Salcombe Restaurant Guide

“A lovely spot by the waterfront for super-fresh seafood” – this wood-built café perched on the harbour is celebrating its tenth year in 2024. It serves a variety of uncomplicated fish and seafood dishes, with the headline event being Whole Salcombe Cracked Crab.

2022 Review: This “lovely beach hut” (park up at Milton or Thurlestone Sands) with a blackboard menu offers “atmospheric outdoor dining with a good range of fresh seafood”, and “the views are beautiful too”. Top Tip: “dirty chips were so good we had to order extra portions”.

Having been born on the same site that hosted an oyster farm over three decades ago, molluscs (with hot or cold toppings) remain central to the joys of this shack – no exaggeration – where you can dine indoors by the fire or at plastic tables and chairs below a makeshift awning. Also on the menu: quality fish, ranging from monkfish to hake and sole.

“Mitch Tonks can do no wrong!” according to fans of this well-known west country chef’s harbourside flagship – an understated, Italian-influenced “seafood brasserie” where you “watch the freshest of local catches cooked in front of you on an open grill”. These days it is run by his son Ben, who oversees twice-daily deliveries from nearby Brixham harbour, “all correctly prepared and served with a Devon smile”.

The flagship of a “small chain with great food”, founded in 2010 by Mitch Tonks – “it’s difficult to know whether it’s a restaurant or an upmarket fish ’n’ chips place (although the food is still good either way)”. The brand now comprises eight restaurants, three takeaways and one café dotted around the southwest, along with a fishmonger and a tinned fish business – but plans to expand via three new branches in 2024 were scuppered by delays: Salcombe and Sidmouth venues should open in summer ’25, but Topsham has been abandoned.

2022 Review: On the River Dart, this location has a fine culinary history, having been run by figures as diverse as Joyce Molyneux (one of the first women in the UK to receive a Michelin star) and TV chef John Burton-Race. It’s now under former MasterChef: The Professionals finalist Elly Wentworth, and fans “think it will settle down into a very good restaurant” indeed, with reports of some “very memorable” food (running from “stunning” Sunday roasts to a six-course tasting menu).

“Very relaxed but with always interesting food” – this organic and ethical pub-with-rooms won the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s coveted Sustainability Award last year – recognition of the efforts made by the team led by founder Geetie Singh-Watson, a self-styled ethical publican who sold her flat in London to rescue what had been a run-down local boozer. The locally sourced food does not just tick the sustainability box: “the local ingredients are varied and excellent, in intriguing combinations. eg. beetroot and sheep’s curd starter is simple, yet tasty and on a recent visit a cod’s head was on the menu”.

2023 Review: “Worth a detour. Have been coming since they opened under new ownership in 2019 and it’s only grown in strength despite the pandemic. Absolute gem!” – limited but very enthusiastic feedback on this 14-bedroom hotel on the South West Coast path, with commanding views of the sea and looking over Hope Cove beach (which is yards away). The food is brasserie-style fare (sirloin, red mullet, confit duck…) and good value.