Review
Home Farm Café, Parke, Bovey Tracey

Saturday night at Home Farm Café seems like the place to be. We’re probably not alone in associating this popular spot at the National Trust’s Parke estate in Bovey Tracey with the daytime, muddy dog walks, and a quick coffee and a sarnie.

My husband reckoned he’d never actually been inside the building before, forever confined to waiting near the door with the Labrador/kids, while I ordered the drinks and cake. So, the idea of spending an evening here with dinner and drinks was quite exciting!

What was also very exciting was the menu. Home Farm has always served wholesome and reliable daytime food but new owners Ben and Char, who joined the team in September, are allowing their creativity to run free on Friday and Saturday nights.

The dishes on offer have a distinctly Middle Eastern/North African feel, for no other reason we’re told, than Char likes the food. So do we. Loads. This was going to be fun.

Luke ordered the spiced lamb borek, deliciously filled filo pastry parcels with carrot marmalade and a ras-el-hanout yoghurt. Cor! These were lovely little bundles of cleverly spiced joy. The marmalade was a good flavour counterweight to the meaty lamb.

I had the labneh, a Middle Eastern kind of soft cheese/yoghurt hybrid. It came with pickled blackberry, toasted dukkah (a nut, seed and spice blend) and warm sourdough. As a culture fusion, it worked very well because I used the sourdough as a spade to scoop up the creamy yoghurt blend.

The mains were again a local/not-local-at-all blend of flavours and spices. Luke went for the beef, sourced from nearby Lurcombe Farm in Bickington. It came with roasted rosemary and garlic new potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli, parsnip purée and jus.

The sample I tried was rich and super-beefy – in direct contrast to my main. I ordered the pulled chicken tagine with harissa giant couscous, date syrup, fresh pomegranate and mint. What a lovely comforting, zingy bowl of textures and colour. Forks didn’t do it justice – this was a big spoon job.

We shared a tangy, creamy baked lemon Basque cheesecake with lemon curd sauce and fresh blueberries.

By this point, it was getting busy. Word has clearly spread around Bovey and beyond about this wonderful set-up, and quite right too. Home Farm Café is doing something different in familiar surroundings.