The restaurant at Exmouth's Manor Hotel has been taken over by a company offering a 'fine dining take on barbecuing'.

Barbecue Thirteen is run by Darren Grice, who, with his wife Phillippa, has a company operating outdoor barbecue and fire-themed events - on hold since the Covid pandemic.

They were also running a pub in Hertfordshire, but had decided to give it up before the Covid crisis. With family ties in Exmouth, they opted to move to the town, and then a chance meeting led to the idea of taking over the whole food operation at the Manor Hotel.

When the restaurant is able to open, it will be offering a very different dining experience to what customers have been used to.

Darren said: "We only cook over coal, so we've taken the kitchen apart and in there now it's fire pits, and the menu will be completely over coal, so a whole different feel to how it was done before.

"We'll use all local produce and from that we create our menu from what's available and what works over coal.

"I suppose it's a fine dining take on barbecuing if you like. We'll be cooking scallops, lighter cuts of meat, we'll even be smoking oysters."

Darren said restaurant diners would be able to see the food cooking on the fire pits: "There's always an opportunity for people to pop their heads in and have a look at how it's all going on, we'll be on show as best we can.

"Because, with the events, we are a live fire cooking company so we like to be on show.

"In the summer we've got permission for people to dine on the grass opposite the hotel, above Manor Gardens, so we're hoping to get the fire pits out there if we can and show a bit of what we do."

The barbecue events company will continue running, and Darren hopes to bring some of those events to Exmouth and the surrounding area.

He's aiming to open the restaurant in May, provided the easing of Covid restrictions goes ahead as planned, but in the meantime he's taking orders for a 'coal cooked family feast' for Mothering Sunday, to be collected from the hotel.

It's based on the 'street food' bar menu, and includes a whole tequila chicken, chilli mint prawns, corn on the cob, apple slaw, tomato/feta/basil salad, burnt cheesecake and sticky toffee cake.

Darren said: "We really didn't want Exmouth's first impression of us to be a takeaway, we can't do the menu that we're going to do in the restaurant as a takeaway, so this is a bit of a taste of the flavours and what we will be doing."

He added that he will be recruiting local people for jobs in the restaurant once they get closer to opening, and he hopes to use apprentices from Exeter College.

For more information, and to see the full Mother's Day menu, visit Barbecue Thirteen's Facebook page