Nailsworth, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: Now that Wild Garlic nearby has converted into rooms, this ambitious and quite well-known venue is Matthew Bearshall’s main operation, wherein all guests enjoy an eight-course tasting menu in a single sitting nightly. It has a hard-to-obtain AA ranking of 3 rosettes, but we didn’t receive reports on it this year, so have left it unrated.

Long-running Cotswold spa hotel (incorporating a 14th-century tithe barn) whose two dining options are led by the Brasserie, which is “highly recommended” for an “enjoyable meal, full of flavour – the hardest part is deciding what to order”. The Hive café/cocktail bar serves an array of small plates, and there’s a 220-acre estate to explore – much of it rewilded in recent years. Top Menu Tip – “cheese soufflé, one of the best ever”.

This “very special pub in the gorgeous Slad Valley” combines “brilliant cooking” with “an olde worlde country feeling” – it was “Laurie Lee’s hangout and he’s buried in the churchyard opposite”. Owned and run for more than 25 years by the sculptor Daniel Chadwick, it offers a “delicious menu that ranges lightly across influences (Modern European? Modern British? Does it even matter?)” – “every single dish, from olives and charcuterie through to a large plate of perfectly cooked lamb with root vegetables is spot-on” (“we overheard a couple saying they’d driven down from Manchester, which was both insane and understandable!”). Top Menu Tip – “skate with cockles and wild garlic in cider sauce” (Laurie Lee’s Rosie would have loved it).

“Wonderful... imaginative... loved chatting to the chef” – Ricki Weston and his team maintain the renown of this well-known dining room, where fans applaud “unusual combinations, flavours to savour and the lovely venue”, all in the “beautiful and relaxed location” of this Cotswolds manor house, dating from the early 1800s. All reports are fundamentally very positive, if sometimes with the caveat that “standards can be a bit up and down”. You choose either a six-course meal for £145 per person or a nine-course menu for £175 per person.

2022 Review: The more informal dining option at this luxe Cotswolds country-house hotel, with an elegant grey colour scheme and a garden for summer months – the British-slanted menu offers “tasty food” in “good portions”, drawing on fresh produce from the kitchen garden.

2023 Review: “Excellent food” and a “lively atmosphere” can be found at this brasserie set in the Corn Hall covered market in the centre of town, that has developed over 15 years from a deli and was formerly known as Made by Bob… although the founder is James Parkinson.

“What a romantic place to spend the night and for dining!” – this “very comfortable” Relais & Chateaux property has “links to Henry VIII [who stayed here with Anne Boleyn in 1535] and such well-preserved interiors”, which all help contribute to the “memorable experience” of “splendour and warmth” that one might expect in such quarters. “Service is good and staff are friendly and helpful” too in this “very comfortable establishment”. Culinary achievements have been on the up here in recent times and one diner notes “dramatic improvement since a previous visit over 6 years ago… the venue used to be the highlight with links to The Tudors etc and such well-preserved interiors… now the food and service are really starting to catch up!”

“My wife and I use this as an excuse for a weekend in Cheltenham once a year!” say fans of this long-established and traditional temple of gastronomy, run by David & Helen Everitt-Matthias since 1987, for which they were amongst the few UK restaurateurs to hold two Michelin stars (which were awarded from 2000-2019, after which they were downgraded to a single star). Fans feel that “the standards here remain as high as ever with cooking that’s innovative (petit fours are always a highlight!)” and “exceptional”. But it was a mixed year in our annual diners’ poll, with some downbeat feedback from former fans (“I have had some fabulous meals at Le Champignon Sauvage, but this meal felt a little tired and I left unlikely to return. Sad because the restaurant has been an icon over the years with exciting, cutting-edge food”). Helen presides over the staff and most accounts say she has been “her usual charming self” but one or two diners felt service “made us feel like intruders”. The “low key and quiet dining room” has always received a mixed press – to critics rather dull, but to fans “comfortable” and “restful”.

2022 Review: “A great pleasure that this fine old inn was rescued from dereliction pre-pandemic by the Lucky Onion team”, a design-led Cotswolds operation. “Food has improved considerably and is well-sourced and often original”, with a “good ambience” and “charming stuff” ensuring that the establishment “works well all round”.

“You feel exceptional” at this “comfortable”, “romantic” and smartly modernised Georgian-era hotel with 18 rooms, where the dining room has a striking glazed addition and whose kitchen has now combined the talents of Jake Simpson (ex-Bocca di Lupo) and James Erasmus (ex-Ledbury & Harwood Arms). Regular supper clubs supplement the à la carte menu that’s more luxe brasserie than it is ‘fayne dining’ and is sensibly priced, too. (Its sibling pub, the Potting Shed, is just across the road.)

“This welcome new restaurant in a former Cornish pasty shop” from local chefs Sam Edwards & Jak Doggett (who previously ran the Firehouse at Upton) offers “well sourced, original dishes” – “and there’s a strong sense that the chefs actually enjoy cooking”. “This is not conventional ‘fine dining’, but it’s very good food, nicely served, at a very reasonable price”. Top Menu Tips – “curry crab fried rice and a fine pork chop with crushed celeriac, prosciutto, and cavolo nero were excellent”.

“Refurbished and reopened by new owners last year, and a great success” – Tom Noest & Peter Creed (owners of Sherborne Arms and the Bell Inn at Langford) relaunched this central gastropub in 2024 and “there is a ‘pubby’ bit and an eating part with a similar feel (woody, cosy and convivial)”. “The cooking is interesting and ambitious, going beyond just gastropub favourites; and service is invariably friendly, helpful and efficient. It’s pretty well everything you want from a neighbourhood restaurant. I just hope Giles Coren’s recent review doesn’t spoil it!” (In his March 2025 review, The Times’s reviewer dubbed it “another glorious, unbeatable food pub… not too poncey, not too pleased with themselves, expressing the right way forward for pub food in a post-pickled eggs and pork scratchings world”).