Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Highfield
Hardens guides have spent 33 years compiling reviews of the best Highfield restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 14 restaurants in Highfield and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Highfield restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Highfield Restaurants
1. The Cotley Inn
restaurant in Chard
Wambrook - TA20
“Seemingly off the beaten track down increasingly narrow country lanes in the beautiful Blackdown Hills but with easy access from the A358 if you are en route to Devon and Cornwall” – this rural inn wins praise as a “great local” (“very dog friendly!”) “producing lovely food in a picturesque setting”. Meat is smoked onsite and “game seems to be a speciality (as we were leaving, the beaters and dogs were arriving back at the pub with several brace of pheasants!)”
2. Brazz, Castle Hotel
British, Modern restaurant in Taunton
Castle Bow - TA1
2023 Review: “Well-cooked and well-presented food” is served in this 70-cover brasserie at the Castle Hotel, a well-known and picturesque-looking local institution (complete with crenellations) run by three generations of the Chapman family for 72 years, although the modern decor of Brazz itself means those searching for period style should look elsewhere. “Service is charming and very helpful” and the overall package is “good value too”. In April 2022, towards the end of our annual diners’ poll, Andrew Swann took over the stoves here. One of his early innovations has been the introduction of an eye-catching £15 lunch deal.
3. The Castle Bow Restaurant
British, Modern restaurant in Taunton
Castle Bow - TA1
2023 Review: With its Art Deco-style interior, this local landmark’s traditional dining room provides a heartily traditional environment. It has yet to reopen for lunch and dinner post-pandemic, but is currently dedicated to the service of afternoon tea, for which – on limited feedback – it comes recommended.
4. The Holt
British, Modern restaurant in Honiton
178 High Street - EX14
2021 Review: “A friendly, well-run pub” that's “owned by the Otter brewery, so the beer is always well kept”. On the food front, it “maintains a steady standard” (“tapas in the downstairs bar are always interesting and the full menu is served upstairs in a non-fancy environment”).
5. The Pig at Combe
British, Modern restaurant in Honiton
Combe House, Gittisham - EX14
A “great location” – an “interesting renovation” of an Elizabethan mansion – contributes to the atmosphere of this Otter Valley outpost of the trendy Pig empire. Increased reports this year of rather “average” cooking (“unmemorable apart from the price”, ouch), though fans insist that, albeit “slightly hit-and-miss”, it’s “generally hit”.
6. The Five Bells Inn
British, Modern restaurant in Clyst Hydon
2023 Review: Landlord James Garnham took over this lovely thatched pub in his boyhood village with his wife Charlie five years ago, building an excellent reputation for its food and hospitality. “We have now visited 3 times in as many weeks – which says it all!”.
7. Glebe House
British, Modern restaurant in Southleigh
Hugo Guest (ex-of London haunts Sorella and Marksman) grew up in this hilltop Georgian vicarage, when his parents ran it as a B&B; fast-forward to 2020, and he and wife Olive set out to create an English-style ‘agriturismo’ on this 15-acre smallholding in a “delightful location” overlooking the Coly Valley. The victuals are split between casual kitchen suppers (for guests only) and more formal four-course fixed dinners (for all), and both showcase a “high standard of cooking”; stay on for the night to profit from the “excellent” breakfast.
8. The Jack in the Green Inn
British, Modern restaurant in Rockbeare
London Road - EX5
2021 Review: One of the better pubs in the Exeter area – this well-known gastropub near J29 of the M5 has been in the same hands for over 25 years, and wins praise for its “very reliable cooking” and “a great choice of local beers and ciders”.
9. River Cottage Canteen
British, Traditional restaurant in Axminster
Trinity Square - EX13
2021 Review: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV tie-in kitchen – serving sharing boards and veggie tapas alongside more conventional starters and mains – is celebrating its twentieth anniversary, but feedback on it has seldom matched the hype, and is too limited last year for a rating. Such as we have says it’s OK value, but variable in performance.
10. Tytherleigh Arms
British, Modern restaurant in Tytherleigh
A “great and reliable gastropub in an area that’s not blessed with super eating venues”, this sixteenth-century coaching inn, on the Devon/Dorset border, was a hit with all reporters this year; “prices are a bit high”, but given that the “lovely food” (modern British with a Euro slant) “keeps getting better”, no one seems to care too much.
11. Masons Arms
British, Modern restaurant in Branscombe
Main St - EX12
A “pretty setting” in a fourteenth-century thatched inn adds to the charms of this restaurant-with-rooms, which is run by the St Austell Brewery, and an easy walk from Branscombe beach. The pub classics and more ambitious dishes achieve “very high standards” (“the lunch menu is particularly good value”) and the “quirky” spot offers a warm welcome too (also to dogs).
12. Augustus
British, Modern restaurant in Taunton
3 The Courtyard, St James St - TA1
A “small but perfectly formed bistro-style” venue which was set up by Richard Guest and FOH Cedric Chirrosel in 2011, and has since firmly made its mark on the local dining scene with its impeccable local sourcing and “nice French-style cooking” (also inflected by British and Asian touches). Fans say that the “idiosyncratic” venture is “as good as it gets locally” (“when it is open we never go anywhere else”).
13. The Candlelight Inn
British, Modern restaurant in Chard
Bishopswood - TA20
As the name suggests, “a great, intimate atmosphere” is found at this seventeenth-century village inn, which is “a cut above the usual for style and service”. Charlotte Vincent was crowned ‘pub chef of the year’ in the 2023 Great British Pub Awards – she sends out “a varied range of dishes, nearly all locally sourced and precisely cooked”, such as a bar snack of roasted marrow bone and Porlock Bay oyster with garlic butter and sourdough bread.
14. The Lost Kitchen
International restaurant in Chettiscombe
The Long Barn - EX16
This informal, wood-fired restaurant set in a ‘feasting barn’ with a terrace garden and beautiful views of the rolling hills of mid-Devon was started by a couple who used to run events across Somerset and Devon. “It can get very busy, but it’s worth the journey down the lanes” from Tiverton for its sourdough pizzas and what Telegraph critic William Sitwell, in an admiring March 2023 review, called its “enveloping, welcome-to-our-cave spirit” and “exotic menu” (“more Shoreditch than Devon”).
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