I’ve been down to Devon a fair bit this year. Devon is a county in southwest England. It encompasses sandy beaches, fossil cliffs, medieval towns and moorland national parks.
You’ll be absolutely unsurprised to hear that when I go there I do none of those things, instead I like to eat food and drink booze.
It’s a tale as old as time, man needs to eat or else he dies. That’s an indisputable fact, a chap who tries to live off sandy beaches and fossil cliffs alone will surely perish.
Beaches, beaches for me, millions of beaches, beaches for free. Let us use the humble beach as an opportunity to discuss the first place I’ve been recently.
Barbecue thirteen – Exmouth
Exmouth has a beach, beaches are next to the sea, the sea is currently where fish tend to reside.
Recently opened by a brummie chef it seemed sensible to go. As my grandpa used to say, “give a man more canals than Venice and he shall cook fish well, give a man the sea and he shall cook it even better.”
Oysters, tamarind scampi, hake kiev, were all great, however the star of the show was a Thai monkfish tail with beautiful spicing which didn’t dominate the fish. I may or may not have gnawed on the bone.
Dartmouth – Andria
Dartmouth has less of a beach than Exmouth (I think. I’ve done no research on this, it’s purely based on how much sand I’ve seen when visiting) however, it also has restaurants, some of which sell fish.
This one was a while ago, so I’m going to need to attempt to access the depleted stores of my memory bank.
Absolutely small plate vibes in this chic eatery (see I could be a food blogger if I really wanted to be).
The problem I have with small plate places is if one of the dishes is really nice you spend time pondering whether you should order it again. No such issue here. I finished the plate of Kentucky Fried Monkfish and asked for another before I’d even finished chewing.
It was a while ago since this visit, so I won’t sit here and pretend to remember everything I ate as that simply will not do, you deserve better. What I can tell you is this though – it was all bloody tasty.
Totnes – Bull Inn
Totnes, where you are never more than 12 yards from someone who thinks Bill Gates shoots 5G rays out of his anus. It’s also got some nice places to eat and drink, you’ll be surprised to hear that I’ve now been to them all, such is my dedication to pursuing bankruptcy.
Talking of bankruptcy. Once, I was sat outside the Bull Inn and the bloke who owns Richer Sounds was at the table next to me, it still irks me that I didn’t come up with some ingenious way of getting him to give me money. A fancy dance or something. We’ll never know.
The Bull Inn is absolutely organic AF, so organic, couldn’t be more organic if it tried.
Last time I went I demolished some lamb croquettes with garlic aioli and took a punt on a £27 duck main.
I sat trembling with fear at the prospect of a slither of duck being passed apologetically in front of my sad face for just shy of thirty quid, but my fears were unjustified. The biggest duck breast I’ve ever seen was presented, with confit potato, fennel salad and a duck sauce. It was glorious.
I often find myself contemplating how big that duck must have been, I honestly think it would have been capable of flapping Rishi Sunak to death.
Exeter – Circa
This must be the longest blog I’ve ever put on this website. To be honest if this last meal hadn’t been really good I’d probably just write ‘was really good’ here. However, it’s worth a few lines extra.
My lady wife and I had a FoodieBaby™️ free evening a couple of Saturdays ago. Being the honourable, generous gentleman I am I allowed FoodieWife™️ to choose the restaurant, quite a daunting task.
We got there a little early and we’re lucky enough to have time to pop upstairs and have some some terrific wine from Natural Growth Wine.
Dinner was excellent, starters of beef carpaccio with black garlic and fermented celeriac remoulade and crab with crab custard, crab shell mayo and asparagus were top notch.
The chicken main with mushrooms, cep foam and spring greens was delightful too.
I think the dessert was good, but I may have been too pissed to remember.
I’m not normally one to bang on about these things, but the staff were excellent and made it feel like a real treat to be out.
So, yeah, there you go, some places to eat in Devon – just like it said in the title.
Foodie Boys 