‘This gastropub brings out the big guns’

The Farmers Arms, Devon

You may have spotted the arms race going on across the country in gastropubs. It’s a battle of the Sunday roast, where the chef clears the menu, takes a cart and horses through the weekday offering, whips off the tablecloth of convention and focuses all eyes on the meat, the trimmings, the puds and a spirit of generosity. It’s an admission of defeat really. Because while they’ve tried to tempt in everyone – friends, families, coats, pushchairs, infants (wriggling somewhere beneath a mountain of hat, raincoat, scarf and mittens) and dogs – with salt and pepper squid with a chillidusted aioli, sea urchin tagliolini, and sea bass with a mussel sauce and seaweed crisp, the fact is they’re all piling into the local carvery.

So here comes the fightback. The Sunday roast, bigger, better, more ambitious, the epitome of tradition with the fattest Yorkshires you’ve ever seen – and just perfect for this time of year.

Off I trotted to get a piece of the action at The Farmers Arms, in the village of Woolfardisworthy, aka Woolsery, on the North Devon coast. The owners of the pub are Michael and Xochi Birch, who made a fortune with start-ups including Birthdayalarm.com (I know, why couldn’t we have thought of that?) and are busy creating what they call The Collective at Woolsery. They’ve bought and poshed up the pub, fish and chip shop, farm, manor house and village shop and post office. (You should see the shop, it’s like a backlit, moody M&S food hall on steroids. I was far too scared to go in.) This monopolising is a thing round these parts: a few miles away you’ll find Clovelly, the world’s spookiest privately owned harbour village.

The Farmers Arms is a very polished establishment – every inch of wall and beam, floor and bar primed and buffed – featuring a host of remarkable taxidermy: stallion’s heads and great beasts of cattle. The dining rooms wrap around the building and there’s a bar with a separate entrance; trying to keep the locals onside, but I think it needs roughing up a bit to make it more conducive to casual pints. It’s currently leaning more towards prosecco and sauvignon blanc, and is noticeably quieter than the restaurant.

Our party took a generous corner booth in the latter. It was dead cosy, covered in huggable fur, a feeling encouraged by the hell-for-leather Sunday roast menu (the weekday menu of cauliflower parfaits, brassica salads and buttered bream was of course off-limits).

And gloriously for the gathered fusspots, young and old, there was no choice. Dishes arrived speedily in the form of dips, soup, bread and vast pork scratchings. The soup was gorgeous (as were all the chic, rustic vessels to decant from and pour into), white onion and cider, rich, smooth and elegant – and there was a chicken-liver parfait so light that if you didn’t eat it quickly it might levitate.

Then came the big guns: the vastest pile, of veg – carrots, potatoes and greenery – massive Yorkshire puds and somewhere underneath, sadly a little indeterminate, beef brisket and pork. The Yorkshires held their shape admirably under assault from the gravy; rich cauliflower cheese on the side was perfectly seasoned, improving in flavour as it cooled, while large chunks of tart beetroot were the perfect foil to all that succulence. What the meat lacked in finesse was more than made up for by the dive-in fabulous sharing fun.

The puds were as perfect as the starters: wonderful pear crumble in which the fruit held its form (far from some mushy misery), and warming, wellbalanced sticky toffee ginger pudding.

If this was a space race, The Farmers Arms would have its man on the moon.

LOCATION

Woolsery Near Bideford North Devon EX39 5QS 01237-439328 woolsery.com

LUNCH

£30 for a threecourse Sunday lunch, excluding drinks and service

T H E M E N U

STARTER

Soup and collection of snacks

MAIN COURSE

Exmoor brisket of beef

• Birch Farm pork

• Served with roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables, cauliflower cheese, Yorkshire puddings and gravy

DESSERT

Puddings to share

What the meat lacked in finesse was more than made up for by the dive-in fabulous sharing fun