With its cocktail bar and sea-facing terrace, Susie and Will Daniel’s buzzy hotel overlooking Summerleaze surfers’ beach is ‘a mecca for the young of Bude’. The Victorian building has been given a smart, contemporary facelift. The ‘very good’ bedrooms vary in size, and are individually decorated in New England style, with limed oak furniture, Lloyd Loom chairs. A regular reader on a third visit found the staff ‘as welcoming and friendly as before’. In the restaurant, classically trained chef Joe Simmonds uses locally grown – and caught – produce in such dishes as roasted wild sea bass, crab and potato doughnut, confit garlic, grilled leeks, garlic and lemon yogurt, poached leeks and coriander, shallot and spring onion dressing. For veggies, maybe beetroot pesto macaroni, pickled and roast root vegetables, toasted hazelnuts, goat’s cheese. ‘We found the meals filling and beautifully cooked.’ Another reader was not pleased to have to eat in the ‘noisy bar’, while the restaurant was being used for a wine tasting, but, for our returnee, it was still ‘a wonderful experience drinking wine in the bar in the evening’. (Frank G Millen, and others)