Highfield Restaurant Guide

One of the better Pigs! – an Elizabethan mansion where the menu is “not haute cuisine”, admittedly, but where the solid cooking (much sourced from the “terrific kitchen garden”), and “brilliant breakfasts” (“the full works is a plateful”) mostly “deliver on expectation”, even given the considerable hype attached to the chain. The most hard-hearted review this year says: “It’s nice enough, and in an area of weak competition it’s worth the trip, but if the setting wasn’t so great, I don’t think the food would taste as nice!”. In autumn 2026, the litter is to expand to eleven with the birth of the Pig at Groombridge, Tunbridge Wells.

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!”.

“Set in beautiful rolling countryside” in a “very rural part of Devon”, a “charming, civilised and completely individual” outfit – think Anglo agriturismo – set up by Hugo Guest and wife Olivia five years ago in the Georgian house where he grew up. The “interesting set menus” (three-, four- or six-course) are inspired by Italy and France and, by all accounts, ex-Fat Duck chef David Knapman’s food is simply “top-class”, making it an “absolute treat both to stay the night or to go for a meal”.

It’s all change at this well-known Exeter pub and restaurant (handy for the M5) where, in April 2024, longtime owner Paul Parnell, who ran the venture with his wife Judy for over three decades, handed over the keys to young couple Craig & Miranda Griffin. Easing the transition, Craig was head chef under the former regime for several years (his wife serving as pub manager) so we’ve retained the venue’s rating despite the change of ownership. According to the new website, “pub grub classics are given a delicious kick up the backside”, and there’s also a £65 per person tasting menu.

This “lovely local gastropub” – originally a 16th-century coaching inn where Devon, Dorset and Somerset meet – has won a dedicated following over 15 years for “food and service that make it stand out from all other local eateries”. Food and drink are sourced as far as possible from the three counties, and “though relatively expensive for the area, prices are absolutely worth it for the meal you get – the taster menu is just superb”.

“Convivial” 14th-century pub-with-rooms in a picturesque village – “cosy in winter and very pleasant outside in the summer” – whose charms of a thatched roof and log fires have been boosted by a £2million refurb from newish owner, the St Austell Brewery. The “traditional pub food” is “very well cooked”, and the “great staff” guarantee a “warm welcome”.

This “lovely little neighbourhood restaurant tucked away in a sort of arcade” is “head and shoulders above the competition in the culinary desert of Taunton” and has been “reliably excellent over many years”, charming its legion of devotees by means of an “always interesting menu (fantastic daily specials to boot)” and a “very professional and likeable team” led by chef Richard Guest and FOH Cedric Chirrosel, the founders back in 2011. Top Tip – “a mainly game-led seasonal menu before Christmas was particularly good, without being overly festive in an Xmassy way”.

2024 Review: 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.

There are “lots of Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies on show” at this “upmarket” (albeit set in a barn) wood-fired restaurant in a “fantastic rural location” near Tiverton. If that posh sartorial prospect makes you want to run for the hills, one reporter who resisted flight “persevered and was rewarded with a decent brunch” (similarly stoic diners can also pick from light lunches, sourdough pizzas and dinners on Friday and Saturday nights).