Restaurant at The Castle Hotel

Long regarded as one of the best eating houses in the country, the restaurant in this spectacular building offers consistently fine cooking in majestic surroundings, drawing heavily on the fine local produce and providing an epicentre for good food, with Head Chef Richard Guest leading the way. Once a Norman fortress, the Castle is now better known for its role as one of the West Country's leading family-run hotels.

Incidentally, some years back, it became renowned for becoming the launch pad for Gary Rhodes, amongst other top chefs. It has been run by the Chapman family for sixty years, during which time the Castle has won a host of awards for the excellence of its kitchens and Kit Chapman's extensive wine cellar.

Richard Guest was appointed with a mission not merely to uphold, but enhance the jealously guarded reputation of The Castle restaurant. His style of cooking has created such dishes as scrambled duck egg and smoked eel and a courgette and mascarpone terrine with candied beetroots.

British cooking, good as it is stand-alone, tends to emerge from the kitchens with refashioned and exciting additions. The locally culled seafood is quite spectacular, in particular the pan fried fillet of sea bass with winter vegetable boulangère and creamed fennel. Saddle of rabbit is served with a wild garlic risotto and there's also rump steak with creamed mushroom and peppercorn sauce.

Bringing a fine meal to a remarkable end is the treacle tart with pine nut ice cream and caramelised popcorn and the artisan cheeses are a speciality of the house and they nicely complement the style of cooking. The kitchen also covers an efficient room service menu.

For an award winning restaurant, the Castle offers decent value for money, especially with its Great British Classics Lunch Menus right through the week and lulled by the quality of the cooking and service, you should feel it's all worth every penny. Slow roast shoulder of pork, calves' liver with bacon and onions, fish and chips and Cornish fish stew are some of the daily changing dishes that could be expected to make their appearance.

Their comprehensive Website should supply all the additional information that you might want to know, including details about their bedrooms and private dining facilities.