Agaric, Newton Abbot, restaurant review To this, there are three stock replies: 1) Why? 2) Do I look like your psychotherapist? and 3) No. Unless what they found featured a corpse, a drugs bust or a cat fight between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, who could care less? Were I Ivan Turgenev, and given to teasing readers with introductory red herrings, that would be the last reference to the subject, and you would limp on even more bemused by my rot than usual. Yet although our styles are often compared by literary critics, and not necessarily to the Russian novelist's advantage, I am not Turgenev. The reason I mention the general uninterest in such facilities is that for once, one offers a nugget of insight. Almost the last thing you would expect to find, after the Angie-Jen tear-up, on a pre-lunch outing to the loo of an apparently modest Dartmoor restaurant, is a mauve apron priced at £19.50, and bearing its name. Aye, aye, you think, this isn't the cosy little high-street gaffe it at first sight appears. This Agaric has a healthy self-regard, as the lavatorial presence of cookery course leaflets quickly confirms. We weren't alone in being mildly confused by the disparity between the look of the dining room (low beamed ceiling, showcases full of fancy chutneys and grains, wood-burning stove, dusty pink and petrol blue colour scheme; a bit urban-refugee's-idea-of-Devon-farmhouse-kitchen without stumbling into tweeness) and the culinary ambition. A middle-aged couple wandered in, perhaps mistaking it for a Bide-a-Wee tea room and after a toasted sandwich, but scurried off the moment they saw the menu and prices. The cuisine is anything but Michelin-pretentious - the website reassures about the absence of facetious squiggles on the plate - and the prices seem fair for the quality of ingredients. Even so, this is a serious foodie joint, with a kitchen shop and b & b rooms attached, whose chef-owner Nick Coiley uses local produce wherever possible (and grows some of it himself) to create high-end Anglo-Med dishes. This one would never guess from the frontage or from peering through the window. The meal that ensued was a tantalising affair in which general excellence was pierced by sporadic shards of imprecision. The bread came not only with beautiful olives and a fabulous Sicilian olive oil (Planeta) but butter far too cold to spread, for instance, and gave way to a mixed bag of starters. My wife's fish soup was accompanied by a superb rouille, along with the other trimmings, but was thin and lemony rather than thick and fishy, and had the healthily dull twang of a dish you'd have pretended to enjoy at Cranks in 1983. However, warm pigeon breast was succulent, smoky, and cunningly matched with tangy poached plums, while my salad of cured Spanish ham, beef and chorizo, with pickled peppers and basil, was a fresh, clean-tasting delight. After the inter-course hiatus had seen the arrival of the generic party we dread the most (a family of three virtually identical to ours, except that they seemed to be getting on), a droll and friendly chap delivered main courses that franked the inconsistency form. A pubescent boy of our acquaintance went for pan fried leg of venison, with chanterelle mushrooms and cubes of pork belly - an imaginative and well-balanced medley that would have been brilliant had the venison not been marginally overcooked to a soppy pink rather than ruby red finish. My wife had a fillet of Devon beef, also pan fried, and though she was suspicious about the skin on the red wine jus and the ring around the plate, the beef was "unspeakably delicious." Having made her swear to swap at the halfway point, I had baked courgette flower stuffed with mushrooms and basil in a herby tomato sauce so delectable that I was half tempted to renege on the deal. "This guy is a really talented cook," observed the missus over puddings that bore out the analysis (a slightly clumping coffee and chocolate souffle with glorious white chocolate and coffee ice cream; and a vanilla and passion fruit cheesecake that would have been perfect with a crunchier base), "but there's a gnawing sense of a place that's slightly off the boil, as if it's resting on its local reputation." Under the Rolling Pin Accord of 2003, I am never permitted to disagree with her in print, but in this case she was spot on. With a touch more rigour and attention to detail Agaric would be a sensational restaurant, we felt, rather than a fine and unusually charming one with what may be the nicest loo in the entire South West.