It’s not intended as a criticism to say that there are some restaurants that lend themselves to a positive review, and then there is High Grange.
For a start, some restaurants— most restaurants, even — are recognisably restaurants. They have doors, tables (sometimes tablecloths), and chairs; and, more often than not, walls or at least windows separating chefs from diners; the fire from the feasting. They tend to have two modes — open or closed — and are content to ask one question of a reviewer: are we any good?
Luke Vandore-Mackay, owner and chef of High Grange, laughs in the face of such basic behaviour. What does he offer? Cookery school? High end dining? Field-to-fire-to-fork? Immersive experience? All of these things, and more. Not much in the way of walls and windows, though.
Most importantly, though, High Grange is seriously bloody good.
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I’ve known of Vandore-Mackay for a long time, since the dim and distant days of Twitter. A longtime Londoner (don’t let the kilt or surname fool you, the brogue is 100 per cent Barnes), and stalwart of the Borough food scene, he’s also one of those massive clichés who upped sticks and left London the moment the pandemic allowed and decamped his family down to a frankly gorgeous little wood in North Devon, where they now live a bucolic fantasy life of chickens, herb and vegetable gardens, and, most importantly, using fire to make an ever-increasing range of food delicious.
Fire, you see, is his passion. A burning devotee of the gospel according to Argentine Francis Mallmann, High Grange Devon is his dream made reality: a centre of pyro-culinary excellence, where shoulders of mutton are cooked underground, sea bass whipped out of the sea that morning are baked in salt, and the finest of local protein is seared, grilled, and cooked, dirty, direct on the coals. Blow me, if it isn’t all wonderful.
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Because yes, High Grange offers fire schools and foraging days and wedding catering: but first and foremost, it’s a beautiful place where you can go to eat beautiful food, all of which gives lie to the idea that the only way to enjoy proper barbecue is to jump on a plane to Texas.
Having run things solo for a while, Vandore-Mackay is now joined at the flames by Chiara Tomasoni, a MasterChef: The Professionals finalist, and formerly head chef at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage. Tomasoni adds a healthy dollop of elegance to Vandore-Mackay’s earthy charms (while it would probably be unfair to characterise the pairing as caveman and craft/Beauty and the Beast, it definitely wouldn’t be that unfair).
There’s no escaping the fact that between them, they create menus that interweave the delicate with the rambunctious, whether that’s a charred octopus skewer and caponata; freshly picked wild garlic capers popping off the top of a deep, warming, embrace of Dexter beef shin; or a scallop ceviche sparkling with locally foraged samphire and homemade gooseberry gin. There’s balance among the sparks, and it works.
It should probably go without saying at a place like High Grange, but I’m going to say it anyway: all the ingredients are so local as to be introduced not just with the provenance, but with the name of the person who’s supplied them. Vandore-Mackay and Tomasoni don’t just sound like people who love food when they talk about it, they sound like people who know that food matters, that ingredients are important, and that they are genuinely privileged to share those things with strangers. That sense of privilege comes across in everything that you eat: like they can’t quite believe they get to serve you this incredible food, which, of course, means you get to walk away not quite believing that you get to eat it.
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I’m wary of making High Grange sound like just another barbecue place, serving good ingredients that taste more of smoke than of food. You could go anywhere to get a flame-grilled rump steak; finding a whole ex-dairy rump, cooked straight on the coals to the point where the surface crisps and crunches, the fat melts, and the whole thing just makes you want to tear up the rule book and marry a cut of beef, though? That’s a High Grange thing. Barbecue too often ends up as a slightly clumsy way of cooking: just fire up the grill, whack on the meat, crack open a beer and the hot hot heat will do the rest. Vandore-Mackay and Tomasoni know that’s nonsense: they know that fire demands delicacy, and rewards gentleness.
There’s a Mallmann idea that Vandore-Mackay is particularly fond of: “Where other chefs make too much of harmony, I adore dissonance in food”. He’s talking of the joy, the spirit that the right degree of char can bring to a dish; of how a cooked tomato is lovely, but a fire-burned tomato is life-changing. He could, though, also be talking about High Grange itself: it’s a cavalcade of stuff, a smorgasbord of things, a literal feast of fiery goodness, and, in some ways, it shouldn’t make sense. But it does. With Tomasoni, he has found the harmony in the dissonance.
High Grange, Burrow Knap Way, Axminster, EX13 7ES, highgrangedevon.com
