Every dish from this superbly talented young cast deserves its moment in the spotlight
Stage, 31 Magdalen Road, Exeter EX2 4TA (01392 496700). Four-course lunch £30, six-course dinner £55, wine from £26
Smart, creative people tend towards the ambitious. They know what they’re doing right now is good, but hope that at some point in the future they will do it better. They are forever striving towards a goal which is just out of reach. The risk is that, with their eyes on that future, they fail to clock what they have in the present. The coolly talented young team at Stage in Exeter are clearly ambitious, but I very much hope they are able to live as deeply in the present tense as possible. It would be a crying shame if, when they move on to the bigger and greater things that doubtless await them, they only realise in retrospect the brilliance of what they had going on now; here in this tiny 20-seater restaurant, where the walls are skirted with corrugated iron, the high wooden tables are built on black steel frames and the toasted cashews come crusted with something called apple sriracha.
