Best Contemporary British Restaurants in Paignton

Delicious food. The pork belly was glorious. The waiter was kind, polite and always attentive to our requests. The reservation was easy and the restaurant was less than a half full, so we could get a table by the window. Ambience was quiet and warm. Cocktails were good as well. Tiramisu was too creamy for my taste but not too sweet. We would come back for another special occassion.

If you’ve read anything about Stage at all before this, nothing I can say will come as a surprise. Stage comes across as a total labour of love for the guys running the show. They’re doing what drives them and what they clearly thoroughly enjoy. In the kitchen and front of house. The Taco Boys are on a mission and I felt extremely lucky to be able to go along for the ride with them. There is a total enthusiasm about their food and drinks which is genuinely infectious. The result is a fine dining experience at a non-exorbitant cost: all the enjoyment of creatively imagined, painstakingly sourced and prepared food, introduced to the table with relaxed, fun, and informative style and panache. I have no idea where it would be possible to experience the same levels of culinary ingenuity and sheer enjoyment at such good value for money. So it’s not over the top to use the word unique to describe what just happened. That wasn’t simply an excellent meal, we were actually blown away by the entire show.

Service was great and relaxed atmosphere.Quality of food although good, 2 of the lunches were superb fish & chips. Focaccia lunch was just a huge sandwich on a small wooden board which meant food kept falling off onto the table. I personally found it too large for both the board and for my appetite and felt the money was wasted. I would have been more than happy to pay just over half the price for half of the meal. Other clients also were overhead saying they were struggling to eat it. The Caesar salad would have fed out whole table so again was too large and therefore a lot of wastage.

Beautiful venue with excellent food and service. The blue cheese soufflé was excellent as well as the duck rendang. Desserts were very clever and well presented. We must go back the next time we are in Exeter.

A delicious birthday meal for our daughter We all enjoyed our first visit