Review
Northgate House Hotel, Buckfast Abbey

Buckfast Abbey is a place of spiritual nourishment. I can now thoroughly recommend it as a place of great culinary satisfaction too. My husband and I went for dinner at the restaurant in Northgate House, a 33-bedroom hotel and self-catering accommodation in the magnificent gardens of the Abbey.

Hundreds of tourists come here every year to visit the historic monastery, home to a community of Roman Catholic Benedictine monks (famous for producing Buckfast Tonic Wine). And that’s all I knew about Buckfast Abbey until we had this lovely meal. I would never have thought about coming here for the kind of food you tell your mates about.

The new chef here, Johnny Varah, deserves to be talked about. I went for NFC to start with, that’s ‘Northgate Fried Chicken’. These delicious, ‘dirty good’, Asian barbecue-style chicken balls with spring onion and black sesame take the Chinese takeaway classic to heavenly levels.

It took me a while to come down from the sticky, crispy, saucy high. My husband, Luke, went for the smoked ham hock and pistachio terrine. He wanted NFC but very graciously ordered an alternative for variety’s sake. The terrine was as good as it gets, complemented by a green chilli piccalilli (as nice to say as it is to eat).

Luke then chose game pie with crunchy chive mash, tenderstem broccoli and – get this – tonic wine-braised red cabbage. Anyone who has sampled Buckfast’s famous caffeinated fortified wine knows that it’s quite the tipple – but on your cabbage? Yep, it works. This could definitely catch on.

The pie tasted as good as it looked. Luke excitedly told our lovely waitress: “It’s got pastry all the way around – not just a lid!” We were both quite taken with this particular dish. In fact, I keep showing the picture I took of this little pie to members of my family and close friends.

Meanwhile, I went for the chickpea curry with jasmine rice and home-made charred flatbread. It was a nicely balanced bowl of texture and spice, plus the flatbread was the perfect size for dunking.

We shared a pudding and kept it authentic by ordering the tonic pear. The tonic wine-poached fruit came with Greek yoghurt, almond crumble and berry gel. Cor! Big spoons at the ready.

Do not overlook Northgate House in Buckfast Abbey for gorgeous looking and tasting food. We drove home thoroughly enlightened. Give it a try.