Super-size your farm shop experience with a food tour of South Devon (2024)

“Local craft ale was once a favourite, but ciders, particularly small-batch, are back,” says Greendale Farm Shop’s ruddy-cheeked Rich Jones, holding up a jerrycan labelled ‘Proper Job’. “It’s a Devon scrumpy made with our apples by Keith Hosein, an 80-year-old local farmer who still uses a hand crusher.”

A Devon farm shop stocked with cider is no surprise, but what is astonishing is Greendale’s multitude of local goods, from veggies, cheese, meat and preserves to pastries, sourdough, ice cream and souvenirs. All are either produced on site or are West Country sourced, filling a giant barn and outbuildings akin to a rustic mall. “The shop started 15 years ago, selling farm eggs from a roadside shed,” says Rich. “But during Covid we really became a community hub and have grown a lot since.” Not only has Greendale’s restaurant capacity doubled, queues for its weekend ‘farmer’s breakfast’ go out the door. It’s also home to a chippie, which shifts 200 kilos of fish from Friday to Sunday.

Yet quality, as well as quantity, prevails. People travel cross-county for its butcher’s handmade sausages and four-week-matured boned steak. Lobster tanks, house-smoked fish and a bounty of local catch grace the wet-fish counter. Above it, photos feature Greendale’s fishing fleet in action at its harbour bases in Brixham, Newlyn and Exeter.

Large-scale farm shops like Greendale are becoming the norm here in South Devon, dotting the county’s rolling pasturelands. In fact, there’s another just minutes from Greendale — Darts Farm, a ‘lifestyle shopping destination’ that’s grown out of a farm hut. And, while South Devon farm-food enterprises like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage and Riverford Organic Farmers’ veg boxes have long garnered national attention, a multitude of other local farm-food powerhouses has blossomed in recent years.

Just south along the River Exe, something else is flourishing. I follow lanes twittering with spring life, to Exmouth, where the vineyard at Lympstone Manor Estate has just produced its first classic cuvée. Rows of vines lend Continental panache to the hotel’s grounds, which rake steeply from Georgian manor to estuary. Premium sparkling wine was Lympstone’s headline mission in 2018 when planting Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir, but the latter has so far yielded the biggest surprise.

“After 2020’s long, hot summer, we let the Pinot Noir grapes hang,” says Lympstone’s Steve Edwards, referring to the practice of harvesting grapes for red wines later than usual. “It’s always a risk — frost and fungus are a terror in this country,” says the Australian ex-pat, “but we won gold at the 2023 International Wine Challenge.” Not bad for a first harvest, I say — and for an English red, no less. Steve nods. “Everyone associates English wine with sparkling, but there’s an amazing future for high-quality still wines.”

I try both: the biscuity, zesty cuvée at Lympstone’s lounge bar; the brambly fruit Triassic Pinot Noir at dinner, which pairs well with a gamey poached chicken from South Devon’s Creedy Carver farm. TV chef Michael Caines, Lympstone’s chef-owner, has sensibly decked out his Michelin-starred dining room with booth seating, so diners can relax into nine-course tasting menus featuring Lyme Bay crab, Newlyn cod and lamb grazed across the estuary at the Powderham Estate’s farm.

Located close to the Dart Estuary in the beautiful stone-built village of Stoke Gabriel, Sharpham Wine is another medal-winner for its reds. With around 40 years and 30 acres under its belt, accolades aren’t in short supply across a range that’s increasingly focused on low-intervention varieties. Set in a former dairy farm on Sandridge Barton Estate, it has two tasting rooms, the newer of which is set in a shingle-floor barn with sheepskins and a wood burner, overlooking a new plot of organic vines.

Circa, once the darling of Exeter’s dining scene, has moved out of the city and into the estate’s former milking shed, offering pairings with small plates showcasing house pickles and foraged fare. The single-estate Pinot Gris brings an earthy edge to a lunch of dessert-sweet milk bread with lion’s mane mushroom, cep and caerphilly from Somerset’s Westcombe Dairy.

I’m still mooning over that dish as I drive 45 minutes south to Salcombe. Here, where the Kingsbridge Estuary meets the Blue Flag beaches of the South Hams — strung in long, sandy arcs towards Plymouth and the Cornish border — it’s easy to get into the holiday spirit. Literally, at Devon Rum, where, in summer, you can dock at its shop, which backs onto the estuary, for co*cktails and tastings of rums blended on site with Devon spring water, spices and raw spirits from Jamaica and Guyana. Opened in 2022, the artisan spirit-maker has a standard entrance on Island Street, just along from Salcombe Gin’s similar fisherman’s shed-like HQ. But mooring up for, say, a Devon Meadow, made with elderflower tonic, a sprig of rosemary, fresh lime juice and local honey-spiced rum adds a delightfully piratey edge to proceedings.

Meanwhile, small-batch co*cktails, built for beachgoers and boaties, are on offer at Bar Buoy, over in Exmouth. “During lockdown, we started going to the beach to surf with our kids and took a shaker to make sundowner margaritas,” says Ria Ball, who founded the bar with her husband, Tim. “Friends started joining us, so we brought co*cktails mixed at home in thermos flasks and, well, it all started from there.”

Locals got a taste for the young couple’s ready-to-serve tipples and a business grew out of their garage, which expanding swiftly into a chic, nautical-themed warehouse where you can now taste a range of 12 pre-mixed co*cktails. From a sweet-bitter Devon Stormy made with Exeter’s Two Drifters rum to a lemon-tart bramble with Salcombe Gin and Six Liqueurs Blackberry Liqueur, local ingredients are the co*cktails’ cornerstone.

I resist a stomach-lining Docker’s Egg, the signature take on a scotch egg using smoked haddock served at nearby deli Fish on the Quay. Instead I take a sunny seat by Exmouth’s slipway at Rockfish: a premium spot for some plump, briny Portland Pearl oysters and buttery, hand-dived scallops. I buy a can of Lyme Bay mussels from Rockfish’s new canned seafood range. Like everything on the menu, the sustainable catch is landed daily in Brixham, 30 miles south, by Rockfish’s boats. Owner Mitch Tonks, an abiding champion of British seafood, will soon add to his ever-expanding South West portfolio with similarly idyllic waterfront locations at Salcombe, Topsham and Sidmouth, the latter with its own moat.

South Devon has no shortage of seaside dining spots, many now encompassed by the South West 660. The coast-hugging road trip, launched in 2022, showcases the best of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset in 12 distinct 50-mile sections, with detailed route notes and dining suggestions for travellers registered through its website. I cover just a fraction of the Devon leg, but each turn is a wow.

There’s the windblown beauty of Burgh Island in its tidal isolation at Bigbury-on-Sea, where The Oyster Shack serves oysters with toppings that include Bloody Margaret, a spicy tomato sauce with house-made gin; the dune-backed wonder of Hope Bay’s sandy coves; and the elegance of Plymouth’s Barbican district, where Jacka bakery’s ‘croissant wheels’ are somehow as delicate as they are super-sized — and all from premises that have been baking since 1597.

Britain’s oldest bakery looks like a pup compared to nearby Boringdon Hall. The hotel, set in a Domesday Book-listed country manor, is home to Àclèaf, a Michelin-starred spot in a mezzanine overlooking the 16th-century Great Hall. Halos of wildflowers and herbs frame complex dishes, described simply as ‘crab’ or ‘hen’. The cheese course is a medieval feast in keeping with Boringdon’s carved oakwood panelling, with breads, local honey still in the comb and a standout brie from South Devon’s Sharpham Cheese.

With no mead to hand, I settle, happily, for a glass of local Lyme Bay Winery’s multi-award-winning Rosé Brut. Deep pink with strawberry notes, sipping it while sampling the Jersey-milk brie is like having a deconstructed cream tea. And as Devon convention dictates, I go cream first, then ‘jam’.

The best restaurants in South Devon

1. The Angel
A waterfront Dartmouth spot run by former MasterChef: The Professionals finalist Elly Wentworth. She leads a young team delivering British cooking with international flavours, plus plenty of local fish, including roasted sea bass with turnip pickle, pak choi and smoked sea lettuce (pictured). Six-course tasting menu £95.

2. Cafe Ode
Come for the ginger cake, stay for special-event supper clubs at this wood cabin-like hilltop cafe above the bay at Shaldon. Michel Roux-trained chef-owner Tim Bouget brings finesse to cafe dishes, like panko-breaded Brixham dayboat fish and mugs of coconut-rich curried green lentil dahl. Dishes £4-20.

3. The Bull Inn
Hippie hilltop town Totnes has fast become a foodie hub. Since opening in 2019, The Bull Inn has led the charge with veg-centered, organic dishes like roast celeriac, skordalia, charred leeks, goat’s curd, chard and pumpkin seed picada sauce. Two courses around £40.

4. Valley View Café
With views across the South Hams, Aune Valley Farm Shop is an idyll that’s grown from modest hut to sprawling cafe, deli and ‘milk shed’ for flavoured shakes. The Butcher’s Breakfast comes with farm sausages and bacon, the hog roast bap is made here with Aune’s belly pork, and cream teas star locally made preserves and Devonshire clotted cream. Mains around £9-11.

Food finds in South Devon

1. Thunder & Lightning
A preternaturally creamy ice cream from the UK’s first carbon-neutral farm. It’s made using an old recipe from the family’s grandma and contains honeycomb and clotted cream from Langage’s Jersey herd.

2. Chilli jam
The signature fiery-sweet condiment from long-established South Devon Chilli Farm, whose impressive seed-growing set-up is fast expanding since Amrit and Jenny Madhoo took over in 2022.

3. Black Foot Charcuterie
Buttery, gamey air-dried ham, capicola, salami and nduja are made from Iberian pigs raised on organic pastures at 500-acre Fowlescombe Farm.

4. Single Malt
Dartmoor Whisky’s remarkable English single malts are made with Dartmoor spring water in bourbon, sherry and Bordeaux casks. Book tastings among the copper stills in the Victorian grandeur of Bovey Tracey’s former town hall.

5. Jubulani
A smooth, fruity, rich award-winner made with beans from a partner women’s collective in Rwanda. Visit the Ivybridge cafe-roastery for barista classes and tasting sessions.