Cornwall, Italian Restaurant Guide

Paul Ainsworth’s casual and reliably buzzy venture is still “great” by most accounts, turning out small plates, heftier fare plus popular Neapolitan-style pizzas as part of its homage to the Mediterranean. For the odd sceptic still not convinced by its 2020 bistro reinvention, however, there’s a sense that these days it’s rather “trading on a name”.

“What you would expect of an upmarket country hotel”, particularly one that’s part of the mother-and-daughter-run Polizzi Collection, and profits from an “exquisite setting” overlooking the Tamar Valley. Although the menus and cooking “do not scale the heights, they are perfectly satisfying”, and it remains an “idyllic spot to enjoy a stroll before dinner” through the 100-acre grounds, or to enjoy an “afternoon tea of sophistication as it should be served” – the latter being a major attraction in its own right, much praised in numerous reports for its “lovely cakes”, and offering the perfect alibi to visit the “perfect Devon location”.