Tom Adams once said to me: "You drink rosé in Provence and it's going to taste delicious; it's not so great in Bethnal Green." Whatever your thoughts on Provençal rosé, you can see what one of London's most exciting young chefs was getting at. So even if you've already eaten his brand of farm-to-table grilled and smoked food at Pitt Cue, the boutique B&B Adams co-owns with chef April Bloomfield at a former dairy farm in Devon is something else entirely.
Here, the surroundings are as much an ingredient in the dishes as the famed Mangalitsa pigs raised just around the corner, or the plump, beaming chickens that peck at the lush grass outside. Adams' food shines even surrounded by the towers and concrete of the City, but here it finds a home. Meals are served at the communal dining table, with a menu dictated by what the seasons and the environment has to offer.
Photograph by Claire Menary
We tucked into snacks of home-cured pork belly slices with padrón peppers, and lamb sweetbreads with homemade 'salad cream', before freshly baked sourdough with cod's roe, duck parfait and gooseberry purée and earthy beef tartare with nasturtium came out from the humble kitchen Adams and his team cook and serve from. Loin of pork, its fat so beautifully rendered as to provide no resistance between the teeth, was delicious, as was unctuous, slow-roasted pig's head, while a tangy yellow tomato salad and salt-baked kohlrabi provided much-needed lightness, and a cultured-cream mousse with black- and whitecurrants was a characteristically confident finisher.
The staff estimate that within a year, Adams' famed, hairy Mangalitsa pigs will have moved in, and the growing of produce will have ramped up to the extent that the B&B will be up to 90% self-sustaining.
It's very much a boutique operation – there are five comfortable and sparsely furnished double rooms, and space for ten for dinner – and the size means it's hard to imagine it turning over huge profits. But that's not the point of Coombeshead; it exists to showcase the beautiful things that can happen when farm and chef work with each other, not for each other; the early signs are that Adams and Bloomfield's farm-to-table mecca does all that and a whole lot more.
Coombeshead Farm, Lewannick, Cornwall PL15 7QQ; coombesheadfarm.co.uk. Rooms from £175 per night based on two sharing; dinner £50
Other farm stays
If you're up on your farm-to-table knowledge, you'll know that Simon Rogan is one of its finest exponents in the UK. Along with Fera at Claridges and a few other restaurant involvements, he runs his vaunted two-Michelin-starred farm-to-table restaurant L'Enclume in the tiny village of Cartmel in Cumbria. Not only can you tour the farm and eat at the restaurant when you visit, but you can stay in one of a few compact but luxurious guesthouses dotted around the village, too.
Soho House might have made its name by offering people working in the creative industries a place to eat, drink and relax in the city (since its first in London, opened in 1995, it now has almost 20 locations worldwide), but Soho Farmhouse is its first foray into country living. The spot is less a farmhouse, more a beautifully designed modern country village set over 100 acres, with spas, pools, bars and, of course, a bountiful farm shop and a huge, upmarket restaurant serving locally sourced farm produce.
