44 Best Restaurants in The West Country, England

This small and buzzing bistro has a rock-and-roll flavor, thanks to the walls adorned with posters of music icons. Diners squeeze onto benches and into booths to savor dishes made with local seafood, including a majestic bouillabaisse, or just a simple "Samburger." Steaks and "super salads" are also on the menu. You may have to wait for a table, but there's a slinky lounge-bar upstairs for a preprandial drink.

Around the corner from the cathedral, you can lift a tankard of bitter in the very rooms where Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh enjoyed their ale. The pub dishes out casual bar fare, from sandwiches and grills to steaks and ale pies, either in the bar or in the beamed and paneled upstairs restaurant. Drake, in fact, once wrote, "Next to mine own shippe, I do most love that old ‘Shippe' in Exon."

One of Cornwall's oldest pubs, the 1312 Sloop Inn serves simple lunches as well as evening meals in wood-beam rooms that display the work of local artists. The traditional menu includes fish pie, salads, and burgers as well as Cornish seafood paella. There's also a separate restaurant upstairs, and if the weather's good, you can eat at the tables outside at the front or on a rooftop terrace for excellent harbor views.

Part of chef Rick Stein's empire, this French-leaning bistro with contemporary art adorning its walls has a secluded feel. The menu is strong on seafood but also offers succulent steaks and tasty vegetarian choices, featuring dishes like whole grilled lobster, a warm salad of monkfish, prawns and fennel butter, and ravioli with porcini mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and hazelnuts. Look out for the set-price menus that are sometimes available. When the weather's nice, you can dine in the sunny walled garden, and Ruby's Bar next door offers a cozy nook for gins and cocktails. Upstairs are 10 spacious bedrooms individually decorated with stylish modern pieces.

Housed within the historic Plymouth Gin Distillery in the heart of the Barbican, this restaurant owned by a distinguished local culinary duo is a cheerful spot for a quick lunch or a more leisurely evening meal. The menu might include locally caught hake with Shetland Isle mussels and potato gnocchi; pea and mascarpone risotto with goat's cheese; or a steak from the charcoal grill. To finish, try one of the toothsome desserts, perhaps the whipped vanilla cheesecake with strawberries. There are good set-price menus at lunchtime and early evening, and you can sample gin cocktails in the Refectory Bar on the same premises, made with the Plymouth Gin distilled on site.

As the name implies, this casual eatery in the heart of Clifton village specializes in pork products, with special attention given to the humble British "banger." Sausages range from the traditional Gloucester Old Spot to Cotswold lamb, mint, and apricot; pork, leek, and stilton; and beef and ale, and all come with plain mashed potato or "champ" (mashed potato with spring onions). The menu also includes a tender slow-roast pork belly with plenty of crackling and gravy, mushroom, and spinach risotto, and a fish special featuring whatever seafood has been brought in from Cornish ports. The bright, modern restaurant is furnished with solid wooden benches and tables, and has outdoor seating, too. Local beers are served, and dishes are also available as take-outs.

Set back from Torquay's harbor, this elegant eatery offers sophisticated but relaxed dining, with views over Torbay from its Georgian windows. The innovative menus offer such starters as Brixham crab with sour apple jelly or hand-dived scallops with whey-butter sauce and pickled grapes, and, among the mains, you might find rump of lamb with Provençal-style vegetables or roasted monkfish with ravioli of salsify and fennel. The highly skilled kitchen is matched by the pleasant and attentive wait staff. At lunch, you can choose between the set menu (£28–£32) or a set-price à la carte menu (£53 or £68), which is also available in the evening alongside a multicourse tasting menu (£90).

This vegetarian café and restaurant is perfect for breakfast, coffee, or a light lunch. Order at the counter and find a space in one of the three rooms—all simply furnished with rustic-style benches and tables and local art on the pastel-colored walls—or in the walled garden. Apart from pizzas, quiches, jacket potatoes, and house-baked rolls and cakes, the chalkboard might include such dishes as cauliflower cheese with roast potatoes and red wine gravy or mixed grain salad with roasted carrot and fennel. The whole food shop next door offers a range of picnic ingredients, too.

This is the real deal, perfect for a light lunch or, even better, a cream tea served on bone china. Warm scones come in baskets, with black currant and other homemade jams and plenty of clotted cream. It's closed every afternoon and all day Sunday.

At this pub you can contemplate the quayside comings and goings over a pint of real ale and a sandwich, a pie, or a pasty. The nautical theme comes through in pictures and the ship's wheel hanging from the ceiling. There are tables outside on the quay.

In a prime riverside location, this seafood restaurant epitomizes the region's ongoing food revolution. The knowledgeable staff guides diners through the Italian-inspired menu, which primarily depends on the day's catch: look for scallops with garlic and white port, spaghetti con aragosta (with local lobster and datterini tomatoes), or Dover sole or gurnard grilled over charcoal. Leave room for the formidable desserts, too, such as panna cotta with prunes and Armagnac. Set-price menus are sometimes available, and Joe's Bar, attached to the restaurant, offers a good range of wines, locally distilled gin, and cocktails. The owner, celebrity-chef Mitch Tonks, also runs a much more basic fish-and-chips restaurant a few doors along called RockFish, open daily.

The excellent café-restaurant upstairs at Watershed overlooks part of the harborside. Sandwiches and hot snacks are served all day, along with coffees, cakes, and beers.

As an antidote to the natural-food cafés of Glastonbury's High Street, try this traditional backstreet inn for some more down-to-earth fare. Bar classics such as beer-battered fish-and-chips and Somerset sausages appear alongside chicken curry, vegan dishes, and sizzling steaks, which you can wash down with local beers and ciders. The pub's quirky decor—including ancient radios, a red telephone box, and a bicycle on the ceiling—has a definite entertainment quotient, and there are tables in the paved garden.