In jaded London tasting menus are so last decade. Out in the country they’re still a draw though, and you won’t find many more alluring, or wallet-draining, than the one at Àclèaf.

When did I get bored with tasting menus? I think it was the time when I had to eat twenty four tiny courses that I finally lost it.

Add to the mix the waiters laboriously explaining everything on the plate, while doing that thing of pointing with their crooked little finger, and it was more an endurance test than a pleasure.

The problem I think stemmed from the chef not actually trying their own menu in total, but only individual dishes, so that he/she/they never actually got to experience just how soul -sucking the event could be over many hours.

Well after a long hiatus, I recently had a multi course tasting menu again, this time at Àclèaf ( it means oak leaf in Old English ) in Boringdon Hall and I really liked it. Maybe the passage of time has made me more accepting of the concept, or maybe it was simply very good. I think it’s a little from column A and a little from column B.

Àclèaf is a Michelin-starred restaurant led by award-winning Head Chef Scott Paton, and Boringdon Hall is certainly a great stage for a decidedly luxurious meal. Located just outside Plymouth this Grade I-listed Elizabethan manor house is mentioned in the Domesday Book; it didn’t have a Michelin starred restaurant back then because they mostly ate grass and tree bark.

You need a fairly Lord of the Manor bank balance to eat here. It’s £180 per person for the seven course tasting menu, wine not included, which is a big bill by anyone’s standards.

So you gastronauts with deep pockets, what do you get? Well Àclèaf is a most unusual dining room for a start, as it perches over the Great Hall. Up here you get a view of the room below and so it’s a good spot for elevated dining. The menu is perhaps the most minimal I have ever seen, just one word per course. This certainly adds some drama as you have pretty much no idea what you’re going to get.

It’s ostensibly seven courses, but little inter-course dishes often appeared. This added to the total length of the meal, especially as there were quite substantial gaps in service. Like most married couples, I suspect, we soon run out of small talk when alone together and so we spent a fair bit of time at our table doom scrolling.

A whole host of amuses began the adventure, along with fine butters and fresh artisanal  breads running from crisp to pillowy soft. Each small dish was presented with a purity that made them visually intriguing as well as delicious. 

First course of a pithivier made of confit pumpkin, with oatmeal with soft herbs and  black garlic puree and finished with a pumpkin jus, teased out all the autumnal flavour while an Orkney (okay, so not local) King Scallop with a mushroom truffle dashi jelly, pickled shimeji, ponzu dashi gel and garden herbs, all finished with umaii caviar was special, the scallop cooked perfectly, which is to say barely cooked at all and served with walnut dashi beurre blanc and walnut oil

Brill from the coast was brill-iant, the fish I think had been cooked sous vide so that it had an unusual firmness that was an enhancement. Stuffed with a mushroom and scallop farce and with a cep puree plus a fennel and green apple confit, it was finished with a fennel oil bordelaise jus.

That’s a lot of things to take in, and if I had any criticism it would be that less really can be more. Every dish was overflowing with ingredients and creativity,  but it teetered on too much.

Sadly we didn’t get chef’s famous Brixham crab with curry emulsion and mango puree, but the roasted and glazed veal sweetbread with confit Perigord truffled onions and morel velout,  finished with black truffle, was intense. I know some people are a bit squeamish about sweetbreads, especially veal ones, but for me this is classic French cooking, the kind  that the French seem to have forgotten how to do. And who can dislike truffles?

Wagyu you might think is the least local meat you can buy, but it doesn’t all come from Japan.

Acleaf’s Wagyu in fact comes from the Highlands, here a sirloin was plated with a braised rump beignet and topped with, again, a Perigord truffle and adorned with mushroom puree and a black garlic puree. 

This was superb, incredible meat, but even better was a Perigord truffle beef jus poured at the table. Of all the dishes this was the one we were raving about when we got home. You jus(t) don’t get great jus anymore, chefs used to have to make them overnight by properly roasting bones and many of today’s chefs are too impatient to put in the hard slog.

By now we were ready for something sweet, we’d finished our wine some time ago, a single bottle can only last so long even when sipped, and a dish called Honey -Crème fraiche mousse dipped in white chocolate, yuzu posset, yuzu confit, honey parfait and a milk and honey ice cream, garnished with white chocolate and alyssium, was intriguing, sweet with the honey and tart with the yuzu, a perfectly balanced dish and palate cleanser.

And so like gourmet marathon runners, we found ourselves staggering to the finish line, feeling a little light headed and in serious need of a lie down.

One last dish to cross  – Chocolate – Single origin chocolate delice made from 50% Madgascan chocolate, filled with a pistachio custard, dipped in 75% Madagascan chocolate, topped with a cocoa nib tuille and pistachio ice cream. Served tableside with a chocolate sauce made from both chocolates.

Well you can imagine how that went down, totally delicious but a bit of an effort to do full justice to. Like every dish it was exquisitely presented and elegantly served by the charming team, we didn’t want to let them down and so we ate the lot,  despite our stomachs telling us to stop.

Down below in the Great Hall the lights were by now mostly off, a few stragglers were still lounging about but the staff were metaphorically stacking the chairs. We pushed ourselves upright, thankful we had no further to travel than to our lovely room, and headed to Bedfordshire.

Acleaf’s tasting menu is exquisite for sure, remarkable artistry and design. I would recommend going for the shorter set menu though, it’s more affordable and presumably runs a bit quicker. I doubt you’ll find anything fancier in Devon, or more ambitious, whichever treat you choose. Multi course menus may be a bit old hat, but now and then it’s worth sitting down and letting the flow take you away.

Boringdon Hall Hotel, Plymouth, Devon, PL7 4DP

Nick travelled from London to Plymouth in a Lexus UX 300E, all-electric compact luxury SUV loaned by Lexus UK. The car itself was excellent, but the UK’s charging infrastructure has a long way to go to make long journeys worry-free. Boringdon Hall has complimentary car charge points available to guests