An Evening at Bel’s Kitchen Supper Club

There’s a kind of magic to eating at The Hall Exeter. Well-spaced wooden tables, candlelight, high ceilings, and a low hum of good conversation drifting up into the rafters. It’s the sort of room that makes you want to linger, and I was lucky to experience it again in July at Bel’s Kitchen Supper Club with three of my favourite girls.

About Bel

For anyone who hasn’t come across her yet, Isabel Rose has spent 25 years cooking professionally in kitchens across the UK, working alongside names like Yotam Ottolenghi, Jamie Oliver and Mark Hix along the way. She opened her first solo venture, Bel Green Café, in Exeter back in 2011, and it went on to win Best Café in Devon. These days she runs Bel’s Kitchen from her professional kitchen at The Hall, hosting Supper Clubs that book up fast, and it’s easy to see why.

What we ate

Isabel food is seasonal, unfussy, locally sourced, and full of flavour, her cooking feels considered without ever feeling fussy. We started with fried rosemary almonds and whipped white beans, all chilli warmth and crunch, it’s the sort of thing you keep reaching for before the next course even arrives. That was followed by a panzanella that made the most of summer tomatoes at their sweetest, glossy with oil and scattered with basil.

Mains brought a choice of roast chicken with lemon and garlic, drunken potatoes and a bright, sharp salsa verde, or a gnocchi with fried artichoke and walnut brown butter for the veggies among us. Both were generous, properly seasoned, and clearly the work of someone who has spent a career getting the details right.

Never skip dessert

Dessert was a salted dark chocolate tart with raspberries that I’m still dreaming about weeks later, rich without being heavy, with just enough salt to keep you going back for another forkful.

What makes these evenings so special isn’t only the food, though. Isabel and her partner have a way of making a room full of strangers feel like old friends within minutes of sitting down, and the service matched the food throughout: warm, unhurried, generous. By the time dessert arrived, the tables around us had merged into one long, easy conversation, which says everything about the atmosphere Isabel creates.

Enjoy Bel’s Supper Club at her next event

If this has whetted your appetite, she’s back at The Hall on Friday 9th October with a new autumn menu: Provençal fish soup, roast chicken with celeriac and thyme gratin, wild mushrooms, and a plum and almond tart to close. Tickets are limited, so grab yours from her website.

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About the Author: Stephanie Darkes

Is a freelance writer and content creator who has been writing about the great things she finds in Exeter and Devon for nine years on her blogzine, Exploring Exeter. Her passion for showcasing the county’s incredible food scene, independent businesses, arts, and beauty spots has also led her to write for Devon Life, Exeter Life, The Exeter Magazine, Exeter Tomorrow, Exeter Daily, and GROW Exeter. Follow her adventures and local discoveries at www.exploringexeter.co.uk and connect with her on LinkedIn.

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