Exeter is bursting with good eateries. People in Devon take their food very seriously and there is a wide choice to suit most palettes. There follows a selection of our particular favourites:
The Hotel Barcelona This place is just great. Situated in perhaps one of the most unpromising locations in the city, wedged between two arterial roads, and on the roundabout of the inner ring road, The Hotel Barcelona rises effortlessly above it all. The premises are the forbidding former Victorian eye infirmary but step inside it is funky, elegant and original. For simple, gusty snacks, try the bar. Huge glasses of wine, bread olives and cheese. There is a cocktail bar and a light airy restaurant serving Mediterranean influenced modern cuisine. As with many of Exeter’s top eateries, it gets packed at the weekend, so you do need to book in advance.
The Thai Orchid. This is a restaurant for that really special meal, and for authentic Thai food. Everything about this elegant restaurant oozes class – from the fresh orchids on the table to the first class cuisine, a huge variety of Thai dishes all cooked to perfection. The elegant and charming staff tend to get a little over anxious that you may not like Thai sticky rice (as eaten by Thais the world over) and will get you fluffy stuff if you prefer – Yoou cannot deny that this is the real McCoy. Prices are nearer top than middle range, and booking is essential as it is an intimate and hence small restaurant.
For something more unusual you might like to try Red Square. This is a Russian restaurant with a huge variety of vodkas. – flavoured and plain. If you thought vodka was just Smirnoff then this place is out to educate you. The décor is Russian rustic full of quirky Russian wisdom “There are no ugly women but there may not be enough vodka’. The menu ….. well let’s just say it’s probably pretty authentic and it didn’t much make me want to do a gastronomic tour of Russia. The cabbage and dumplings theme can be rather heavy but the menu is certainly interesting and worth experiencing at least once.
One of the most exciting ethnic restaurants in Exeter has to be the Moroccan Al Farid, tucked away in a corner of Cathedral Close. This place is atmospheric, the food is stunning and booking a table on a Saturday night well nigh impossible. Downstairs there is a cosy cushion-filled tapas bar (for want of a better word) . Upstairs, for more formal eating is an atmospheric room like something from the Arabian Nights. For balmy summer evening there is a private roof terrace, with an amazing mosaic table, large enough to hold a party of ten. And that’s just the décor – the food is quite simply amazing. Varied unusual. Try the tagines – the speciality of the house. Most amazing are the lamb pastries topped with cinnamon and…icing sugar. It sounds appalling – it is one of the most surprising taste sensation I have ever had – until you try it you simply cannot believe how that little touch of sweetness can bring out the flavour of the meat. Give it a go, you won’t be disappointed.
Al Farid has an equally nice but very different sister restaurant, Cohiba. Here, the décor is much more subdued, relying on natural wood and clean lines. Serving a wide range of tapas and robust Spanish food.
For Italian food, the slightly out of the way, Quo Vadis in the residential area of Heavitree is probably your best bet. A small intimate family restaurant, catering mainly for locals, it does good range of pizzas, pastas and meat dishes. Particularly tasty is the veal in marsala.
For a more in-your-face pizza experience, you need do no more than head for the renowned On the Waterfront on Exeter’s buzzy quay-side. On the Waterfront is a huge restaurant but manages to retain an impression of intimacy – The venue is a series of interconnecting former boat houses, long tunnel like affairs, cut into the cliffs. The menu? Well, it’s pizzas. The bigger the better – from standard sizes to dustbin lids – there are no prizes for guessing how big they are. When you fail to eat everything you have ordered, the friendly and helpful staff will box it up for you to take away – expect pizza for breakfast next day!
The one thing Exeter doesn’t do terribly well is curry. True, curry houses abound but anyone from the cosmopolitan North (by “North” in this case we mean anything North of Taunton) or from London is likely to be disappointed. The best of the bunch is The Ganges, which serves a fairly standard range of well cooked Indian favourites.
Just a little way outside Exeter, two places deserve a mention:
The Crown of Crediton is one of Devon’s real surprises. A first class Cantonese seafood restaurant in what is hardly a throbbing metropolis. The owner (who incidentally owns another top notch Chinese restaurant elsewhere) had always wanted to own an English pub and so The Crown. So, the first room is a standard unprepossessing market town pub, with locals propping up the bar and looking as though they have been there since Doomsday. Go through, however and the attached restaurant will serve you some of the best Chinese food outside the capital. The Crown also does a take-away service.
Travelling down to the sea, you can find The Galley in Topsham. Topsham is a cute (maybe a little too cute) townlet, catering for the very comfortable commuters of Exeter who still want some authentic living. The Galley caters for locals and the many tourists who come to savour the Hornblower era town centre and sea front. This cosy and atmospheric seafood restaurant serves excellent fresh fish. Food has a mixture of French and English influences. Prices are middle to top range – a great venue for that really special meal. Pre booking is advised, particularly at weekends.