Top 50 Gastropubs

2

The Cornish Arms

Tavistock, Devon

The Cornish Arms in Tavistock, Devon, is a gastropub that serves the simplest of food crafted with the highest care.

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Run by enthusiastic husband and wife duo John and Emma Hooker, the pub serves unpretentious, mouth-watering dishes, featuring superb local produce which has bumped them all the way up to number 2 in the UK.

It has featured repeatedly in the Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs list over the past several years and has been awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand for offering high-quality food at an affordable price.

It was also named as one of six national finalists for the title of Best Food Pub in 2016’s Great British Pub Awards.

The pub’s four menus are beautifully put together with a significant amount of thought, while dishes are presented beautifully at the table, representative of the talent in the kitchen.

Starters have previously included cauliflower soup, parmesan, crème fraîche and house breads; pheasant Scotch egg, blue cheese and beer pickled onions; and oak-smoked haddock omelette with Hollandaise and chives.

For mains, dishes have consisted of poached and roasted lamb belly in a lamb gravy; rare breed pork chop with café de Paris butter, hispi cabbage, walnut and Bramley apple; and the Cornish homity pie with confit leek, autumn truffle, soft poached egg and hollandaise.

Desserts you can expect are the likes of raspberry trifle with raspberry sorbet; sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce, caramelised banana and banoffee ice cream; and Cashel blue cheese treacle tart with walnut and apple.

The pub is a St Austell Brewery tenancy, so expect to find a wide range of the brewery’s much-loved ales as well as draught lagers and a well-curated wine list.

Diners who don’t wish to travel too far from the table to bed, can stay at the gastropub in one of its rooms, which are warm and comfortable and offer a great night’s sleep.

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