Brookside Café & Restaurant — Restaurant in Teignbridge

We had a wonderful lunch at this delightful place in the heart of Bovey Tracey. As soon as we arrived we were greeted by a kind & very professional gentleman. Sadly we were unable to see his face completely due to him wearing a face mask but it was clear he was smiling 😃 (can't wait for this pandemic to be a memory long forgotten) When we ordered our meals we sat comfortably basking in the lunchtime sun & simply enjoying the pleasant surroundings. We could have only been waiting 10 minutes & our delicious food arrived & boy did it look a picture fit for a King! The grown ups both had avocado & sunblushed tomato salad with chips & wholemeal seeded bread. The not quite but thinks he is a grown up was extremely satisfied with his vegetarian sausage, chips & garden peas! He even received 3 packets of tomato ketchup (which he swiftly proceeded to hide under his sunhat so he could perform like Ed sheeran later apparently)🤔 Anyway the service was excellent 👌 the food was delicious, fresh & so beautifully served that it felt wrong to disturb the masterpiece! We all had a pleasant time & the kiddo had to use the bathroom before leaving which I'm always cautious of but when you gotta go... you gotta go! Needless to say, as expected it was clean, well maintained, easy to navigate & no issues 👏 Job done, we paid (not too expensive but you really do pay for what you get... right) & left with full tummies. The bank of happiness had made a large deposit too so we all decided we would definitely be returning to this little gem hidden on the outskirts of Dartmoor National Park This is a must so...

We found this cafe towards the end of our holiday for breakfast. First visit was 10/10 for food and service and we left our lovely waitress a decent tip because she paid extra attention to allergies. They also had an excellent choices for GF options. However when we returned 2 days later it was the complete opposite. It was a different waitress who was rude & didn’t smile at all. It angers me why people like this are in the service industry if they can’t be polite & smile. When the food came out it looked completely different compared to previous. I said straight away it looks awful so it must be a different chef today. The waitress didn’t come over at all to ask if the food was ok or if we needed more drinks. Both breakfasts were inedible. When she came to take the plates away was when we complained. The eggs were inedible & so was majority of what was on the plates. The manager took one of the breakfasts off the bill & we appreciated the gesture. She also confirmed my suspicions that it was a different chef. What a shame because we commented on how the breakfast was the best we had the first time we visited. Second time around everything from food, service & atmosphere deserved zero. However as the first visit was so good I’ve not scored zero for anything. There should be consistency with food & service regardless of which chef is cooking the food. Not sure if we will visit...

I think it may have been a bad chef day. First the good points: excellent location, ambiance and front of house staff and the Pinot Grigio was passable. Now to the food: the new potatoes and soup were good, the salad was disappointing, the whitebait and fishcakes were disgusting. Whitebait should be lightly dusted with flour and deep fried to a crispy perfection, these were encrusted in a thick disgusting batter and soggy inside. Presumably bought deep frozen and cooked carelessly. The crab cakes should be crispy on the outside and succulent inside, these were squashy on the outside and barely tasted of crab. Our companions had roast beef and it was grey! They were not asked how they wanted it cooked (so presumably it was pre-cooked and re-heated). You may call yourself a restaurant but I suggest you go back to being a café and get that...