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Heskyn Mill Restaurant

British • Plymouth
(01752) 852127 Tideford, Saltash, Plymouth, Devon, PL12 5JS (01752)8…Show
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Route 38

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3 /5
3 /5
3 /5
3 /5
Michael Baggley
Heskyn is a warm, friendly and welcoming family run business. The food is not only excellent, it is plentiful and varied. Heskyn is not only a very historic venue it is also very interesting. They cater for all sorts of functions and events and they will bend over backwards to do their best for you. We have gone there for years and always want to return. Lovely.
Hungry Bunny
Heskyn Mill - disappointing - to be avoided Booked for a birthday celebration but were very disappointed. Despite the fabulous location and interior we did not feel at all welcome. We were a party of three and were the only customers...perhaps a sign! We ordered from set menu and order taken promptly...but our 3 soups for first course were very cold - tepid! Also just too much cream...lacked any flavour. (Bread was delicious though). Waiter nowhere to be seen so we could not ask for it to be warmed and so had to eat it cold. When he cleared the plates mentioned the problem and his cursory apology was as cold as the soup itself! Fish for main and accompanying peas were cold - again waiter nowhere in sight...so just had to endure. Combination of Pineapple Salsa with haddock - unusual to say the least...and not to be recommended. Good comforting puddings arrived and at last piping hot. The Mill looks wonderful and everything was very clean and well presented...but just lacking atmosphere or any glimmer of hospitality. However we ordered coffees and even this was dreadful...weak insipid and hugely disappointing. Still what did we expect! The waiter did remove the cost of soups from our bill but we would all have preferred a warmer apology and the chance to express our disappointment. We left and sat in our in car rather than stay in that hostile environment. We will not return or recommend to friends. What a waste of a beautiful venue with such potential.
M & S
We would recommend this excellent restaurant to anyone. Very friendly, super food. Can not do enough for us so now regular customers.
Mike
Had Sunday lunch with my wife and two friends. Superb setting, excellent food, good service and very good value. A definite recommend.
Steve
Driving down the A38 into Tideford in April 2008, my partner and I noticed new signs for Heskyn Mill Restaurant. Located in a three-hundred year-old grain mill, Heskyn has had a number of largely unsuccessful incarnations as a restaurant, and we were excited that it had re-opened, not least in order to give us another option for eating out. The signs which, admittedly, look cheap and hand painted, referred to Heskyn as a bar and restaurant and so, one evening, we stopped by for a pint. Apart from the laminate wood flooring on the ground floor, the décor isn’t bad at all, and the beer is cheap (50p cheaper than the local pub). Tony, the owner, is the only person there apart from Yvonne, his girlfriend, and the chef. He’s recently moved back from Spain (too many immigrants, apparently, which is odd given that he’s British and Yvonne’s Polish) and has bought Heskyn outright. He’s spent a small fortune doing the place up, but it doesn’t matter whether or not it works because he doesn’t owe anyone a penny. He owns it outright. And never fails to remind us of this at every opportunity. It quickly dawned on us that despite the beer being cheap, a ‘quiet pint’ just isn’t going to happen at Heskyn. We left after a few pints and decided to go back sometime for a meal. We returned for food on a Sunday night. Once again, apart from Tony, Yvonne and the chef, the place was deserted. Perusing the menu, we asked if all the meat was local. “Oh yes,” Tony told us, “all apart from the bacon, which is from Brake Brothers”. The fish was all local too. I ordered a game pate to start and we both ordered a Smoked Haddock main course, and a bottle of Torres’ Vina Esmerelda, a light Spanish white wine. He searched around in vain for the wine and, after five minutes, found a bottle. It transpired he thought it was Chilean and not Spanish - given Torres’ position at the top of the Spanish wine industry, it’s surprising that someone who claims to have owned bars in Spain has never heard of it. Half way through our starters, Tony appears at our table, apologising that he only has one bottle of the Esmerelda (we haven’t ordered another) and gives us a bottle of Pinot Grigio to compensate. Very generous, if not slightly odd to be giving wine away. From that point onwards, having a quiet meal, alone, becomes impossible. The only time that Tony spends away from our table is when he’s in the kitchen collecting our food. He’s telling us (again) how he’s bought the place outright and it doesn’t matter if it works or not and how the chef had moved down to work there (he’d already told us he was from Plymouth). On discovering that I was born in Bradford, he makes some bigoted comment about me being the ‘wrong colour’. And so it continues. To be fair, the food was good. It was well cooked and nicely presented. The potatoes - sliced with mushrooms and then boiled and served in what looked like dirty dishwater - looked disgusting. I mentioned that it was quite unusual to find potatoes and mushrooms together as standard, given that a lot of people don’t like mushrooms. “Well everyone else like it. It’s only you that doesn’t.” Oops. Sorry for speaking. We drank the Esmerelda, and the finished off the complimentary Pinot Grigio. We then order a bottle of Rioja which, I commented, was a bit thin and watery. I expressed surprise that St Austell Brewery - known for it’s good wine business - would sell what appeared to be such a low quality wine. Once again I was told that I was wrong; everyone else really liked it. We paid, we left. We went to the Rod & Line (Tideford’s original pub which, incidentally, serves excellent food) and spread the word: the food’s good, the service is poor, but it’s worth suffering the latter to experience the former. A week later, after eating at the Hayloft in Menheniot, we called in at Heskyn for a pint. As soon as we were through the door he was thanking us for spreading the word and generating business for him. He’d had lots of people who said they were there because Steve and Phill had told them to try it. Again, though, we were the only guests. Tony showed us the new menu, due to begin the following day. It featured ‘Mackrel’ [sic], ‘Ali Ole’ [sic], and a ‘Heskyn Tower of Chicken’. We helped him out with some corrections and said that the Heskyn Tower sounded like it belonged on the menu at Kentucky Fried Chicken, not at a country restaurant. He thanked us for our feedback. Last night, neither of us could be bothered to cook, so we headed back down to Heskyn, to try the new menu. The downstairs was deserted - though he was quick to tell us how busy he had been and that he was struggling to fit everyone in on Saturday night. This didn’t seem to ring true, though, as the open diary showed only three bookings. Two people were dining upstairs. After gin and tonic, we went up to the restaurant. We had both ordered the Lamb Shank which, as promised by the menu, fell off the bone. The sauté potatoes were lovely but would have been lovelier had fresh herbs been used. The huge bowl of mange tout weren’t too fresh, and the leek and stilton slop could have been presented better. But, sensing the pointlessness of complaining given that everyone else likes this stuff, we said nothing. He clears the table, piling all the dishes on top of one another in front of us, café style. We ordered two crème brulée as desert, and Tony nipped into the kitchen, returning to tell us that chef’s not happy with the brulée that are already prepared and so he’s going to make two fresh ones. I said that that’s not possible; Crème Brulée takes at least three hours to cook as it needs to set in the fridge. But no, Tony insists it can be done. So we order and wait. After a 30 minute wait, the arrive. Tony tells us to wait 15 minutes before eating them to allow them to set. But Phill can’t wait and tucks in with gusto, to find that it’s more like a synthetic vanilla flavoured soup. Served with an almond shortbread, he can’t resist dunking it like a boiled egg and soldier. I wait fifteen minutes, as instructed, to find that it’s still like soup. I pour it onto the plate to demonstrate. Tony comes over. I said that this wasn’t Crème Brulée and that it really can’t be made in 15 minutes - I’d made some for a dinner party a fortnight ago and they’d taken a good 4 hours to set. “That is a Crème Brulée,” he insists. I suggested that real vanilla leaves dark spots in the mixture, noticeably absent from the Heskyn concoction. “I don’t know what’s in it. I’m not a chef. I pay the chef.” As he walks towards the kitchen with the rejected vanilla flavoured soups, he looks back, and says that he’s sick of our complaining, and would be happier if we just “paid up and fucked off and never came back”. Everyone else, apparently, loves what we don’t like. It’s just us. We’re a pain. We pay; we leave. So, after telling us that he appreciates our feedback (one of us used to manage a Michelin starred restaurant), that he’s straight talking, and that above all he’s very appreciative of our spreading the good word about Heskyn, he kicks us - probably his most regular customers - out, simply for complaining that the Crème Brulée is dreadful. If you want good food in Tideford, go to the Rod & Line. If you want a ‘proper’ restaurant, try the Hayloft at Menheniot, or Webbs in Liskeard. But if you want to be given food that you must enjoy or be kicked out, served by an over-eager owner who can’t clear a table properly and knows nothing about wine because he’s tee-total, then do try Heskyn Mill.
Kristian Sharpe
Stunning location to dine....! Great People....! Great price...!