Bridge Inn

"Not so much a pub, more a museum with beer," is how its owners describe the Bridge. It has been in landlady Caroline Cheffers-Heard's family since 1897, and, in many ways, little has changed over time. Beer is still gravity-dispensed from the barrel (from £2.80), mobile phones are discouraged ("The Bridge is a place of conversation between people and not machines", reads a sign) and its rooms are decorated with the sort of antique bric-a-brac - grandfather clocks, mounted butterflies, rifles, tattered union flag bunting – that might have once cluttered up a Victorian gentlemen's club. Food is served lunch-only, midday-2pm, and the menu is as simple as it is sound. There are three ploughman's lunches, including one that uses smoked chicken from the renowned Mike's Smokehouse in nearby Loddiswell; pasties and pork pies from local favourites Chunk; and sandwiches. A sample sandwich of the pub's own home-cooked ham with elderflower and gooseberry chutney and salad sounds a little toppy, at £4.70, but every element of it was very good. The thick layer of moist baked ham came apart in substantial piggy strands, the chutney was nicely tart, if perhaps a shade too sweet, the salad was fresh, and the granary bread first-rate. On a sunny day, you can enjoy fine views of the river Clyst and the surrounding countryside, sat in the car park, but beer enthusiasts may prefer to linger inside and earwig on the enthusiastic, informed commentary between bar staff and drinkers on that day's beers (beer menu updated regularly on the pub's Facebook page). Naturally, the focus is on Devon and West Country breweries, such as Jollyboat and Branscombe Vale, although I enjoyed a beautifully dry pint of North Cotswold's pale Shag Weaver (£3).
• Snacks and meals, £3.20-£7, Bridge Hill, Topsham, 01392 873862, cheffers.co.uk/bridge.html

The Exploding Bakery

Primarily, the Exploding Bakery works wholesale, supplying local restaurants and delicatessens. Savvy punters, however, can also drop in at its central Exeter unit and sample its stellar baking, at bargain prices. Each day, the bakery has a small selection of items available to go: a fresh soup with sourdough bread, lush-topped foccacia slices, perhaps a quivering cheddar and rosemary quiche, and several gorgeous cakes. All this is accompanied by great coffee, using beans from premium London roaster Monmouth. A sample slice of pistachio-topped lemon polenta cake oozed class. It was moist, superbly fresh, light, not overly sweet nor confrontationally lemony, the grains falling apart easily. There are a few seats outside, which the bakery has made the best of, decorating the space with pot plants and herbs, but you're still eating on a busy main road outside Exeter's main train station. If you want a little peace and quiet in which to savour your haul, wander around the corner into Northernhay Gardens.
• Takeaway items £1.50-£2.50. 1B Central Station Buildings, Queen St, 01392 427900, explodingbakery.com

Real Food Store

A novel community project, Real Food is owned by 300 local shareholders. Collectively, they wanted to create a showcase for Devonian produce in Exeter city centre. The shop fulfils that brief, and how. Its shelves are stacked with everything from clotted cream fudge and Ashridge organic cider to handmade pork pies by Chunk of Devon and locally smoked duck. Upstairs, a colourful, airy utilitarian cafe continues the theme across simple breakfast dishes, gourmet sandwiches and specials, such as smoked trout and salmon fishcakes with salad and sweet chilli dipping sauce (£6.45). The star of the Real Food show is on-site artisan bakery Emma's Bread, whose creations are available to eat in or take away. Its lightly cheesy spelt scones are nice, but Emma Parkin's savoury flapjacks are unmissable. A moreish mix of mushrooms, for umami depth, carrots, onions, cheese, oats and sesame seeds, they are grand and, for £1.95 (takeaway), you get a substantial slice.
• Takeaway snacks and sandwiches £1-£3.75, eat in £1.25-£6.45, 11-13 Paris Street, 01392 681234, realfoodexeter.co.uk

Boston Tea Party

Born in Bristol, this is a multiple with soul. Not for Boston Tea Party the bland, functional roll-out. It claims its nine West Country venues (with a new site due to open in Ringwood in November) are individual spaces, where the proper cooking of real ingredients is emphasised. The Exeter branch bears this out. There are banks of handsome homemade cakes, freshly squeezed juices and lemonades, and packaged sandwiches prepared each morning on local artisan breads. Boston also prides itself on its coffee (it uses a blend from Bristol roasters Extract) and a sample flat white is, for once, exemplary. Properly stretched and textured – rather than simply frothed – warm milk is mixed with a short double ristretto to create a genuinely velvety smooth, full-flavoured drink. A plate of eggs Florentine (£5.95) is also sound. The hollandaise could have been a touch lighter and sharper, but it is, otherwise, a thoroughly decent breakfast. Regulars rate Boston's cheeseburger (£6.95), and its new lamb kofta wrap (£6.25), with apricot and toasted seed couscous, sounds appetising.
• Breakfast £1.75-£6.75, sandwiches and meals £3.85-£6.75, 84 Queen Street, 01392 201181, bostonteaparty.co.uk

Petit Mange

Magdalen Road is Exeter's foodie enclave. Along one short stretch of tarmac, you will find a fishmonger (remember them?), wine shop, the butchery outlet for award-winning Devon farm Piper's, the old school Village Bakery, as well as Bon Goût (45 Magdalen Road, 01392 435521, bongoutdeli.co.uk) and Belgreen (25 Magdalen Road, 01392 271190, belgreen.co.uk), a couple of interesting budget eating options. The former deals in sandwiches, loaded pizza slices, cakes, homemade pies, pasties and novel chorizo or Devon scrumpy scotch eggs. Meanwhile, the brand new Belgreen textile shop and cafe – which I didn't get a chance to test – delivers such slick-sounding mains as Exmouth mussel and crab linguine or confit duck, Toulouse sausage and flageolet beans, at around £9 a plate.

Petit Mange – a pleasant split-level bistro, decorated with splashy action paintings – is another good reason to visit Magdalen Road. Chef Adam Page's keenly priced daytime menu includes snacky dishes, say a daily soup or devilled whitebait and aïoli, as well as more substantive dishes, such as a tempting ham hock and pea pie, new potatoes, green beans and red cabbage (£7). Annoyingly, on this visit, the latter was one of four courses from the short menu that was off, so it was left to Petit Mange's 5oz burger (£8) to save the day. Pink, liberally scattered with herbs, properly seasoned, it was long on juicy, beefy flavour and it came with a zippy tomato and courgette chutney. Chunky chips in a Jenga-style stack are, of course, wrong, but these (skin-on, and accurately cooked) were as good as misguided chips get.
• Dishes £4.50-£8, 29 Magdalen Road, 01392 435883

Oliva Kitchen Deli

This delicatessen and sandwich shop is a spin-off from the Mediterranean restaurant next door. Many of its products, such as its seriously good looking tortilla (£1.50 a slice) or its sensational, grown-up white chocolate and whole nut brownies (£1.60), are made in chef Tim Golder's kitchen, with others sourced from a key network of Devon producers. The homity pies, made locally, are filling comfort food of the first order, particularly the ham version (£2.85). It's a liberally seasoned pillow of real muscular ham, soft potato, leeks and herbs, bound in a rich cheese sauce. Take your lunch down to Topsham Quay, which – the view stretching out for miles from the muddy banks of the Exe estuary – is a lovely spot in the late afternoon sun.
• Snack items, £1-£2.50, sandwiches £3.75-£4.25, 5 Fore Street, Topsham, 01392 877878, olivarestaurant.co.uk

Georgian Tea Room

As a nation, we are in the midst of a tea room boom. Trendy cafes focused on baking, brewing and the ritual of afternoon tea proliferate. Topsham's Georgian Tea Room, however, is an original. There are no cup cakes or whoopie pies on the menu, no designer wallpapers in the hall, no eye-watering prices. Instead, Heather Knee's unselfconsciously retro tea room has been doing all the right things (baking 'n' making everything from scratch, using local and kitchen garden ingredients) since long before it was fashionable, and will, no doubt, be doing so for many more years to come. The menu includes a full array of honest, home-cooked meals and sandwiches, from the likes of a cheddar and courgette soup to pork loin with sage and onion stuffing, roasties and seasonal veg, but most people are here for Knee's scones with homemade jam and clotted cream. Said scones arrive still warm from the oven, air-light and moist, the jam farmhouse-style, the clotted cream something you carve rather than spoon. Taken together, it makes for an ambrosially good mouthful, a wholesome hit of sweet, creamy biscuity goodness. One warning: if you sit in the garden, be prepared to do battle with the wasps. They love Knee's jam.
•Tea and scones, from £3.95, full meals £4.60-£8, Broadway House, 35 High Street, Topsham, 01392 873465, broadwayhouse.com

Avocet Café

There are other good cafes in Topsham. Route 2, for instance, is a great little spot (meals £4.25-£8.50, 1 Monmouth Hill, Topsham, 01392 875085, route2topsham.co.uk). It's open later than Avocet and there's a bit more of a lively buzz about it – it's particularly useful if you're a cyclist (it doubles as a cycle hire/ repair shop). Its populist menu includes an all-day full breakfast that uses sausages from Topsham butcher Arthur's, and a creditable homemade beef and sage burger. If you are starving and need to fill up, it is probably the better option.

In terms of pure food quality, however, Avocet shades it. Its bacon sandwich uses rare breed Gloucester Old Spot rashers (£5). The soup of the day could be sweet potato and leek with dukkah spices. Clearly, this is an exacting operation. There is a quiet ambition to the kitchen's cooking. A plate of Devon rarebit, laced with a slight cidery tang, is well-executed, the topping a correct mustard 'n' milk paste, using a proper, punchy mature cheddar. Avocet's cakes look fantastic, too, and its West Country cheese plates (£5/£6.90) are a good way of eating your way around the region. One thing that needs work, though, is Avocet's coffee. A sample flat white was too hot, too frothy and lacked creamy body.
• Breakfast £1.75-£6.90, snacks and light meals £1.50-£4.20, lunch meals £5-£8.50, 86 Fore Street, Topsham, 01392 877887, avocetcafe.co.uk

The Fish Shed

Is the Fish Shed Britain's best chippy? Quite possibly. It is certainly worth a detour from wherever you are in Devon. Much less the 15-minute walk from the centre of Topsham. Originally inspired by the combined chip shop/fishmonger operations which he had seen in Australia, owner Dave Kerley has taken this traditional British institution, stripped out all the rubbish (burgers, kebabs, vegetable oil, bulk-frying), worked back to the basics and built a chippy fit for the 21st century. A one-time scallop diver, Kerley only sources fish from local day-boats. This means that he knows who caught what and where, and that his customers get to eat their fish within 36 hours of it being plucked from the sea. Likewise, the Shed's well-seasoned beer batter is prepared daily and it fries in high-temperature beef dripping, although you can also have your fish grilled. The menu usually includes a wide choice of, for instance, monkfish, brill, eel, John Dory, scallops, even lobster and river Exe mussels. Thus, a series of small decisions and conscientiously completed chores leads inexorably to the perfect serving of fish 'n' chips. The golden brown chips have a crunchy, glassy exterior, yet are fluffy within. The pearly haddock is steamed (not fried, you'll note) within a delicate batter casing, its flavour not overwhelmed, as it sometimes is in Yorkshire, by beefy savour. Mushy peas and tartare sauce sparkle. Rarely is such simple food rendered with such precision.
• Fish 'n' chips, £5.50-£10, Darts Farm, Clyst St George, Topsham, 01392 878206, dartsfarm.co.uk

The Plant Cafe-Deli

The Plant has the edge on many of its right-on veggie competitors in two obvious ways. First, you'll find it on Cathedral Green, which, on a sunny day, is Exeter's prettiest alfresco lunch spot. Second, its food shimmers with flavour. You can have all the ethical local ingredients in the world, but if your food tastes like an obligation, the project is doomed. With its "lovingly handmade" food, Plant seduces your tastebuds, rather than appealing to your conscience. Breakfast runs from simple croissants to Persian baked eggs, the deli-counter thereafter serving up a variety of interesting, bright-eyed salads (for instance, chickpea, marinated artichokes, dill and lemon); thick, glossy frittata; individual vegetable tarts; and comely cakes. The risotto layer (Fri/Sat only, £3.95 or £3.30 takeaway) is fantastic: dense, fragrant, a veritable vegetable bingo, topped with grilled goat's cheese and olives. Plant has a second night site at the Bike Shed Theatre (162-3 Fore Street, 01392 434169, bikeshedtheatre.co.uk).
• Snacks £1-£3, meals £3.40-£7.95. 1 Cathedral Yard, 01392 428144

Tony travelled with Cross Country trains (crosscountrytrains.co.uk) – visit the website for fares from Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol to Exeter. St Olave's Hotel (Mary Arches Street, Exeter, 01392 217736, olaves.co.uk) is centrally located and has rooms from £85 a night. For more visitor information on Exeter, Topsham and wider Devon, visit Heart of Devon (heartofdevon.com)

This article was updated on 11 May 2012