Four of the best dog-friendly places to eat in Exeter

We climb from the quay towards the Hour Glass with the dog pulling slightly ahead and supper beginning to seem a reasonable reward for the gradient. Exeter is good at this: putting a pub just far enough up a hill to strengthen its argument. Below us, old warehouses accommodate a restaurant whose pizzas reach thirty inches long. Over in Heavitree, a café hides a garden behind an ordinary shopping street. Some of the tables can be reserved with a dog; others depend on arriving before everyone else has the same idea.

These four places offer different sorts of welcome. The Hour Glass combines a proper interest in beer with cooking that ventures well beyond the usual pub menu. Daisy Café makes breakfast affordable and gives dogs access to the company indoors as well as the garden. On the Waterfront is the place for a large, informal gathering over pizza, with restrictions that matter when booking. At the Prospect, venison finds its way into a lasagne and a community bakehouse supplies the bread for a salad. These are places to linger with the dog, with food worth understanding before ordering.

1. The Hour Glass Inn

The Hour Glass occupies a rounded wedge of building on the corner of Melbourne Street and Colleton Row. We come in from the hill, bring the dog close and work our way towards a table in the bar. The room wraps around its central counter, with wooden floors and pictures competing for the remaining wall space. This is a small pub. That is attractive until someone needs to manoeuvre a large dog past a chair, when it becomes an architectural fact. We gather the lead beside our feet and give the animal a place out of the route to the handpumps.

Exeter Brewery runs the Hour Glass, and we begin with its Avocet, a 3.9 per cent pale ale listed at £5.20 a pint. The brewery developed this organic beer in 2008; its presence here is part of a substantial family, including Ferryman bitter and the much darker Darkness stout. We take the Avocet back to the table and leave the darker beer for pudding. At 5.1 per cent, Darkness is a more substantial drink, and the kitchen has already found a use for it.

The pork and ’nduja Scotch egg, £9, starts our meal from the à la carte selection. The Calabrian sausage is soft, fatty and seasoned with chilli; worked into the pork, it changes the character of a familiar bar snack before the accompanying apricot-harissa mayonnaise gets involved. We cut through the egg and bring some of the bitter leaves onto the fork. Sweet fruit, chilli and something green give us reasons to move around the plate. The combination is more interesting than simply making the sausage hotter, and characteristic of a kitchen willing to complicate a pub favourite without making it unrecognisable.

Our main course takes us to Holsworthy, the market town in western Devon named on the pork dish. At £26, the crispy pork comes with romesco, cashew, a Cheddar salad and fries. Romesco is a Spanish pepper-and-nut sauce; its usefulness here is easy to understand alongside pork, adding a savoury, nutty element rather than another layer of meat gravy. We pull the plate towards us, keeping the fries safely above the dog's eyeline. It is a generous collection of rich ingredients, and we prefer to approach it with the lighter beer rather than turn every part of dinner into a contest of weight. The kitchen changes dishes with its supplies, so check the latest choices when booking.

There is a more economical way in. The fixed-price menu is £23 for two courses or £28 for three, available at Thursday-to-Saturday lunch and, with advance booking, between 6pm and 7pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. Chicken with mushroom and Madeira, or a Dawlish mushroom risotto, shows the sort of food offered. The five-pound step from two courses to three is persuasive when the pudding is Darkness stout cake. On the à la carte menu it is £9, with brown-sugar butterscotch and clotted-cream ice cream. We set down the menu and order it, then take a small glass of the stout alongside. The beer's roasted coffee and bitter-chocolate character explains its place in cake; the butterscotch and cream provide more than enough sweetness without asking the drink to contribute further sugar.

The dog remains at our feet while we divide the last of the cake. That freedom is the Hour Glass's appeal, although its confined bar will suit a settled dog better than one needing a wide berth. Mention the dog when booking and agree the table: there is also a separate dining room, and a general reservation is not a seating plan. Allow for the discretionary ten per cent service charge on the à la carte bill. Sunday evening has a reduced menu, and Monday brings the quiz. For a full dinner we favour a quieter midweek evening, with a suitable table agreed and the stout cake in mind.

21 Melbourne Street, Exeter EX2 4AU.

2. The Daisy Café

Daisy Café draws us off Fore Street in Heavitree, an important qualification in a city with another Fore Street in its centre. This is a neighbourhood breakfast stop, away from the quay and close enough to Heavitree Pleasure Ground to make a walk part of the outing. We take the dog through to the back garden, choose a table among the plants and put our bag beside the chair. Rik and Matt, who opened the café in 2017, have made the garden a substantial reason for coming, with dense planting that gives an ordinary café table a much greener setting than its address suggests.

The dog is welcome inside too, a useful reassurance when the garden ceases to look such a good idea. Daisy keeps a gallery of canine customers, dogs of different sizes and degrees of willingness to pose. We make room beneath the table, gathering the lead beside our feet, and open the breakfast menu.

On an ordinary weekday breakfast menu, £9.95 buys sausage, bacon, an egg, a hash brown, tomato, beans and mushrooms. The large version is £12.50, doubling the sausage, bacon, egg and hash brown and adding toast. We choose the smaller plate and a pot of tea. There is something useful about a breakfast menu that states its quantities: two hungry people can make a decision without discovering that the adjective “large” has done all the catering. The eggs are Devon free-range; the beans are Heinz. We cut into the sausage, draw some mushroom alongside the egg and reserve a piece of hash brown for the beans.

With an eye on the dog between forkfuls, we notice the smaller orders too: two eggs on toast at £5.95 or a bacon sandwich at £4.25, without having to commit to a full breakfast. The £6.50 breakfast bap is the middle course for people who want sausage, bacon and egg without a whole plate's accompaniments. Vegetarians and vegans have complete breakfasts at £9.95 on the weekday menu, rather than being charged the same sum to have the meat removed. Saturday has its own brunch list and slightly different combinations, so the weekday prices should not be mistaken for an all-week offer.

Lunch keeps the same practical instincts. We turn over the menu and consider a fish-finger bap with lettuce, homemade tartare, chips and coleslaw, £9.95. It is a more substantial proposition than the £8.95 fish-finger sandwich, which comes with salad, coleslaw and crisps: the difference is in the meal, not merely the shape of the bread. Ham, two eggs and chips starts at £9.95. There is a changing specials board too. Read it before ordering, particularly if breakfast has already happened elsewhere.

A licence gives us another reason to return for lunch. Norcotts cider and West Country gins with Luscombe tonic sit beyond the tea-and-coffee options; the cider is a sensible companion to the fish-finger bap, apple alongside salty fish and tartare. For now, we finish our tea. Daisy is strongest when we want a proper breakfast or an uncomplicated lunch and the dog needs to remain part of the company. Regular opening is Tuesday to Saturday, finishing in the afternoon. Sunday roasts are offered on a changing seasonal schedule, so a Sunday visit needs a specific check. We gather the lead and leave with the rest of Heavitree still to walk.

98 Fore Street, Heavitree, Exeter EX1 2RS.

3. On the Waterfront

At On the Waterfront, our lunch depends first on finding a terrace table. Dogs are welcome here and in the bar, but both spaces work on a first-come basis; the bookable restaurant rooms do not admit pet dogs. The attractive stone arches in the photographs can therefore lead to the wrong reservation. We take a terrace table, put the dog's mat beneath it and turn our chairs towards the quay. There are heaters outside, though on an uncooperative day the indoor bar is the more comfortable possibility, subject to finding space.

The building belongs to Exeter's nineteenth-century expansion as a port. Warehouses were added to the quay in the 1830s to store goods including wine and tobacco, with further storage cut into the cliff. It is an unusually solid setting for a meal whose principal ambition is to cover as much table as possible. On the Waterfront's large pizzas are called dustbin lids, a name that at least settles any uncertainty about the mood of the place. We order a sixteen-inch Lemon Grove to share and move our glasses towards the table's edge.

At £31.95, the pizza combines roasted artichoke hearts, ricotta, sun-dried tomatoes and lemon oil. The softer cheese and artichoke appeal more to us than another layer of meat. Lemon gives the combination an aromatic direction, while the dried tomatoes contribute their concentrated sweetness and acidity. We lift a slice and fold its point inwards, keeping the plate over the table and the dog out of the calculation. Sharing is the point here. The same pizza in a twelve-inch size costs £17.95, so two individual ones cost £3.95 more than the large, shared order. The saving is modest, and a sixteen-inch pizza is smaller than two twelve-inch ones: appetite should determine whether the shared order is enough.

The kitchen is cheerfully untroubled by pizza orthodoxy. Even the Margherita uses Cheddar alongside mozzarella; another pizza puts macaroni cheese and bacon on the dough. Crispy duck with hoisin, cucumber and spring onion takes the route of a takeaway pancake. Those combinations explain whom this place suits better than a claim to authenticity could. We are here with the dog, eating with our hands and choosing what sounds good together. Anyone seeking the tightly defined pleasures of a Neapolitan pizza will have a different set of priorities.

Larger parties can divide a sixteen-inch pizza into two varieties, paying the higher price, or order a thirty-inch rectangular pizza with three choices of topping for £55. The shape matters: this is a long sharing pizza, not a thirty-inch wheel. Our table stays with one flavour and adds a small plate. Burrata with romesco and artichoke echoes the pizza, so we choose the harissa corn ribs instead, £7.95, bringing sesame and chilli to the meal. Three small plates cost £22.95, a useful alternative for a table wanting several flavours without a pizza dominating proceedings. Vegan cheese carries a supplement of £1 on a small pizza and £2 on a large one; ask for it explicitly when ordering.

Our drinks stay simple: a glass of dry white from the list rather than a sweet cocktail alongside the tomatoes and ricotta. The published wine selection includes Spanish Verdejo and Italian Pinot Grigio, alongside a much longer run of gins, rums and cocktails. There is room for a party here, and the river-facing terrace is well suited to people who enjoy watching the quayside move past. The same movement makes the table less appealing for a dog unsettled by passing feet and other animals. We keep ours close, finish the last slice and take a final look across the water. We recommend it for sharing pizza over a long, informal lunch, provided the group can be flexible about when it eats.

4–9 Southern Warehouse, The Quay, Exeter EX2 4AP.

4. The Prospect

At the Prospect, we bring the dog in from the quay and find our table in the part of the pub with wooden flooring. Dogs are welcome there, as well as outside; it is worth specifying the animal when reserving one of the limited indoor tables. The picnic benches outside lose out to a longer meal under cover. With coats off and the dog beside a chair, we look through a menu that has rather more to say about Devon than the usual line about local produce.

The first choice is the venison-and-hog lasagne, £19.50 with garlic bread. The name Elston Farm takes us inland to the source of the meat. Elston, near Copplestone, is home to the butcher M C Kelly, with its own red deer and a game larder handling wild venison from forests and estates across the region. The business supplies far more of an animal than its expensive loin. Putting venison in lasagne gives it a place at a pub table without requiring a special occasion, or a diner already convinced that they like game.

We work a fork down through the pasta, taking the layers together. Lean venison and richer pork make a sensible partnership in a lasagne, the darker character of the game given some softness by its companion. We use the garlic bread to gather the filling from the edge of the plate, then move it away from the dog's interested nose. The dish asks less of an uncertain game-eater than a venison steak: the familiar pleasures of pasta and meat sauce give us a way to discover the difference.

Across the table, a panzanella from the published menu supplies a different connection to the city. This Italian bread salad uses sourdough from the Sidwell Street Bakehouse, with buffalo mozzarella, peach and tomato. The bakehouse began in a converted office at St Sidwell's Community Centre in 2019, teaching volunteers to make bread before moving to larger premises. Bread is integral to panzanella, absorbing tomato juices and dressing; its substance is as important as the vegetables. Peach pushes the salad towards sweetness, with white balsamic and herbs alongside. At £21, it asks to be considered a main course. We share some beside the lasagne, appreciating the fruit and dressing between mouthfuls of meat. It is a seasonal choice to look for when peaches and tomatoes appear on the menu.

There are smaller commitments. A Devon vegetable pasty with apple-and-cider chutney is £10; a pork pie with pear-and-ginger chutney is £9.50. These are useful pub orders when we want to stay for a drink without spending twenty pounds on a main. A pint of Exeter Ferryman, when on the bar, is our choice with the lasagne: a copper-coloured bitter with malt and fruit in its character, substantial enough for the meat without making the entire lunch heavier. Sandford Orchards ciders offer another local route. The menus stay open a little longer: a shorter return visit with the dog need not involve another full lunch.

Outside, the quayside's old working buildings put the setting in perspective. Part of the Prospect incorporates three bays of the seventeenth-century Quay House, a transit shed whose covered frontage once stood over a dock. The water no longer reaches its wall. The filled-in dock explains the oddity of an old quayside building that now stands a little way back from the water. There are steps around and within the pub, so anyone with mobility needs should discuss access before coming; the picturesque approach is not necessarily the convenient one.

Lemon posset with almond biscuits, £9.50, finishes lunch while the dog stays beside the chair. Head chef Suzanne's menu gives this pub a stronger food identity than its waterside position alone would require. It is our choice for a leisurely lunch with recognisable dishes and specific Devon connections, particularly the game lasagne. Monday is a closing day, and Sunday food finishes at 4pm. Dog ice cream is available too, although by the time we finish the posset our companion has rather more interest in going for a walk.

The Quay, Exeter EX2 4AN.