1. Aubrey Allen
Aubrey Allen is one of Britain's most respected butchers, supplying numerous high-end restaurants, including the three-Michelin-starred Waterside Inn at Bray. As you might expect, the shop's deli section is none too shabby, either. The salad bar shines and the pre-packed (that morning) sandwiches are thick doorsteps filled with quality ingredients. There are various other bits and pieces that you could pick up, particularly if you're planning a picnic (cheeses, quiches, cured meats, local Four Angels cakes), and a hot counter serves light takeaway meals throughout the day (lamb bhuna curry, £3.95). Or you could sample a little of Aubrey Allen's butchery work in the breakfast sausage bap (£2.50). Said bangers are meaty and delicately seasoned, as a good breakfast sausage should be, but they arenot mindblowing. Even the best links shrivel a bit when they're held on a hot counter.
• Sandwiches/snacks from £2.50, salad bar from £3.25. 108 Warwick Street, Leamington Spa, +44 (0)1926 311208; aubreyallen.co.uk
2. Kayal
If you've yet to explore the light, sensitively spiced delights of Keralan and wider south Indian cooking, Kayal - a newcomer to Leamington Spa, but well-established in Nottingham and Leicester - is a fine place to start. Its lunch deals, and specifically its thali of several sampler curries (£5.95), heavenly dosa, chutneys and rice, are particularly good value, although prices are keen throughout. For instance, in the evening, mutton stew with appam (a kind of 'lacy' thick pancake) is a very appetising £6.89.
• Lunch from £3.95, main with rice from around £6.50. 42 Regent Street, Leamington Spa, +44 (0)1926 314 800; kayalrestaurant.com
3. Bread & Co
All chunky blonde-wood fittings, artisan breads and Belvoir drinks, this busy cafe-takeaway is a useful address if you want to pick up a superior sandwich. Options range from salt beef and Milanese salami to "the ultimate salad sandwich". Like the breads, all the cakes and savouries are bought in from small dedicated producers such as local cake maker Sarah Edwards, who has won several Great Taste awards, and the Blueberry Hill Patisserie (although the latter's deceptively good-looking individual bacon and leek quiche tasted of little). The amiable, chatty staff also pour decent, if slightly one-dimensional, coffee.
• Sandwiches from £2.95. 94 Warwick Street, Leamington Spa, +44 (0)1926 831291; also 56 Regent Street, +44 (0)1926 313839
4. The Granville Arms
If you fancy heading out into the Warwickshire countryside there are several good, affordable gastropubs vying for your pound, namely the new Huff Cap at Great Alne (huffcapgreatalne.com); the Stag, Offchurch (thestagatoffchurch.com); and the Red Lion, Hunningham (redlionhunningham.co.uk). The Granville Arms, halfway between Leamington and Stratford, is a good en-route option. A village dining pub that has been given a smart (or heretical, depending on your point of view) contemporary makeover, it has won numerous regional awards for its sharp, energetic locally sourced food, and is listed in several national pub guides. It offers a core of familiar mains - a gourmet burger; a pie of the day; sausage and mash; quiche, salad and triple-cooked chips - which duck in at just under a tenner, and at lunch there are cheaper sandwiches and bar meals available. Expect to see regional brewers, such as Purity and Hook Norton, represented at the bar.
• Lunches from £6.95, à la carte mains from £9.50. Wellesbourne Road, Barford, near Leamington Spa, +44 (0)1926 624236; granvillebarford.co.uk
5. Bernadette's Restaurant
There is much buzz about relative newcomer Bernadette's and, judging by this fly-past, it's justified. It's a chic three-storey corner restaurant - all black seating and bare, white-tiled walls - that majors in fish dishes, most of which are priced way beyond the means of the budget traveller. However, by day, Bernadette's offers a cheaper menu of soups, salads, sandwiches and tapas bites, as well as oysters and a handful of smaller seafood dishes. A sample bowl (£6.50) of smoked haddock and lentil chowder is a highly competent bit of cooking (rarer than you might imagine). A deep, generous bowlful, it is seriously creamy without being at all heavy, stridently flavourful, properly seasoned and chocka with fish and lentils all accurately cooked.
• Mini appetisers from £2.50, snacks/meals from £4.50 (midday-6pm). 44 Guild Street, Stratford-Upon-Avon, +44 (0)1789 415 542; bernadettesrestaurant.co.uk
6. Church Street Townhouse
A 400-year-old Grade II-listed building recently given a very Sunday supplement makeover, Church Street Townhouse is now a 12-bed boutique hotel, bar and brasserie. Its standard menu busts this series' self-imposed £10-a-head budget, but the all-day bar menu is much more democratic. It includes small steel buckets of chips, mini sausages, Scotch quails' eggs and brown sauce, and breaded mushrooms with garlic mayo, as well as (after 5pm) mini pies from a bar-top warmer. Portions are larger than you might imagine. For £4, I got 11 reassuringly irregular fish fingers partnered with a pleasantly pointed tartare sauce. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it fills a hole with a flourish. The Townhouse's ale (half a pint £1.50) is less impressive. It tastes, at first, like Bass shandy and later like Tetley's, neither of which is a good thing.
• Bar snacks £2.50-£4. 16 Church Street, Stratford-Upon-Avon, +44 (0)1789 262222; churchstreettownhouse.com
7. Haviland's
"Stratford's favourite caterer" is at risk of damning itself with faint praise. Haviland's could hold its own in towns with much more sophisticated food scenes than Stratford's. Split between a charming, modern tearoom and a takeaway section, with a kitchen-bakery above, it is a hub of good things done properly. In the takeaway, you can pick up excellent cakes and quiche slices (their smoked salmon and spring onion quiche was £1.95, and the single best thing I ate on this trip), as well as tortilla, soups, sandwiches and salad boxes. There is a distinct whiff of quality about the whole operation, although Haviland's isn't above pandering to base instincts. Its chorizo and onion-loaded potato skins won't win any awards for refinement, but that's the kind of filthy, guttural food a man could get addicted to.
• Cakes from £1.20, sandwiches from £1.95 (takeaway). 4-5 Meer Street, Stratford-Upon-Avon, +44 (0)1789415477; havilandscatering.com
8. McKechnie's
It's as busy as Starbuck's but McKechnie's puts a firm emphasis on good food of sound local provenance. In short, it's the thinking person's coffee stop. At around a fiver (eat-in), the sandwiches may sound expensive, but these are huge beasts, as thick as encyclopaedias and filled with bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Warwickshire ingredients. The cupcakes (£1.75), meanwhile, from local outfit The Tea Cake Company, are feather-light, moist and grown-up, the thick frosting creamy and sweet, but not cloying. Curiously, given the fuss they make about it - there is even a sign on the wall explaining why the milk is heated to 140°F - McKechnie's coffee was a shrug in a cup. An underpowered latte tasted of little but warm milk.
• Soups/sandwiches from £3.50 (takeaway). 37 Rother Street, Stratford-Upon-Avon, +44 (0)1789 299575; mckechniescafe.talktalk.net
9. The One Elm
The One Elm is owned by Peach, a regional pub company which turns old boozers into modish gastropubs. You know the score: chunky tables, calculated casual interior design features, pleasant young staff, an overall air of breezy self-confidence. Like Peach's other venues, the Elm makes a big thing of its local sourcing and on-point contemporary food cred. Its steaks, for instance, come from Leamington Spa butcher Aubrey Allen (see above). From a selection of daytime sandwiches and bar meals (cash-strapped travellers could also share one of the appealing deli boards, £10.50), a plate of ham, egg and chips was creditable, a distinct cut above the high street norm. The large decked outdoor area, shaded by a canopy of branches, is a pleasant, secluded spot, safe from the tourist hordes. Sit there and nurse a pint of superlative real ale from Warwickshire brewery Purity.
• Breakfast from £2, sandwiches/bar meals, from £6. 1 Guild Street, Stratford-Upon-Avon, +44 (0)1789 404919; oneelmstratford.co.uk
10. Marco of Stratford
In the context of a "budget eats" guide, this family-run bistro and deli is hard to beat. Refreshingly unpretentious, or a bit dated and gloomy, depending on your point of view, it is certainly stuck in a timewarp as far as prices go. While the bistro (more of an old-school cafe) knocks out dishes such as homemade lasagne with salad and chips, and platters of Italian meats and cheeses, for just £5, the deli counter delivers cut-price sandwiches and slices of decent hand-raised pork pie (just 60p). The come all wrapped up in clingfilm as if your mum had just packed them for a school trip. Marco is owned by a butcher and it prides itself on its joints of meat, roasted daily. It may be served on ordinary sliced brown bread, but at £1.90 their roast beef and horseradish sandwich is great value for money. The beef is reasonably tasty and roasted to a perfectly rare pinkness. The staff are friendly, too.
• Sandwiches from £1.80 (takeaway), soup/meals from £3. 20 Church Street, Stratford-Upon-Avon, +44 (0)1789 292 889; marcositaliandeli.co.uk
• Stratford Upon Avon Food Festival runs 24-26 September. Tony travelled from Manchester to Leamington Spa with Cross Country trains, which has one-way tickets from £12.50.
