the crown of a drinks list that also takes in some well-chosen mainstream wines.

Let's all get over the fact that it isn't geographically Cornish, but resident on a town-centre street in the west of Devon. This is a lively venue that manages an impressive balancing act between pub and restaurant, the more so since the extensive refurbishment it underwent back in 2022.

While the menu format rests on broad choice, as before, there is a distinctly more adventurous air to the nibbles, which now embrace buttermilk king prawns with smoked paprika mayonnaise or teriyaki chicken wings. The main menu continues to offer a broad range of options, with a mixture of traditional pub fare and modern classics. Expect ham hock Scotch egg with blue cheese and beer-pickled onions to open the show, ahead of roast cod with brown shrimp vinaigrette in béarnaise or a distinctly elegant butter-roasted breast of guinea fowl, served with Jerusalem artichokes, pearl barley and hazelnuts in sherry gravy.

Fifteen minutes seems a small investment of time to be rewarded with a mango soufflé, served with the full regalia of pineapple compôte, coconut sorbet and clotted cream or you could get instant satisfaction from a Yorkshire strawberry trifle in season. Fans also dote over the traditional Sunday lunch, which offers the likes of roast sirloin with sublime brisket to best end of Saddleback pork alongside maple-glazed pork belly. A user-friendly wine list is arranged by style, and the glasses come in all three sizes.

‘So consistent, cosy and welcoming,’ commented one regular visitor to this fine old 16th-century inn a short detour from some of the National Park’s best trails. Since taking over in 2019, the Barker-Jones family have given the oak-beamed, slate-floored interior a satisfying makeover, with lots of attention to detail (note the lovely hand-painted photos on the walls). ‘You would feel welcome to just pop in for a drink,’ noted a reporter, but it would be a sin to miss the pub’s main attraction – its menu of carefully sourced local and seasonal food.

The kitchen delivers ‘deep full-on flavours’ across the board, from hunks of warm home-baked bread with Netherend butter and bowls of verdant pea soup topped with seasonal ramsons to panna cotta with rhubarb and shortbread or treacle tart given extra zing with confit orange, candied zest and crystallised ginger ice cream. In between, Jail Ale-battered haddock with triple-cooked chips is a winner, likewise the cider-braised West Country pork fillet and the stone bass and Teignmouth mussels with fennel, samphire and mussel velouté. It’s also worth working up an appetite for the effusively praised Sunday lunch with its offer of roast moorland sirloin and the like. 

Service from really professional, welcoming staff is all you could wish for, as is the wide-ranging drinks list, which covers everything from local Dartmoor Ale to classic cocktails and a small but varied list of mostly Old World wines.

Readers were quick to alert us to the transformation of the former Black Horse and how good the food was. Now a stylish restaurant with rooms, an early look found us settled in the very pubby bar with a drink, the cosiness that only a beamed ceiling, wingback chairs and an inglenook fireplace can induce willing us to settle in for the night. We could, of course, have stayed put and ordered from the full carte but then we would have missed the rather chic dining room.

Located in a newly built wood-clad extension, floor-to-ceiling windows look out onto a heated terrace and small garden. Exposed brick walls hung with modern art and two back-to-back brushed black leather banquettes lend the room a sophisticated metropolitan feel, while a picture window into the kitchen, framed by a display of fine wines and stemware, signals the pub’s serious gastronomic intent.

Jordan Taylor’s CV takes in Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and Moor Hall and that high-end pedigree is evident in a menu that celebrates produce from the estate and other local suppliers. Our meal produced a visually stunning terrine of estate game – layers of breast of pigeon, pheasant and partridge surrounded by a chicken mousse flavoured with dried apricot, fermented cep and tarragon – and tasted as good as it looked. And we enjoyed a generous loin of estate hare wrapped in cabbage, served with celeriac fondant, purée and remoulade, plus roasted hen of the woods and a copper pan of leg ragu on the side.

But among all the culinary fireworks, Taylor hasn’t forgotten that he is also cooking for a local community of regulars and offers a hearty Sunday roast (Great Durnford lamb, Springbottom Farm beef, served with crisp roast potatoes and roots, spiced creamed kale and fluffy Yorkshire pudding), as well as a list of pub classics including battered cod and chips, steaks from the nearby Springbottom Farm, and a very appetising looking burger. And we found service as friendly and enthusiastic as it is polished and professional.

For decades, the Milbrook has defended its reputation as a reliable source of decent pub food in the South Hams but since Caitlin Owens took on ownership in 2021, it has found a new stride. Elegant restoration has amplified the cosy low-ceilinged hostelry into a sophisticated destination, whether you’re staying in the rooms across the road, or rocking up sandy-footed from the beach, ready for a pint of Salcombe Brewery Ocean Cider by the babbling brook at the back.

Beyond good looks, the menu is bolstered by its connection to Fowlescombe – a luxury rural retreat and working regenerative farm – and by Elly Wentworth, who works as executive chef across both sites, balancing prime ingredients with an approachable menu. Brixham crab and fresh corn chowder made for a swoon-worthy opener on our most recent visit, while a Toulouse sausage was packed with flavour and the triple-cooked chips were as good as you’d hope.

Sunday lunches and seasonal desserts such as Fowlescombe farm honey and fig trifle with roasted hazelnuts complete the package, while on dark nights the fireside beckons for a pre- or post-prandial trip through the adventurous wine list, which uses the Coravin system to offer maximum interest by the glass. Service can fluctuate with the seasons but it always supports a convivial hubbub of happy diners.

‘One of the best gravies of any pub we have tried,’ declares an admirably methodical reader: just one nugget of praise for the Sunday roasts at this edge-of-village pub. Most tables in the modernised two-room interior are for diners, though local real ales and bar stools await drinkers. The main menu runs from ‘classic pub plates’ of burgers, fish and chips or Bramley apple crumble to a trio of beetroots with whipped feta, roasted chestnuts and pomegranate dressing and ‘special plates for any occasion’ (whole lemon sole meunière, for example). The staff and atmosphere also attract plaudits: ‘it’s like being wrapped in a big blanket’.