The story
The Elephant is a Modern British restaurant at 3-4 Beacon Terrace, Torquay, and it holds one Michelin star for 2026. Chef proprietors Simon and Katy Hulstone run the bright, informal dining room near the harbour, where the menu changes with whatever the local growers and farm have at their best.
Simon Hulstone has cooked professionally since school and has won the Roux Scholarship and the Craft Guild of Chefs National Chef of the Year award. He has twice represented the UK at the Bocuse d'Or. Much of the British kitchen's produce comes from the restaurant's farm in Brixham, and the team sources further afield only for ingredients they are especially keen on.
The Good Food Guide singled out poached scallop with chicken wing in a bone-marrow dressing, and poached cod with pink grapefruit in a coconut curry sauce. Desserts take a savoury approach, such as apricot parfait with toasted rice and chai foam. Traditional diners can still order heritage pork with glazed cheek and black pudding.
Recognition
Details
History
High quality cooking
Torquay's finest is barely more than a rope-throw from the Marina, a double-fronted, expansive space run with serene efficiency. Simon Hulstone oversees a long-established, venturesome kitchen that reliably brims with good ideas, against a backbone of mainstay classic dishes that ensure the locals keep coming back. The base price shifted sharply upwards with the transition to a prix-fixe format, but there is no doubting the integrity and class of the cooking. A favoured pairing of gently poached scallop and savoury chicken wing in bone-marrow dressing with sea buckthorn is a masterful exercise in counterpointing flavours and textures. In its spring season, Wye Valley asparagus might be smartly accoutred with barbecued pineapple, a hash brown and macadamias, while the same imaginative energy is on dazzling display in a main dish of poached cod with pink grapefruit and carrot in a coconut curry sauce. That said, confirmed traditionalists will find nothing lacking in a serving of heritage pork with its glazed cheek and black pudding, alongside grelot onion and pearl barley. The voguish savoury approach to desserts sees apricot parfait served with toasted rice and chai foam or gariguette strawberries fragranced with bay leaf flan and peppered caramel. The wine offering doesn't change much with the passing years, other than for the initial offering headed 'seasonal wines we like', which are always worth a flutter – perhaps a Sardinian Vermentino or Rhône-style red from Cucugnan in the Aude.
3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
Location
Facebook
Instagram
X