Restaurant review Angela's, 38 New Bridge Street, Exeter.

To qualify for the endearing label "local", it's not enough these days for a restaurant to be within walking distance of the front door. It has to have other, easily identified but hard to realise qualities. These include: a small, familiar main room, with an ambience that tends towards the intimate; ultra-friendly and few waiting staff; and, above all, garrulous owners on hand to take orders, talk about the perils of nearby parking, and ask after your father-in-law's cat. Most of all, the establishment should be named after said owners. By something approaching this alchemy, Angela's in Exeter is a wonderful local restaurant.

It sits on the steep slope linking the river to the town centre. There is a single, small eating area facing the street with cut flowers on each table, quiet soul music and wooden floors. Local artists, depicting local scenes in pastel colours, are exhibited on the walls. Paddy and Richard, with whom we are here, have identified three sights of the south-west captured in paint: Exeter's quay, the coast at Dawlish, and St Michael's Mount, the family seat of the St Aubyns.

The name of the restaurant comes from the female half of owners Richard and Angela Valder. She is charming, polite, joyful and tonight, a winter Thursday, the sole front-of-house staff member, serving 14 customers. Much of her service is, hilariously, devoted to getting out a procession of cocktails. Available are a Moscow Mule, elderflower with gin (both £4.75), as well as that bizarre, bright-yellow concoction called a Snowball (£4.50). This contains a double measure of Advocaat with lime cordial and lemonade, tastes terrifyingly of Nesquik (which I thought I'd left behind years ago) and might be best saved for the shape-shifters at Timepiece, the five-floor club 10 minutes up the hill.

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