On The Road: Devon

From a rustic café doing a pipinghot trade in pulled pork baps to the offshore restaurant dispensing local gin and scallops to kite surfers, this corner of the south-west does quirky eats with as much finesse as it does fine dining

- Clare Hargreaves

“At The Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal gives his customers seashells playing the sound of crashing waves while they eat fish. Here we have the sounds and smells of the sea all around us.” I’m with chef Chris Dayer inside the River Exe Café, set on a barge in Devon’s Exe Estuary (riverexecafe.co.uk). Outside, a few brave souls clutch their Yellow Hammer ales as the wind whistles across the decks. I understand what Chris means.

Getting here by water taxi from Exmouth is part of the adventure. Most visitors have to book months in advance, but there is some passing trade. “Kitesurfers land here in their wetsuits and come in to warm up,” says Chris.

The fruits of the estuary’s waters don’t disappoint. Chris buys much of his seafood direct from local fisherman and, if you want to sample them all, he does a mixed seafood platter, including sensational scallops in port and parmesan. There’s local booze, too, notably Copper Frog gin, distilled in Exmouth (copperfrogdistilling.co.uk).

Quirky is what this little corner of Devon does well. The Pig & Pallet café, inside a former sail loft on the quay at Topsham, claims to be a marriage of East Coast USA and West Country UK; meat, rather than fish, is king (pigandpallet.co.uk). The café’s owners crafted it – out of discarded pallets, hence the name – as a stall from which to sell their nitrate-free Good Game charcuterie (bestsellers: rabbit salami and Devon fire chorizo). But their hot offerings became so popular that the stall quickly morphed into a rustic dining space. I tackle a beefburger made from Devon’s own Red Ruby breed. The meat is reared a few metres away at Darts Farm, also home to an excellent farm shop (