Looking for a gift for the foodie in your life? Buy them a dining voucher for The Great Barn, the restaurant at Suffolk’s Retreat East: for quality of both food and experience, it’s tough to beat, writes Alice Ryan

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Few places are more fittingly named than Retreat East. As you peel off the main road and wend your way through the leafy Suffolk landscape to reach it, there’s a genuine sense of escaping to the country.

A sustainable accommodation, spa, gym and dining complex, complete with onsite solar power, water well and thriving kitchen garden, Retreat East was developed from former farm buildings in Sandy Lane, Hemingstone, in 2017.

The focal point of the site, and arguably the jewel in its crown, is The Great Barn restaurant; arrive after dark and its tall windows are beacons of welcoming light, calling you up the tree-lined drive.

The restaurant's design and decor alone are seriously impressive: a cavernous space, it manages to be airy and spacious yet still warm and cosy, and the added comforts and mod-cons complement, rather than eclipse, the period features. Attentive without being intrusive, the staff too are a delight.

But it’s the menu which really marks The Great Barn out from the dining crowd. Credit goes to head chef Adam Spicer, who cut his culinary teeth at some of Suffolk’s best-loved restaurants: he was sous chef at both The Tack Room and The Jockey Club Rooms in Newmarket, then head chef at Bury’s All Saints Hotel, where he won an esteemed two AA Rosettes.

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Adam’s known for showcasing local and strongly seasonal produce in his dishes, but the veg plot, fruit trees and bountiful meadows and hedgerows at his disposal at Retreat East have seen him take his low-food-miles, high-freshness-and-flavour approach to the next level. A fan of pickling, preserving and fermenting, he uses homegrown and foraged produce year-round.

For transparency: I was first invited to The Great Barn on a press visit to sample the tasting menu. But it was so good, I returned within the month as an unannounced, paying guest - and everything was just as exemplary the second time around.

Current highlights of the seasonally shifting tasting menu, a competitively priced £69 per person for seven courses, include the snacks, a set of five small plates presented together for sharing: the parmesan gougeres, plump with whipped cod’s roe, are rich little mouthfuls of heaven, and the soy-soaked, sesame-crusted Dingley Dell pork kebabs are melting in texture, punchy in flavour and seriously moreish.

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While veggie courses have upped their collective game in recent years, on an omnivorous tasting menu they can often be excluded or an afterthought - but Adam’s combination of fresh fig, tomato raisin, salted candied walnuts, pickled grapes and nasturtium flowers is a star dish, balancing sweet and tart to masterful effect.

Special mention also goes to the salted caramel tart, served with milk and whey sorbet and a sourdough macaron filled with carrot jam; Adam is striving for a zero-waste kitchen, so, as he told us when delivering and talking through the courses, both the macaron and jam recipes were developed to avoid leftovers.

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The drinks list, which has a notably good selection of British wines, is big enough to be interesting yet small enough not to boggle. Even the coffee and petit fours - which include the zingiest little jellies - are best in class.

Even on a wet winter’s weeknight, the restaurant was pleasingly buzzy with diners. And on our second, Saturday night visit - I brought my parents as well as my husband this time, knowing they’d love it too - every table was full and a solo singer/guitarist was providing an atmospheric soundtrack.

If you’ve got anyone on your Christmas gift list that’s a bonafide foodie/already has everything else/is tough to please, treat them to dinner and drinks at The Great Barn - it can’t fail to impress.

* Gift vouchers can be purchased for afternoon tea, a three-course lunch, the tasting menu and monetary amounts at Brick Kiln Farm, Sandy Lane, Hemingstone, Suffolk, IP6 9QE and retreateast.co.uk

* Pictures by Emma Cabielles