A CHAGFORD café has won a prestigious national competition in London just weeks after being named ‘Britain’s best cream tea’.

The Café Life Awards has crowned The Old Forge Café and Restaurant the winner of the Afternoon Tea Experience Challenge. The competition, whose live final took place at the Lunch! trade show in London, saw the country’s most innovative cafés, bakeries and cookery schools create a bespoke sweet and savoury spread to provide the ultimate Afternoon Tea Experience.

Head judge was celebrity chef and café entrepreneur Aldo Zilli, working with an independent panel of food and drink experts. The award was presented at the gala dinner attended by the elite of the café industry, held at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel, London.

The Old Forge Café has recently received widespread media coverage for serving the best cream teas in Devon by local cream tea expert Ditch Townsend in a review of over 250 venues.

The café was coined ‘Britain’s best cream tea’ by The Daily Telegraph and ‘the cream of Devon teas’ by The Times in September.

Dr Richard Farrington, who has been proprietor and chef at The Old Forge since leaving a career in medicine two years ago, said: ‘The competition today was truly astonishing, and I’m thrilled to be able to take home the prize for my version of a Devonshire cream tea — an amazing local speciality that I am incredibly passionate about. To be recognised by the Café Life Awards in this way is a proud achievement and one that I will treasure.

‘My afternoon tea idea started with the traditional Devonshire cream tea — a pot of tea served with scones, clotted cream and red berry jam. The cream tea only became well known to the rest of the country with the expansion of the railways in the early 1900s, so this time period was the inspiration for the types of sandwiches and cakes that I included on my tea stand.

‘However, the real fun came with the cream tea element. Instead of pairing scones, cream and jam with traditional Earl Grey tea and sliced lemon, I made spiced caraway scones — to taste like Victorian seed cake — and served them with homemade Earl-Grey-infused clotted cream, lemon curd, and a red berry Tetley tea. All the flavours are the same, but completely turned on their heads.’

Speaking at The Café Life Awards, Aldo Zilli said: ‘Innovation in the sector is awesome. Things have leapt forward in the café industry and they’re now closing in on the restaurant sector.

‘There’s nothing that this young man Richard doesn’t know about the Devonshire Cream Tea. If you’re ever in the Westcountry, this is the café to visit.’

The Café Society’s Gethin Evans said: ‘Café culture in the UK is one of the fastest growing lifestyle choices; one in five of us is a daily café visitor. The Café Life Awards celebrates all that is great in British café life and the award winners are truly great people.’