During my two nights stay at Lympstone Manor in Devon I only had dinner on the final night; this is my review.

I reserved my table for 7pm when I made the hotel booking, but at Lympstone it seems the reservation time is not the time you sit at your table, it’s the time you ‘gather’ in the bar area for an aperitif (which can be sipped in the bar, the lounge, or on the outside terrace).  I’ve encountered this same arrangement at another country house hotel, but I don’t know if it’s the norm.  I’m letting you know in case, like me, you book a restaurant for the time you want to eat.  I didn’t particularly want a drink, but I ordered a Margherita which was good and lime-tangy to get my saliva flowing.

While we sipped our cocktails in the lounge they brought us canapés and menus and we chose to go for the Signature Tasting Menu and wine pairing.

Our canapés consisted of: a moist and crunchy beef cheek bonbon with curry mayo; a smooth salmon and horseradish mousse; and a deliciously truffley aubergine and parmesan puree.  They each had simple clean flavours and displayed medium level chef technique, but odd to have two canapés with the same texture (salmon and aubergine). 9/10

 

 

 

When we were moved into the dining room, at 19:35, we were offered a good selection of fresh breads and asked to choose which we wanted, but the waiter left the whole basket on our table so we could try them all. The accompanying butter was ‘standard’. 8/10

 

 

 

Our first course was a crab raviolo with grapefruit, lemongrass and a ginger sauce. I was very pleased to see them use the singular for the pasta – too many restaurants say ‘ravioli’ on the menu but serve up just one item. There was good bold flavour from the crab, the pasta was well-made, but it was fairly salty and included more pepper seasoning than is usual. 8.5/10. I was disappointed that the wine to accompany this dish was poured for us ten minutes before the food arrived, as I find it hard not to sip from a glass placed before me and these glasses only contained about three sips!

Our second course was described as “Duck liver terrine”, but I’m certain it used fattened duck livers (ie foie gras de canard) because of it’s colour, texture and rich flavour.  I loved this dish, but I was confused why they hadn’t used the term ‘foie gras’ in the title: if there’s a local back-lash against the product the locals won’t be happy being sneakily served something they disapprove of.  The terrine was topped with delicate shimeji mushrooms and sat on a bed of delicious madeira jelly. There was just a tiny ‘soldier’ of toasted sourdough on the plate, but extra was served on the side. Also on the plate was a small salad of truffled green beans and leaves which was ideal for cutting through the richness of the liver.  9/10

It was now 20:37 and we’d been at the table an hour; the slow service was beginning to irritate me.

The third course was a tranche of pan-fried Loch Duart salmon, a spear each of white and green asparagus, white wine sauce and oscietra caviar.  It sounded and looked wonderful and the salmon was indeed good and had a lovely crispy skin. But both asparagus spears were tough – too tough to cut with my cutlery, the white wine sauce was no better than “so-so” and the caviar was quite mushy instead of being pert al dente eggs. They told me the caviar was Italian and I thought it a shame they hadn’t used the good quality sustainable caviar farmed on near-by Exmoor. 8/10

It was now 9pm and I was starting to have a mild autistic melt-down over the slow service, so I stepped out of the dining room to recompose myself. As I left I asked the sommelier to only pourer wines when the food was about to arrive and I noted my dissatisfaction with the slow service speed to the restaurant manageress.  I found the atmosphere in the dining room to be too hushed and uncomfortable – apart from one table, everyone else appeared to be frightened to talk in a reasonable volume, so waiting ages between courses just wasn’t a comfortable experience for me.

The next course rightly returned to more local ingredients; Cornish duckling, orange braised chicory, orange puree and orange and anise scented duck jus. The duck breast was tender and thinly sliced, with well-rendered fat and a crispy skin, and the jus was light and non-fatty, but I found the orange elements too orangey 8/10

Our main course featured local beef: a slice of very tender fillet and a cube of braised shin, celeriac puree, roasted celeriac, spinach, shallot, bacon and mushrooms.  I found both beef elements to be under-seasoned, but its quality made this a good main course, though I noticed my portion size was less than half that of a man next to me who was eating ‘a la carte’. That’s the way with ‘Tasting Menus’; you find a dish you love, but wish there was more of it. 8/10

Next we had a plate of English cheeses. I was delighted to see a cheese course as part of a menu rather than an optional additional course. We were given a plate containing a nice light Somerset rind-washed goat’s cheese; a Somerset brie; a hard Devon cheese which was like a mild cheddar with a little kick to it; a very interesting beer-washed cheese from Oxfordshire; and a Devon blue which wasn’t very blue. Various crackers were there too, along with some garnishes, but no local chutneys, and the portions were similar to what one is served on an aeroplane, but the flavour selection was enjoyable. 7/10

BTW service speeded up after my words with the manageress and our wines were served with the food, and next up came a pre-dessert cum palate cleanser of apple mousse, apple jelly, apple sorbet ad vanilla foam, all served in a small cup too look like a caapuchino, except it also had a slice of dehydrated apple (why?).  I found it very pleasant and I would score it 9/10 as a dessert, but only 4/10 as a palate cleanser because it was too creamy for that.  It was now 22:05 and the dining room was becoming quite dark; I would have appreciated better lighting.

For dessert we had a quenelle of cherry parfait sitting on top of a tube created with rolled dark chocolate, which contained poached cherries and a cherry sorbet, and topped with a biscuit twirl.  This was a pretty dish which demonstrated good chef skills, but I felt it would have been better with riper cherries to give a sweeter, more rounded flavour.  8/10

We finished our meal at 22:10: I think three hours is appropriate for a dinner, but we wouldn’t have achieved it if I hadn’t asked them to speed things up.  I thought the food was good, but it wasn’t as good as I had anticipated. I thought that because chef Caines had two Michelin stars at his former restaurant (Gidleigh Park) he would be pulling out all the stops to improve upon Lympstone Manor’s current one star rating, but I feel we were served a 1 star meal.  I expected to see absolute precision in the cooking which wasn’t always there. And I expected local ingredients to star in every course.

We left the dining room and asked that they bring us our favourite night-cap, Frangelico and milk, to our suite’s terrace. We enjoyed our drinks with a pretty pink selection of petit fours: a so-so strawberry Royale, a good blackcurrant macron and a pleasantly sharp blackcurrant jelly.

The total price of the meal with wine, water and service, was £587, which is 2-star prices.  I felt it a shame that chef Michael Caines didn’t come into the dining room to chat to his guests.  His name is a major selling point of the hotel and I’ve no doubt I wasn’t the only one there eager to meet the famous chef.  I noticed that most of our fellow diners ate a la carte, and apart from us, those on the tasting menu didn’t choose the wine pairing.  Overall 8/10