Popularity trail tells a true tale

FREMINGTON Quay was once one of the busiest ports between Bristol and Land's End. Today it is a peaceful watery cul-de-sac, crossed by the Tarka Trail, much visited by walkers, cyclists and tourists – most, if not all of them, attracted to the award-winning Quay Cafe.

Entering the former railway station buildings is a feast for the eyes, offering a mouthwatering range of home-made cakes, while a plate of irresistible just-baked macaroons is strategically placed on the counter where coffees and tea are served.

Blackboards show the day's specials, all using the most local of ingredients.

These could include coarse farmhouse paté, deep-fried Devon blanchbait with home-made tartare sauce, and a local cheese platter – with Devon Oke, Sharpham Rustic, Curworthy and Exmoor Blue served with apple and celery and Devon cider chutney. If you weren't hungry on arrival, taste buds will soon be tingling after reading the day's offerings.

Sue and Tony Harty came to this lovely cafe overlooking the River Torridge nine years ago. Since then it has picked up numerous awards, including coming 17th in The Independent's list of 50 best cafes in the UK, and silver and bronze awards from Taste of the West in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

"When we came down here to retire," Sue says – with a smile at the memory of the intention that rapidly vanished – "local was not a buzzword.

"But because I trained as a chef in France doing local, fresh, going to the market every morning was the way I worked.

"I started to do that in the 1970s, and now everyone's doing it."

When she arrived at Fremington she started looking for old Devon recipes based around what was available locally and seasonally and adapted them for contemporary tastes.

"They used to have a lot of sugar, which I have taken out, but they remain essentially the same," she explains.

Recipes such as squab pie made with pigeon breasts and saltmarsh lamb, others using game and fish, or gammon, leek, apple and potato pie served with a cream and cider sauce.

"A lot of it is poor man's food – I've been doing offal and pigs' trotters for years," Sue said. "Most of the ingredients come from within a three-mile radius – salt marsh lambs come from the fields outside, salmon and trout from the river, and fruit and vegetables from local gardens."

Fish is so fresh that it is almost still flapping, often having been caught, filleted and delivered to the kitchen within an hour.

Her specials menu changes each day and the blackboards are written up only when she knows what is coming in, and when a dish has run out it is rubbed off the board.

Menus are not just highly seasonal but also weather-dependent.

"We have Braunton asparagus, samphire and sea spinach that I pick myself, sea bass, and local strawberries."

She also operates a bartering system for much of her produce, such as fruit and vegetables and fish.

Where not immediately local to the cafe she looks elsewhere in the county and the region, so beers from the nearby Country Life Brewery and Luscombe's cider and soft drinks are on the menu, along with tea from DJ Miles at Porlock, and Camel Valley wines from Cornwall.

"When people come here they want to have regional specials – why are restaurants doing pizzas, curries and fusion foods?" she asks.

"In Devon they are looking for good, hearty food, poor man's food often based around all the things that people don't generally eat but are delicious."

Although the cafe is usually open all day for coffee, sandwiches, lunch and tea, Sue also does occasional four or five-course gourmet dinners that might include smoked salmon and crab tartelette, fish cakes with spring leaves, Easter rabbit pie with spring herbs or fillet of sea bass with a mussel, chive and cream sauce.

Follow that with a chocolate and Devon violet mousse with primrose cup cakes – if you can manage it.

The day I visited, intending to stop for a coffee, I was seduced by a home-made macaroon which led on to a lunch that included the best smoked salmon I have ever tasted, supplied by a local fisherman and described by my friend as making "the orange tarpaulins they sell in the supermarkets laughable", and local Torridge mussels, cooked in Devon cider and clotted cream, which turned out to be a huge bowl of gleaming black mussels, the biggest and meatiest I have seen.

In food miles terms they hardly passed the one-mile mark, having come from mussel beds in the estuary nearby.

For something simpler there are freshly baked baguettes available from midday until 4pm.

Lunch is served from noon-3pm, and on a gloriously sunny day it is easy to find the hours slipping by absorbed by the view and birds in the nearby RSPB reserve.

The sense of history extends from the recipes to the location of the cafe itself.

It is sited in the former railway station on the quay, from where in the mid 19th century tonnes of clay and local pottery were exported, while lime and coal were imported.

Inside the walls bear detailed pictures of some of the former activities, complemented by a collection of period bicycles, including pennyfarthings and boneshakers.

Outside, tables with umbrellas offer uninterrupted views across Fremington Pill where it joins the River Torridge and beyond as the Taw and Torridge estuary reaches the sea.

Although the railway was taken out of service in 1969, the disused track forms part of the Tarka Trail, making this simple but honest cafe and tea room easily accessible to visitors who have worked up an appetite.

Recession, what recession? is the feeling here.

The packed tables and steady stream of customers are testament to the fact that when an eating place gets it right, it will continue to thrive.

Quay Cafe: 01271 378783.