Bill's - Exeter

Bill Collison, founder of Bill's, opened the first Bill's in Lewes, East Sussex, in 2001. Built on the same site where Bill had been running a successful greengrocery for several years, Bill's Café & Produce Store, as it was then known, was an instant success. The aim was to make a place that was colourful and exuberant, with dishes that were really tasty and also made you smile, that put every day and unusual seasonal ingredients together and gave everyone lots of ideas to take home with them. The team at Bill's baked, cooked and served deliciously different food, hung skeins of raffia from the ceiling, stacked towers of produce for people to buy and hired lively, enthusiastic staff to look after their customers. They wanted Bill's to be somewhere that really celebrated food and was welcoming to everyone, a place that felt like the next best thing to home. Breakfast at Bills is a great way to start your day; from a humble bacon or sausage sandwich to a bells-and-whistles super classic great British breakfast. Weekends are a different story, time to kick back and turn breakfast into brunch, complete with newspapers, freshly squeezed orange juice and plenty of tea or coffee. There's a real warehouse feel to Bill's Exeter, an idea we decided to run with the moment we first discovered this hidden gem of a location. Right in the middle of the town, but off the main drag down what's really little more than an alleyway, the restaurant is over two floors and has a lovely gallery, home to two enormous chandeliers. With some outdoor seating along the front, the first thing you notice are two huge barn doors at the entranceway. Inside, the Bill's vibe takes our guests from breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, through to dinner. The upstairs floor is available for private hire for around 50 people.