Best Restaurants in Torbay: Fine Dining, Local Gems & Where to Eat

There is a particular smell that arrives in Torquay around six in the evening in summer – warm tarmac cooling, salt air drifting up from the marina, and somewhere nearby, almost certainly, the ghost of frying fish. It is not an unpleasant combination. The harbour lights are beginning to flicker on, the palm trees along the seafront are doing their implausible best to convince you this is the Côte d’Azur, and the evening stretches ahead with the kind of lazy promise that only a seaside town can deliver. Torbay is not a place that rushes dinner. It earns it.

The English Riviera has long had a complicated relationship with its own culinary reputation – unfairly pigeonholed as the land of cream teas and overcooked fish and chips while quietly developing a dining scene of genuine ambition and quality. The truth is that Torbay, encompassing Torquay, Paignton and Brixham, now offers a spread of restaurants that would make a visiting Londoner’s eyebrow rise – not in scepticism, but in pleasant surprise. From serious fine dining with sourcing credentials to no-nonsense fish suppers eaten on harbour walls, this is a bay that feeds you well. The trick, as always, is knowing where to go.

This is your complete guide to the best restaurants in Torbay, covering fine dining, local favourites, hidden gems, food markets and everything worth putting in your mouth along the way.

The Fine Dining Scene in Torbay

Torbay does not currently hold a Michelin star, which will surprise people who haven’t eaten here and won’t surprise people who have followed the region’s steady culinary rise. The bay is producing food of a calibre that merits serious attention, even if the red guide has not yet formally acknowledged the postcode. What you find instead is a cluster of ambitious, skilled kitchens that take their produce seriously, their technique seriously, and – mercifully – themselves not quite so seriously.

The Elephant Restaurant in Torquay has long been the standard-bearer for fine dining in the bay. Chef Simon Hulstone, who has represented Great Britain in the Bocuse d’Or, has built something genuinely special here – a restaurant that uses exceptional Devon produce and frames it with French classical technique without ever becoming fusty or formal. The tasting menu changes with the seasons, and the sourcing is meticulous: much of the produce is grown on Hulstone’s own farm. This is the kind of place where you sit down intending to have a light supper and emerge two and a half hours later, substantially happier and very glad you booked the wine flight. The Elephant also operates a brasserie downstairs for those who want the quality without the ceremony – which, depending on the evening, might be exactly the right call.

Beyond The Elephant, Torbay’s fine dining scene is characterised by chef-led restaurants with strong local identity. Expect menus built around South Devon crab, aged Devon beef, sea bream from Brixham market and vegetables pulled from the red Devon soil. The cooking philosophy across the best establishments here is not London-imported – it grew from the ground up, which is why it tastes so right.

Local Gems: Bistros, Neighbourhood Favourites & Hidden Corners

Every great food destination has its unofficial second tier – the places that don’t make the glossy features but where the locals actually eat on a Thursday evening. Torbay has this in abundance, and it rewards the traveller who wanders away from the obvious harbourside tables.

Brixham, the working fishing port at the southern end of the bay, is where the ingredients begin, and it is also where some of the most honest, least performative cooking happens. Small bistros and independent restaurants clustered around the harbour serve fish that was landed that morning with a directness that is almost confrontational. You will not find elaborate garnishes threatening to upstage the main event. You will find plaice that tastes of the sea, properly dressed crab, and grilled lobster prepared with the confidence of people who have access to the best shellfish in the country and know it.

In Torquay itself, the side streets and quieter neighbourhoods yield Italian-influenced trattorias, neighbourhood restaurants serving rotisserie meats and local cheeses, and wine bars that double as decent kitchens. The trick is to look for the places with handwritten specials boards and no QR code menus – there are fewer of them every year, which makes finding one feel mildly triumphant. Paignton, often overlooked in favour of its more glamorous neighbours, has its own crop of independent eateries worth investigating, particularly for anyone after a straightforward, good-value dinner without the marina premium attached.

Casual Dining, Beach Clubs & Waterfront Eating

One of Torbay’s genuine pleasures is that eating well does not require a reservation, a jacket or a strong opinion about tasting menus. The bay’s beaches and seafront terraces offer a range of casual dining that ranges from excellent to perfectly acceptable, which is a wider range than you might expect.

The Harbour Light area of Torquay marina has evolved significantly in recent years, with waterfront restaurants and bar-restaurants offering decent food alongside views that do most of the work. On a warm evening, eating tapas-style plates at a table looking out at boats is one of life’s simpler pleasures – and Torbay delivers this without requiring you to be in Spain. Several of the marina-adjacent venues offer fresh fish boards, local charcuterie and well-chosen wines by the glass, pitched somewhere comfortably between a beach club and a proper restaurant.

For actual beach dining, Oddicombe Beach and Babbacombe are worth the trip – the cliff railway descent alone earns your appetite. The cafes and beach-adjacent spots here are not attempting gastronomic heights, but fresh crab sandwiches eaten on a terrace above a turquoise cove do not need to be gastronomic heights. They need to be fresh crab sandwiches in exactly the right location. This they manage.

Brixham Harbour itself is probably the finest casual dining location in the bay – wander with something good from one of the fishmongers or grab a table at one of the quayside places and watch the trawlers come in. It is deeply, unapologetically pleasant.

Brixham Market & Food Shopping: The Source of It All

Any serious discussion of eating in Torbay begins at Brixham Fish Market, one of the most important fish auction sites in the UK. The market itself operates in the early hours – not ideal for the villa breakfast crowd – but the ripple effects are felt all day across the bay’s best restaurants. What gets landed here in the morning appears on menus by lunchtime, which is a supply chain even the most demanding London restaurateur would envy.

For visitors who want to engage with the food culture beyond restaurants, the bay has a reasonable selection of farmers’ markets and local producers. Torquay and Paignton host regular markets where South Devon dairy, local honey, artisan breads and Devon charcuterie appear alongside the kind of hand-labelled jam jars that either delight or terrify you depending on your persuasion. The quality is genuinely high. Devon’s agricultural produce – the cream, the beef, the soft fruits – is some of the finest in England, and the best markets here let you take it home rather than simply eat it in someone else’s kitchen.

Several local delis and specialist food shops in Torquay are worth an afternoon visit, particularly for building a serious picnic or stocking the villa kitchen. Look for establishments that champion Devon-specific producers rather than the generic artisan aesthetic that has colonised every market in Britain. The difference is usually apparent within ten seconds of walking through the door.

What to Order: Dishes & Ingredients You Cannot Leave Without Trying

If there is one non-negotiable in Torbay, it is the crab. South Devon brown crab is exceptional – sweet, dense and deeply savoury in a way that pre-dressed supermarket crab does not prepare you for. Order it dressed and simple at a harbour restaurant, or look for it appearing in pasta, on toast or in bisque at the bay’s better kitchens. It will be the best version of whatever dish it appears in.

Brixham scallops are another serious pleasure – hand-dived where possible, served with the kind of simplicity that respects the ingredient. Pan-fried with a little brown butter and nothing else is not laziness; it is confidence. Lobster, when in season, is worth the price – particularly at Brixham, where the supply is direct and the premium is at least honest.

On the meat side, South Devon beef is a protected designation of origin product and for good reason – the cattle here produce beautifully marbled, deeply flavoured beef that appears on the better menus as aged sirloins or slow-braised cuts. Devon lamb, similarly, benefits from the particular quality of the grazing land.

Cream tea is, of course, obligatory. The Devon vs Cornwall debate about which order to apply cream and jam is less a culinary question than an identity one. In Devon, you put cream first. You are in Devon. Act accordingly.

Wine, Local Drinks & What to Sip

The English wine revolution has arrived in Devon with more conviction than you might expect. Several local vineyards – including Sharpham Estate on the River Dart, close enough to the bay to appear on local wine lists with some regularity – produce genuinely accomplished wines: English sparkling that challenges champagne in blind tastings, Pinot Noir of real delicacy, and crisp whites that make a compelling argument for what this climate can achieve when it tries.

The better restaurants in Torbay are stocking local Devon wines with increasing seriousness, and ordering a glass of Sharpham or one of its regional neighbours alongside local seafood is one of those combinations that makes you wonder why you ever defaulted to Chablis. Not that there is anything wrong with Chablis. But when context and provenance align this neatly, it would be a shame to ignore it.

On the spirits front, Devon has a lively craft distillery scene producing gins, vodkas and, increasingly, whiskies with genuine character. Salcombe Gin, made just along the coast, has achieved well-deserved recognition and appears in most of the better bars in the bay. Local ales and craft beers are available throughout – Devon’s brewing scene is robust and worth exploring. For the full seaside experience, a locally-made gin and tonic on a terrace as the sun drops towards the water is not something you will be arguing against.

Reservation Tips & Practical Advice for Eating in Torbay

A few notes that will make your eating in Torbay considerably smoother. The Elephant Restaurant books up weeks in advance in peak summer – if a fine dining evening is on the itinerary, reserve before you arrive. Not in the car. Not on the day. Before you arrive.

The bay’s casual and mid-range restaurants are generally more flexible, but popular harbour tables in Brixham and the Torquay marina area fill up on warm evenings with more speed than you’d expect. A same-day booking by mid-morning is usually sufficient outside of July and August, when the bay’s population effectively doubles and the whole calculation changes.

Dress codes at even the best restaurants here are relaxed in the proper Devon sense – smart casual covers everything, and nobody will look twice at a well-dressed person who clearly arrived by boat. The dining culture is warmer and less formal than its London equivalents, which is either a relief or a disappointment depending on your relationship with starch. Tipping at 10-12.5% is customary and appreciated at sit-down restaurants; most now add a service charge which you can, of course, remove if the experience warrants it.

For the fullest experience of eating in this bay – both its produce and its rhythm – consider booking a luxury villa in Torbay with a private chef option. Having access to Brixham’s landed catch, Devon’s best farm produce, and a skilled chef who can bring it all to your kitchen is not a compromise between restaurant quality and domestic comfort. It is, on many evenings, the superior arrangement. The chef sources, prepares and serves; you eat on your own terrace with the bay spread out below you and nobody at all on the neighbouring table.

For everything else you need to know about visiting the English Riviera – beaches, boat trips, villas and the general art of spending time here well – the full Torbay Travel Guide covers the bay in thorough and affectionate detail.