FoodeaZe

After inspecting the banal ugliness of Exeter's redeveloped Princesshay, it was a real relief to go the sillily named, but rather good, FoodeaZe, in what was St George's Market. Where Princesshay represents nothing but a confirmation of the centre of Exeter as being the ultimate "clone town" (the restos are Cafe Rouge, Tasca and Strada) and a dismissal of the city's inherent charms (in the manner in which a view of the cathedral has been occluded), FoodeaZe represents a determination to celebrate food production and sourcing in Devon. The place is rather like a food hall in a department store, without the store itself: a central kitchen and bar area, with seating, surrounded by little outlets selling or making food. One of the pictures shows the pretty wonderful oil area - rapeseed, two olive oils, walnut and various other oils were available - where I tried all on offer and concluded that the kalamata olive oil was really top notch. At £2 for a medium-size bottle, this represented excellent value for a wonderful product and I presume the idea is that you will go back to refill your bottles, which I would do if I were in Exeter. Some other foodstuffs and cooking equipment was rather expensive, but there were plenty of great things at keen prices, including Pebblebed wines and other good bottles from Vino in Topsham. We stayeyed for lunch and I had pretty tasty vegetable noodles. S found them rather sweet, but I thought them fine and I'd like to go back to check out the early evening offer (they're open till 8 but I imagine this will stretch out in time of they're successful) of a drink plus unlimited snacks for a fiver. All in all, a brave move to open a sizeable enterprise like this in a location that had been going downhill for years. I very much hope that they find a big enough market for what they're doing in promoting excellent, sustainable food.