4 Best Restaurants in The West Country, England

Just steps away from where the boats unload their daily catches, Rick Stein's modern and airy flagship restaurant has built its reputation on the freshest fish and the highest culinary artistry in town. The menu includes everything from grilled Padstow lobster with herbs and stir-fried Singapore chili crab to meat and vegetarian dishes. Choose between sitting either formally at a table or on a stool at the Seafood Bar. Guests at one of Stein's hotels can also book a table on the panoramic rooftop terrace—and a stay in one of the sunny, individually designed guest rooms overlooking the harbor is an enticing option if you don't feel like moving very far after your meal.

Seafood is the main event in the two small, pink-toned rooms of this restaurant off Market Jew Street. The menu showcases whatever the boats bring, though crab Florentine, grilled on a bed of spinach with a cheese sauce, is usually available. Meat dishes might include noisettes of Cornish lamb with fennel puree and rosemary sauce in spring and summer or breast of guinea fowl or venison loin in winter. The restaurant is small—just six tables—and the semiformal style is intimate, elegant, and traditional.

Unbeatable for its location alone—on the broad, golden sands of Porthminster Beach—this sleek, modern eatery prepares imaginative lunches and evening meals that you can savor while you take in the marvelous vista across the bay. The accent is on Mediterranean and Asian seafood dishes, and typical choices include sea bass fillet with local asparagus and a sauce vierge, Indonesian monkfish curry, and roasted duck breast with baked beetroot, burnt orange, and gin sauce. There's a gin bar and outdoor kitchen too—a tempting stop on a sunny day for breakfast, a snack, or just a drink—and two sister restaurants (Porthminster Kitchen on the harborside and Porthgwidden Beach Restaurant, in the Downalong neighborhood) have smaller and cheaper menus that are equally strong on seafood.

In a prime riverside location, this seafood restaurant epitomizes the region's ongoing food revolution. The knowledgeable staff guides diners through the Italian-inspired menu, which primarily depends on the day's catch: look for scallops with garlic and white port, spaghetti con aragosta (with local lobster and datterini tomatoes), or Dover sole or gurnard grilled over charcoal. Leave room for the formidable desserts, too, such as panna cotta with prunes and Armagnac. Set-price menus are sometimes available, and Joe's Bar, attached to the restaurant, offers a good range of wines, locally distilled gin, and cocktails. The owner, celebrity-chef Mitch Tonks, also runs a much more basic fish-and-chips restaurant a few doors along called RockFish, open daily.