Neil's Restaurant — Restaurant in East Devon

Arrived at Neil's on a cold, wet Saturday night, our first visit to the restaurant & to Sidmouth. The restaurant was busy & continued to fill up during the 2 hours we were there. The decor is calm & comfortable. We were warmly greeted & seated , our wet coats taken away & we were given menus. A bottle of tap water was already waiting in an ice bucket at the table. So a very good start. The menu is a set 3 courses for £39.95 & as you'd expect from a fish restaurant, reflects local produce. We were asked what we'd like to drink & chose a well priced bottle of South African chenin blanc. This arrived swiftly & after tasting, proved to be ideal with our meal.

I could have chosen any of the starters to enjoy, but went with tempura crevettes with soy & sesame dip. My husband had smoked mackerel with horseradish cream. A plate of sliced bread arrived, which was plain home baked white & tomato flavoured. I would have preferred not to have butter pats wrapped in foil, but I'm picky! The starters were delicious & enjoyed by us both.

0ur mains consisted of scallops with mushrooms & bacon for my husband & pan roasted John Dory with mussels & samphire for me. A dish of sugar snap peas, carrots, broccoli & green beans & another of fried potatoes were brought to the table, to accompany our main courses. The mains were beautifully cooked & presented, especially my John Dory, which came away from the bone, with ease & tasted beautifully succulent. My husband's scallops were sweet & flavoursome too.

Having cleared away our plates, & looked again at the menu, we chose our desserts, vanilla panacotta with rhubarb d ginger compote for me & rum & raisin icecream for him. My panacotta was beautifully set & the compote had a strong kick of ginger. Good strong double espresso coffee followed.

Overall a fabulous meal, which without service was £107 for the two of us. Not expensive for the quality & service we received. We would definitely recommend Neil's, he is obviously a chef with skill who loves...

We booked a table at this restaurant due to the good reviews. Unfortunately we never got to try the food as the restaurant itself was terrible.

We were greeted by friendly staff who were unfortunately wearing face masks which is something I personally find very off-putting and unhygienic in a food setting due to staff repeatedly touching their faces to adjust their masks.

The restaurant itself is very small with guests crammed in with little space between the tables. The atmosphere was very hot and airless despite having the small windows open, there was no air conditioning at all.

The whole place seemed incredibly dated, from the decor to the terrible music that was playing. It felt more like an old people's home than a restaurant, looking around the youngest guests appeared to be in their mid 70's.

Part of the restaurant experience for me is sitting in a nice environment and enjoying the lovely food, unfortunately the environment was so stifling and unpleasant that the thought of having to endure it for a couple of hours whilst eating food was untenable and my wife actually started to feel ill.

Despite paying a £20 deposit we had to leave and never got to...

We spent a few days in Sidmouth catching up with friends . We pre booked Neil’s for the second night . We thought £37:50 was about right for 3 courses in a fish restaurant . Well money well spent . The meal was delicious ,my starter monkfish with garlic mayonnaise was to die for . We all agreed great meal . I’ve been telling all my friends who visit Sidmouth to go there. The lady who said she’d had better meals for the price should let us know where she’s going ,cause I find that difficult to believe...