Where to eat in Devon
Published 17 September 2024

‘A top restaurant experience in an incredible setting,’ commented one fan after visiting this impressively proportioned, Grade I-listed Elizabethan manor house. Aclèaf – oak leaf in Anglo Saxon – is the small, intimate premier dining room, an elegant space occupying a former minstrel’s gallery overlooking the majestic great hall. Here, well-spaced, linen-covered tables seem to mandate a sense of occasion, which is amply supplied by a brigade of ‘outstanding, knowledgeable and passionate staff’ and by chef Scott Paton’s ‘creative’ contemporary cooking.

His compact, seasonally driven dinner menus are inventive yet simple, cooked with assurance and technical know-how. From the moment the snacks and freshly baked breads arrive, it’s clear that concentrated thought has gone into every detail, with ‘lots of unique personal touches’ adding to the experience. The ‘inspirational’ four-course menu is perfect for taking in the whole experience, with tip-top supplies and bright, upstanding flavours evident in opening salvos ranging from goat’s cheese with brambles and pecans to a Middle Eastern-inspired combination of squab, dates and preserved lemon. Elsewhere, thoroughbred meats such as venison with prunes and beetroot or a whole-table speciality of Highland wagyu ‘au poivre’ with parsnip exemplify the style perfectly.

Savoury notes also appear in the final course (perhaps duck egg with exotic fruits and coconut), or you could round things off with a delicate confection of vanilla, bergamot and star anise. Wine matches offer pure class by the glass, and readers applaud the dedication that has gone into compiling an authoritative list with better-than-fair mark-ups.

Just off the quayside in Dartmouth is Luca Berardino's welcoming neighbourhood restaurant, 'a little jewel' in the estimation of one confirmed regular. There is a chef's table, but nobody will be expected to genuflect to a presiding genius; instead, diners lap up the chance of getting a little closer to the engineering of hearty food, some of it prepared on a wood-fired barbecue. The orientation of the cooking is somewhere between Italy and France, with enterprising small plates the core of the operation. Expect anything from a high-powered assembly of beetroot, Saint Agur cheese and apple dressed in Gewürztraminer or Torbay scallops with lime and coconut to Jerusalem artichokes and goat's curd in truffled vinaigrette or slow-roasted cabbage and ajo blanco. When the plates get bigger, they come bearing the likes of Black Angus fillet with beef fat rösti, artichoke and spinach in classic red wine jus. At the close of business, consider sticky toffee pudding with Earl Grey sauce and ginger sorbet or an Italian mash-up of espresso-laced affogato, zabaglione and vanilla ice cream. Fully dressed Sunday roasts are an abidingly popular recourse for weekenders tired of loading the dishwasher. Everything on the rough-and-ready wine list is available by the glass (from £6), while bottles start at £24. 

On the first floor of the Plymouth gin distillery, the walls cast in ancient stone, is Chris and James Tanner’s excellent value restaurant where on-the-ball staff keep everything motoring, from ordering to cocktail production. Expect the likes of fillet of grilled mackerel with a ‘rather delicious’ Peruvian green sauce, pork belly with crisp crackling, ‘heavenly’ apple purée and ‘moreish’ creamy mash, and a perfect crème brûlée. Global wines come by the glass, carafe or bottle.

There are few better places to enjoy fresh fish in the South Hams than at this blue beach hut on the shingle seafront at Beesands. The Hutchings family have been running their fishing enterprise here for more than 40 years, and are now in the business of serving up their catch to customers. Their weather-beaten shack is now a robust, rustic café/restaurant, which doles out whole Start Bay crabs and lobsters alongside specials such as scallop and monkfish Thai red curry. Book ahead – and BYOB. Those walking the South West Coast Path can stop for a stellar crab sandwich or fish and chips from the takeaway hatch.

Tim Bouget continues to expand the definition of what a modern-day eatery might be at his eco-friendly venue at Ness Cove, overlooking Lyme Bay near Teignmouth. If it takes some finding, persistence is rewarded by a menu of all-day contemporary café food, with electronic pre-ordering a neat way of ensuring a smooth passage through – whether you're at a table or sitting in a waiting car.

In the summer months, the outdoor pizza oven is fired up for terrace feasting. Otherwise, the world is your oyster, kicking off with breakfast (perhaps a house-baked croissant, organic porridge or the ‘best bacon and egg roll ever’). Lunch and all-day menus run from fish-finger wraps to dukkah-spiced roast pumpkin and red onion broth, grilled Haldon fallow deer burgers and panko-crumbed Brixham plaice fillets with tartare sauce and salad in a soft tortilla. Alternatively, warm yourself up with a mug of curried English lentil dhal with kale, coconut milk and spices.

The sweet-treat brigade is also well served with carb fests including fruity flapjacks, sticky ginger cake, choc-chip cookies and the like. Drinking is usually interesting too: boozy hot chocolate, dirty chai, lavender lemonade, mocha milkshakes and so on.

One of those perfect, no-frills seafood spots you dream of finding in every fishing village but rarely do. Despite the name, this is a proper restaurant rather than a shed, while its haul of crabs is landed and boiled a stone's throw from the quay. Other plus points include a good wine and beer list, local spirits, waterside terrace seating and far more variety than just whole crabs cracked and served cold or warm with garlic butter. Expect anything from fish and chips to bouillabaisse; crabs are also available ready-dressed for those who don't fancy getting messy.

Clare Lattin and Tom Hill, once of Ducksoup in Soho, have migrated to the sub-Dartmoor stretches of south Devon and pitched camp on the T-junction that more or less is Ashburton. It's a small room with an agreeable buzz and square tables (some for sharing) supplemented by wicker stools at the counter and window that are probably best reserved for younger, more resilient backsides. Just add a thrifty, serenely industrious kitchen, plus a wine-store (for retail) half-hidden behind a curtain, and a frequently changing menu that works within its own modest capacities to produce contemporary, Italian-inflected small plates and mains. The special of the day on our lunch visit in the long linger of late winter involved chunks of sublime red-rare hanger steak in a mound of roasted Tropea onion with salted ricotta, capers and oregano. Others were scarfing up the broad-ribboned pappardelle with a ragù of ox cheek and black olives, as well as marinated gurnard in an aromatic livery of golden raisins, almonds and saffron. Appetisers are a little more prosaic (a couple of splots of white Gorgonzola with lightly pickled pear; shaved pickled fennel in oregano and chilli) but there is good charcuterie, and even the minimal choice of two desserts will provoke agonies of indecision. The dark chocolate mousse with ginger and oat crumb looked the business, but altogether flawless was our blood-orange and pistachio tart with crème fraîche. Only a select few of the wines emerge from behind the curtain onto the list, but they are enterprising and interesting Italian regional stars: a tobaccoey, Merlot-based Gambellara, perhaps, or a skin-contact Sicilian from Grecanico-Inzolia. Aperitifs run to a take on the Bellini earthed up with rhubarb juice.

On a quiet but central street behind the Theatre Royal, Fletcher Andrews' self-named restaurant has enlivened Plymouth's culinary scene virtually single-handed. Launched in 2018 after a stint with Anton Piotrowski (in his Treby Arms days), Fletcher's radiates youthful enthusiasm. An elegant front extension with well-spaced tables supplements the main dining room with its outsize light fittings and pale wood floor, while staff are on point. Food is in the modern British vein, underpinned by bright ideas and versatile technique. Diagonally sliced scallops come with layered baked celeriac and diced smoked eel, or there might be Devon crab with the assertive accompaniments of compressed apple, yuzu gel and candied walnut. Main dishes are complex but comprehensible – from a serving of brined brill, herb-crusted and served with kohlrabi fondant in shellfish bisque with mussels and sea-purslane to tandoori-glazed pink duck breast alongside a pastry cup of shredded leg confit (with a hint of Peking duck to it), a ball of sesame- and honey-laced pak choi and plum sauce. At dessert, variations on a cereal theme produced pear and popcorn jelly in a chocolate shell with buckwheat custard and grain ice cream, or there might bergamot parfait in Italian meringue with fennel pollen and raspberries. A short wine list makes up for what it lacks in amplitude with confidence-inspiring quality, from Cottonworth Classic Cuvée (a Hampshire sparkler) to Matetic Pinot Noir (from Chile's Casablanca Valley).

There is more to Totnes than twee teas and pub lunches if you scout around – although you need look no further than Gather, which takes its place near the bottom end of Fore Street in a room that's all light wood and voluble welcome. Harrison Brockington can be seen through the kitchen hatch, hard at work producing impressively presented contemporary dishes of genuine flair. Menus founded on Devon foraging are a lure, especially in mushroom season, and the 'tasters' extend to a vegetable version that might embrace hedgerow tortellini in velouté or a wild spring vegetable tartlet topped with a poached egg and béarnaise sauce. The style is one of tenacious simplicity, but brought off with a high degree of polish – as in a cider broth of St Austell mussels with wild sea herbs. Main dishes bring satisfaction in the shape of locally farmed duck on a bed of petits pois à la française or gurnard in crab bisque with asparagus. A separate cheese course might pair Ragstone goat's cheese with a brioche-encased fig roll, ahead of something sweet – perhaps rhubarb vacherin in its own consommé with whipped Chantilly cream. A short wine list does its job. 

Getting to Glebe House is an adventure in its own right. A series of narrowing country lanes leads north from Seaton, diving about patchwork fields and rummaging through copses, before the house itself materialises – a whitewashed Georgian pile poised high on a grassy slope, set within 15 acres of grounds. Interiors are a study in contemporary country house cool (grandfather clocks and kilim rugs, Welsh dressers and colourful objets d’art), creating a place that is eclectic, eccentric and full of fun.

That spirit extends to the kitchen too – a small and faintly domestic space, where guests can perch on a long rustic table and watch Italian techniques being applied to Devon produce (much of it sourced from the kitchen garden). Head chef David Knapman's late-summer set menu began with antipasti of Glebe salumi with sublimely gooey Vacchino cheese, before segueing into a wonderful zesty octopus terrine doused in sauce vierge, served alongside a salad of beets, figs and blackberries. The faintest West Country accent was detectable in a pasta dish of ricotta and Ticklemore cheese agnolotti, though the kitchen saved the best for last in the form of guinea fowl with sweetcorn and girolles, lathered in sherry and tarragon sauce.

'Dolce' might include tarta di riso (Italian rice cake) with poached rhubarb and yoghurt ice cream or an innovative take on a historic ‘Exeter pudding’ (layers of financier, lemon curd and berries), while an Italian-leaning wine list kicks off with bottles from around £30. Glebe House also offers a range of characterful accommodation – both in the main house and in a cabin in the grounds – for those who would rather postpone their return journey along those narrow country lanes.

Embracing the country house genre with charm, sumptuously sited Lympstone Manor boasts picture-perfect views across its own extensive vineyards to the Exe estuary, plus three gracious chandeliered dining rooms, luxe bedrooms, and a front-of-house team well-drilled in old-school 'silver-ish' service.

Where Lympstone parts company with tradition, however, is in the food. Michael Caines' cooking, with its roots in France and Britain, is a tantalising mix of classic and modern. His carte and tasting menus are deftly executed by head chef Jordan Denning and, while breaking new ground is not the game here, the cooking shows off superlative produce and gains vitality (as well as identity) via its use of sharp flavours to point up the main ingredients. A delicate nugget of warm Lyme Bay lobster offset by a mango and lime vinaigrette, cardamom, curried mayonnaise and oscietra caviar is a delightful interplay of sweetness and acidity, while salted cod with dabs of confit lemon, samphire, crabmeat and chorizo foam creates a multi-layered sensation.

Other revelations have been the straightforward pleasure of new season's Powderham Estate lamb – a gloriously flavoured rib chop – with pea purée, a dice of braised boulangère potatoes, balsamic-glazed onion and a glossy truffle jus. Similar contentment is to be found among the desserts, especially a delicate apple mousse with Granny Smith apple sorbet and vanilla foam.

As for the wine list, Lympstone Blanc de Blancs and rosé sparklers head up a stunning collection that is resplendent in quality and imagination for those with the readies. Fine wines by the small glass are a flawless bunch. It’s also worth noting that the Pool House overlooking the heated pool and vineyard sets a more informal tone, with a broadly appealing menu that aims for easy satisfaction.

The beaches of Saunton Sands, Croyde and Woolacombe make up what has become a surfers’ paradise on this stretch of the north Devon coast, and committed surfers are here year-round. However, the winding lanes and thatched villages swell with holidaymakers in summer, often looking for something beyond pub grub – which the young team at New Coast Kitchen are more than happy to provide. The outside seating area is popular at lunch when a small-plates menu is offered, while the dark walls of this smart little restaurant abound with hanging greenery, big mirrors, spotlights and low-hanging industrial lamps. You’re at the seaside, so kick off with some Porthilly oysters, perhaps served with a delicate apple pickle and a dash of chilli oil or hot in tempura batter with a wasabi tartare sauce. There’s more seafood on the menu, including a superb scallop ceviche in its shell with a mild roquito pepper mayonnaise, sea vegetables and a refreshing tomato granita (a clever addition). Hake appears regularly (served with a mussel mousse and miso butter sauce when we visited), while wild sea bass is a treat whenever it's landed – perhaps partnered by Fowey scallops, herring roe and citrus-marinated fennel. In the mood for meat? Indulge in generously sliced saddle of lamb, served pink with a tender roast short rib alongside accompaniments of courgette and basil purée and baby turnip. At dessert, you might opt for the prettily presented vanilla cheesecake with lovely honey and lavender ice cream or chocolate ganache with poached cherries. An interesting, fairly priced wine list includes several organic and less familiar bottles including a Kardos Dry Furmint (from Hungary) and a Yamanashi Koshu sur lie (from Japan); there's also a selection of elegant cocktails.

A multi-purpose community hub and daytime pit stop rather than a proper restaurant, Outside comes complete with a couple of polytunnels, a growing patch, skate park, pottery studio and plenty of outdoor seating. The open-plan café-bar serves brunch and lunch (Wednesday-Sunday), offering a hotchpotch of global ideas based on local ingredients (some home-grown): expect anything from crispy polenta cakes or giant chickpeas and chard on toast to aloo tikki with farm greens and pea and cashew fritters (plus meat and fish specials). You can also drop in for a flat white and a pastel de nata – or dip into the minimal list of wines, beers and cocktails.

In an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and sharing its name with the 90-acre farm on which it sits, Daniel Lord and Toni Mctoal’s rural restaurant celebrates the seasonal harvest from local producers and the waters around north Devon. Set in a former milking parlour, the bijou 26-cover dining room and open-plan kitchen are run solely by the two young chefs, who take it in turns to work front of house during service – the level of detail shared at table during our visit was massively beneficial.

The menu changes seasonally, with summertime starters offering the likes of fat, perfectly caramelised Cornish scallops in a rich, 'deliciously crabby' bisque topped with smoked roe, fennel and tarragon or creamy goat’s cheese tortellini with chopped walnuts, chunks of beetroot and buttery spinach.

Main courses are also generous and great value for money. We enjoyed beautifully pink new-season's Herdwick lamb fillet with shredded shoulder and parsnip (confit and purée), fluffy fondant potatoes, fresh peas and luscious fennel-infused lamb jus, as well as a piece of skrei cod loin, expertly balanced with an earthy bean stew, plump Fowey mussels, sea vegetables, lovage, red dulce and ramson.

To finish, a squirl of Black Forest crémeux on a bed of glossy black cherry sorbet and chocolate 'soil', all dotted with sweet-and-sour black cherries was a joy. As for the wine list, it's a brief selection but it does offer flexible measures at reasonable prices.

A little out of Plymouth city centre, along the route to the international ferry terminals, this is the latest venture from David Jenkins and the team behind Rock Salt (now closed). It's a place that's determined to demonstrate its versatility, with an outdoor area as well as a warren of indoor spaces on different levels – plus regular music nights to add to the gaiety. Jake Hardington cooks a fairly mainstream brasserie menu, with filled bagels (a speciality), a good-value fixed-price lunch and a roster of pedigree Devon suppliers proudly credited on a wall-board. Presentations aim to be eye-catching – witness a broad earthenware dish of gently flavoured smoked mackerel pâté (looking like a bowl of creamy soup), dotted with diced pickled veg, hazelnuts and dill, accompanied by seeded stout and treacle bread. For main course, there could be duck confit with a pork and shrimp 'baozi' or Thai pork curry, but also appealingly tender Dartmoor lamb rump with pommes Anna, roasted asparagus and black garlic purée. Desserts will push most buttons with cheesecake, toffee pudding and the like: our hefty sundae-glass serving of raspberry trifle came topped with chunks of honeycomb, alongside a beautifully intense raspberry sorbet. The flair and finish of the cooking deserves much better wines than the short, perfunctory selection, but there are tempting cocktails too.

Older subscribers may recall the Taco Boys' horse-box on Porthilly beach. It was the jumping-off point for the collective that now runs Stage in Exeter's bosky Magdalen Road district, a 10-minute flit from the city centre. The place has been dolled up a little in the last few years, with comfier booth-style seating and the reception desk now moved sensibly to the door. Felix Craft and his team can be seen through a broad hatch at the back, while the effervescent Robbie Ashby runs the front with galvanising panache.

The place takes about five minutes to fill up in the evening (book well ahead), and a sense of community prevails – we're all eating the same things, after all (give or take the odd allergy). It's four set courses at lunch, six at dinner, changing weekly. We began with a bowl of yummy beetroot gazpacho, accompanied by a steel brochette of beetroot, bresaola and quail's egg. Next up was a shatteringly good version of Chinese sticky chilli beef, made with battered and glazed shin, on an underlay of stir-fried spring greens, asparagus and slivered garlic – a stunning success. An intermediate salad saw more wafer-thin, rosy-red beef topped with Devon Blue cheese and rocket, before a majestic main course of crisped pollock with lemony fennel and wholewheat farfalle in a puddle of 'nudja fat, sizzling with chilli. 

A cheese course with lacto-fermented mini-plums and candied pistachios followed, while the whole show was rounded off with a slice of rhubarb frangipane tart, its accompanying milk espuma dotted with cornflakes. The drinks flight is worth taking: only three of the six items were wine when we visited, the rest were aromatic cocktails, shrubs and shandy. Not every match is, strictly speaking, a match, and the approach can teeter on the edge of recklessness, but it adds hugely to the fun. Which is exactly what Stage aims to deliver.

The Bull describes itself as an 'organic, radical, ethical' pub, which is what it's about these days. Who doesn't love a radical pub? Just round the corner at the top end of Totnes' main drag, it's certainly a comfortable and welcoming place to enjoy good beers, adventurous wines, and some conscientiously sourced local produce that is treated with respect for its innate quality.

Johnny Tillbrook's blackboard menus offer a wealth of choice, turning Jersey-milk Ogleshield cheese, Jerusalem artichokes and leeks into a warming gratin topped with pangrattato, or curing monkfish in paprika, alongside electrifying accompaniments of blood-orange, fennel and chilli oil.

No lily feels over-gilded, and yet every dish has plenty to say for itself, through to sustaining mains such as sea bass in ajo blanco with spinach and roast courgette, or chicken breast with greens, turnip, onion, skordalia and green sauce. Basque cheesecake, perhaps with prunes soaked in Earl Grey, is a sweet stalwart. The small plates arrangement remains a good way to go for an enterprising group (how about venison koftas with cumin yoghurt, preserved lemon and pomegranate salad?). Wines are arranged by style, and (not surprisingly) embrace a healthy showing of biodynamic and natural specimens.

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.

With spectacular views of Dartmoor all around, this inn with rooms is hugely popular among hikers and dog walkers. The menu is entirely organic, with ingredients hailing from the owners’ Eversfield Organic Farm & Market Garden, as well as other artisan regional producers. This is a meat-lovers fantasy with an ox grill at the heart of the dining room: grass-fed, seriously aged Aberdeen Angus steaks are seared to order and served with mixed leaves from the farm, house dressing and triple-cooked chips infused with rosemary, thyme and garlic. To drink, local organic ales are offered alongside organic wines, cocktails and soft drinks.

Torquay's finest is barely more than a rope-throw from the Marina, a double-fronted, expansive space run with serene efficiency. Simon Hulstone oversees a long-established, venturesome kitchen that reliably brims with good ideas, against a backbone of mainstay classic dishes that ensure the locals keep coming back. The base price shifted sharply upwards with the transition to a prix-fixe format, but there is no doubting the integrity and class of the cooking. A favoured pairing of gently poached scallop and savoury chicken wing in bone-marrow dressing with sea buckthorn is a masterful exercise in counterpointing flavours and textures. In its spring season, Wye Valley asparagus might be smartly accoutred with barbecued pineapple, a hash brown and macadamias, while the same imaginative energy is on dazzling display in a main dish of poached cod with pink grapefruit and carrot in a coconut curry sauce. That said, confirmed traditionalists will find nothing lacking in a serving of heritage pork with its glazed cheek and black pudding, alongside grelot onion and pearl barley. The voguish savoury approach to desserts sees apricot parfait served with toasted rice and chai foam or gariguette strawberries fragranced with bay leaf flan and peppered caramel. The wine offering doesn't change much with the passing years, other than for the initial offering headed 'seasonal wines we like', which are always worth a flutter – perhaps a Sardinian Vermentino or Rhône-style red from Cucugnan in the Aude.

Almost lost amid the tangle of east Devon villages, Darts Farm is rather more of a hive of activity than the nearby Exeter airport. It's a family-run enterprise (and then some), with a wellness spa, extensive farm shop, butcher and deli counters, vineyard, farm walk and bird hide, among other amenities. Alongside a maze of other eating possibilities, serving food in the very precincts where much of it is grown, there is also now the Farm Table for ‘agricultural fine dining’ – a very 21st-century style.

You might feel you are eating in a large hangar, but the quality of what the kitchen puts out tends to encourage people to get a little glammed-up for the occasion. The rattle call of ice-cubes being shaken is a sure lure to the bar, and a dedicated pizza chef always raises expectations, amply fulfilled with the arrival of grilled flatbread topped with pancetta, hot honey and garlic butter.

Nibbles are full of allure: burnt broad-bean pods sprinkled with chilli salt or crispy brawn bites with rhubarb and apple sauce might kick things off, ahead of a simple salad of sweetly delicious picked-this-morning beetroot, chicory and truffled Graceburn cheese – an array of incomparable ingredients. Fish dishes are forthrightly but sensitively handled, as when a hulking fillet of a sea bream is teamed with pickled cockles, tomatoes and jalapeños, all sauced  with a thick ajo blanco.

Gold-standard meats range from a starter portion of grilled pigeon breast with lentils and redcurrants to Ruby Red steaks and Creedy Carver duck, the latter with grilled radicchio and pickled cherries in red wine. Portions tend to the hearty, meaning that two might easily share a whopping rhubarb sponge pudding topped with a gigantic clod of clotted cream, but if you are feeling a little delicate by now, consider gin and strawberry parfait with pink-peppercorn meringue. Special-occasion menus add to the offer, and there is an excellent range of drinking to contemplate, from fruity cocktails to a well-chosen list of wines at manageable prices (from £6 a glass).

It may date from the mid-17th century, but nowadays the Farmers Arms is every inch the 21st-century village pub. It was the initial inspiration for a far more substantial project that has become 'The Collective of Woolsery' from San Francisco-based tech entrepreneurs Michael and Xochi Birch.

The couple now own the local convenience store and post office, the fish and chip shop, and various rooms and cottages around Woolfardisworthy (to give the place its full name) – including the Grade II-listed Wulfheard Manor (opening as a hotel in 2025). In addition, their 150-acre farm provides the pub with rare-breed and heritage meats as well as just-harvested fruit and vegetables – hyper-seasonal produce that is beautifully realised in the hands of Ian Webber (Michael Caines’ former head chef at Gidleigh Park).

The bijou ‘farm menu’ could bring a moreish Curworthy Haytor cheese puff dotted with oxeye daisy petals and deep-red globules of sour cherry gel, ahead of Birch Farm pork fillet perched on a generous chunk of coppa bacon and offset by the earthiness of fermented grains, paprika, red cabbage and finely sliced pickled fennel.

Alternatively, you could look to the more traditional 'pub menu' for the likes of Honey Wood Haze cider-battered haddock, chips and minted peas, or an elevated monkfish and scallop fishcake with buttered leeks, poached Birch Farm egg and chips. Visually stunning desserts include a warm lemon geranium cake topped with raspberry jam and pistachio ice cream, served with a citrussy lemon verbena curd.

There’s also a terrace with a covered seating area and heated stone benches for all-weather dining. To drink, take your pick from locally brewed ales and seasonal cocktails, or select a bottle from the well-chosen wine list. 

You can't deny the good vibes that emanate from this unassuming but ‘joyful’ venue – a rural café-cum-restaurant housed in a converted threshing barn not far from Tiverton. Part of the attraction is the setting with its magnificent views over the Devon hills, combined with staff who are as helpful and pleasant as can be – and the fact that the place is admirably family-friendly. However, it’s the firm focus on good-value food in all its seasonal, sustainable and local glory that draws diners back.

A huge wood-fired oven is at the heart of the operation, dominating the busy open kitchen at one end of the long dining room, with imaginative, carefully made sourdough pizzas being the stars of the show. But there’s much more. Share a wood-roasted stuffed flatbread with ricotta, red onion marmalade, truffle and thyme or keep a ‘small plate’ of baked Brixham scallops in the shell with wild garlic and lemon butter all to yourself.

 Among the bigger plates, you might find wood-roasted estate venison with new season’s potatoes, purple beetroot and carrots or an unusual ‘orzotto’ with roasted fennel and broad beans (a winner for one reader). For afters, honey and lavender-scented iced parfait with macerated strawberries is spot-on for seasonality. The Lost Kitchen is also a hit with those who simply want to stop by for coffee and cake – although booking is advisable for this, too.

To drink, there are plenty of well-chosen wines by the glass, but don’t miss the home-brewed Perdu IPA (made with unused organic sourdough grain) or LK’s own Wylde Ferment cider. Designated drivers are also well served by the thoughtful list of mocktails and classic soft drinks (including homemade lemonade) – so ‘find a seat on the terrace, sit back, relax and smell the sweet peas!’

Snuggled away in a slip of a village on the southern edge of Exmoor, Mark and Sarah Dodson's thatched 13th-century inn is comfortingly remote. Inside, the low-ceilinged rooms emphasise the feeling of being enveloped, while the dining room (housed in an extension) offers views of the surrounding farmland.

Mark's menus deal in local materials treated sensitively, presented with more than a little contemporary dash. Dishes such as seared scallops with celeriac, apple and hazelnut dukkah or prosciutto-wrapped monkfish with oyster mushrooms, crushed new potatoes, orange and balsamic sauce belie the landlocked location, before we return to it in the form of Exmoor beef fillet and cheek with beetroot purée, field mushrooms and lardons in a hearty port jus. Alternatively, you might find some seasonal game in the shape of, say, loin of venison in juniper jus or partridge breast ‘en crépinette’ with burnt apple purée, Brussels sprouts and parsnip.

Farmhouse cheeses constitute a tour of the West Country's finest, or there might be something sweet such as mirabelle soufflé with honeycomb ice cream; otherwise, spoon your way through the four-strong 'taste of British desserts'. And if you decide to call in for the set lunch, you'll be treated to recipes from Mark's debut cookbook This Is Mine. A fairly priced wine list opens with bottles from £22.

Amy Mitchell and Joe Suttie’s cool, hand-crafted eatery now runs as a no-bookings daytime café (9am-3pm, Mon-Sat) serving breakfast, brunch and lunch dishes based on locally sourced ingredients. ‘Curious croissants’ are loaded with smoked bacon, avocado and poached egg, while ‘Mr Pig’ is slow-roasted crispy pork belly fired up with chipotle mayo and pickled red onion in home-baked focaccia. Otherwise, drop by for coffee with an Old Library ‘deli sub’ or an apple and custard doughnut. There’s also a twice-monthly dinner club, when the deal is a seven-course tasting menu (£70) featuring dishes such as braised pressed lamb with grilled chard, courgette and caponata plus a few mainly European wines.

Loyal regulars will have noted the post-lockdown change that has come over the Salutation, Topsham high street's Georgian finest. At the front is now the Salt Deli, a wet fish shop supporting the local boats, while the original dining room is now flanked by a glasshouse extension, with an open sun terrace to boot. The limited spaces have been resourcefully used, so that it doesn't feel at all cramped. Tom Williams-Hawkes has ceded control of the kitchen to Luke Heaver, with an apparent brief to offer a simpler menu that aims to cover all bases, from lunch snacks to compendious seafood platters, plus an early-bird prix-fixe supplementing the evening carte. Lyme Bay mackerel escabèche has been hailed by readers and was good at inspection, while mains might offer confit duck, pork tenderloin and shoulder with black pudding and mash, or a classy pairing of turbot and lobster with saffron potatoes in a froth of wasabi and coriander. A simple poached peach for late-summer dessert comes with coconut and a miraculously intense raspberry sorbet. A workable wine list needs a few more reds by the glass at less than 14% alcohol, but does feature both the Brut and Demi-Sec versions of Sussex's Nyetimber sparkler.

Moored on the Dartmouth quayside, the Tonks family flagship is currently helmed by Mitch's son Ben, who is maintaining its ‘very high standards’ and commitment to daily deliveries of local produce (particularly seafood). The Seahorse has always radiated a balmy sense of the Mediterranean, partly for the sunny good cheer with which the place is run, and partly for the orientation of the cooking (as well as the wine list). If the best preparations of the freshest fish are ever the simplest, the menus here offer an object lesson in what is still a culinary discipline.

Torbay scallops, charcoal-roasted and dressed with a lick of white port and garlic, are a favoured way to start, unless you prefer a plate of red mullet ‘con saor’, pickled with onions and hazelnuts. Wine plays its ancestral role in seasoning and enriching the dishes: Dorset shellfish is steamed with Trebbiano and porcini, while fillet of cod is cooked in a paper packet, sauced with Lugana, and spiked with pepperoncini chillies, capers, and basil. A whomping £50 buys a whole Dover sole cooked on the bone, with nothing more complex than some rosemary and a meunière dressing. There are steaks, Middle White pork chops and whole roasted quail with salsa dragoncello if you’re not quite in the maritime mood, while desserts maintain the theme of elegant simplicity – perhaps amaretti cream or salted honey ice cream dressed in Pedro Ximénez and sultanas. 

The fixed-price lunchtime ‘menu del giorno’ offers excellent value, while Ben Tonks’ latest venture is a series of monthly ‘open table’ gatherings in the private dining room (aka the Cantina). An excellent Eurocentric wine list does justice to the food, with wines by the small glass from £6.75 and a 'knowledgeable sommelier’ on hand to proffer advice.

The Tytherleigh could be another whitewashed roadside inn, briefly glimpsed along the A358 as you hurtle towards the Dorset border. But halt. Within its 16th-century walls, there is plenty more going on than pub grub. In the kitchen, there's a firm commitment to West Country supply lines, and the menus speak a language that big-city escapees would recognise. Start with miso-glazed king oyster mushroom with kohlrabi rémoulade, mushroom ketchup and cep soil, a fungal exploration full of umami wallop, or consider grilled and tartared mackerel with compressed apple and beer-vinegared beetroot. Dishes have the sturdiness of flavour to back up their smart looks: cod is rolled up and set beside roasted and puréed cauliflower with a bit of burnt lemon in cockle velouté. A daring ingenuity for combining sees crispy pork belly appear with smoked eel, along with caramelised onion and hispi cabbage. Those in the market for fish and chips or a steak will find themselves rather more royally served than they were expecting. Chips with the latter are, in the modern manner, truffle-oiled and tweaked with Parmesan. Finish with matcha and pistachio cake garnished with white chocolate Chantilly. Wines start at £22 for Italian house selections.

*After a decade in business, Wild Artichokes permanently closed at the end of 2025*

Driven by the humane principle that life is better when we are together, Wild Artichokes is a sure-fire success story. Samantha Miller and Jane Baxter's eccentrically located restaurant, among motor repair shops down a rubbly back alley in the intestines of Kingsbridge, runs to a 'shared table' format, encouraging sociable dining and the chance to discuss Jane's food with people you haven't yet met. Tables are loaded almost haphazardly with dishes in waves of starters plus a main course with accompaniments, punctuated by the intermezzo of a pasta dish – perhaps cuttlefish lasagne or an array of seafood with black cavatelli.

'Beautiful, flavour-stuffed food comes generously and copiously from Jane Baxter's kitchen' and the cooking has an appealingly domestic air, but one that almost belies the accomplished technique that underpins it. There are layers of resonance in the simplest offerings: whipped cod's roe, rabbit rillettes or a salad of mussels, saffron, potato and fennel. Italian foodways inform much of what is served, but not to the exclusion of, say, some crab and prawn empanadas. The meat main course might be a duck crown or veal chops with spinach, lemon and sage – all chaperoned to table by a bouquet of artichokes, broad beans and peas, potatoes sharpened with pecorino, and a smartly dressed green salad.

Desserts are always a threesome: say, rhubarb and orange sundae, chocolate and ginger pudding with caramel custard, and pear and almond tart. Also watch out for the monthly 'feasting nights', which are a regular sell-out. A short wine list just about covers it, but more choices by the glass would be very much appreciated and not difficult to organise. Even so, eating here is reckoned to be 'a truly memorable experience'.