The Top 60 Places to Eat Near Saltwater
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Rank 1. alchemilla
Modern British
Vaulted red-brick arches from a Victorian carriage house give Alchemilla its bones, while a living wall and roof garden signal that the chef had other ideas. Alex Bond's Michelin-starred modern British cooking leans hard into contrast, pairing sweet, sour, and citrus in ways that feel intuitive rather than engineered. The wine list tilts natural and slightly esoteric, which fits the room perfectly.
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Rank 2. Piccalilli
Modern British
Down an alley and up a stairs in central Nottingham, Piccalilli is a small-plates spot tucked inside a period building with exposed brick, heavy timbers, and dried flowers overhead. The kind of room that makes you feel you've found something. Three or four plates per person is the move, and the cooking keeps flavours familiar enough to trust while doing something considered with them. The wine list is short and fairly priced. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.
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Rank 3. Kushi-Ya
Japanese
Tucked behind the arch of Enfield Chambers, this compact Japanese small-plates and skewers spot holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The charcoal grill does most of the talking, turning out skewers that smell like they mean it. No bookings, so the lunchtime crowd forms early and moves fast. A courtyard terrace softens the urgency once you're in. The kind of place where the bill arrives and you quietly do the math twice.
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Rank 4. Ibérico World Tapas
Mediterranean
The dining room sits in the vaulted basement of Nottingham's old city law courts, which does give a certain dramatic quality to ordering small plates. Ibérico is a tapas restaurant with a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and its menu roams well beyond Spain, pulling in yuzu and dukkah alongside the Mediterranean anchors. Four dishes a head is about right. The crowd tends toward people who've been before and already know what they're getting.
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Rank 5. Raymond's
Modern British
Fish crackling lands first, a snack that functions as a mission statement for the meal ahead. Raymond's is a sharing-plates spot in Nottingham's Lace Market, the kind of room with counter seats, moody lighting, and a wine list heavy on by-the-glass options, as if someone sat down and ticked every box on the modern restaurant checklist. The crowd seems entirely unbothered by that, and honestly, so will you.
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A flyover and a shabby lane lead you to Sat Bains' two Michelin star tasting menu restaurant, which is either a statement of intent or a very good joke, probably both. Inside, 28 covers keep things intimate, and you can also book the four-seat Kitchen Bench in the pastry section or watch the savoury kitchen from the Tasting Room. The cooking shifts constantly, dish by dish, week by week, restless by design.
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A 16th-century farmhouse on a working 400-acre estate where the chef grew up, now earning a Michelin star for tasting menus built almost entirely from what his brother grows and raises next door. Exposed beams, brick, and the kind of provenance story that usually sounds like marketing but here is just geography. Drinks downstairs first, then up to the dining room, where the cooking is personal enough to riff on duck pancakes without embarrassment.
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Rank 8. The Reindeer
British
A village pub down a narrow country lane in Nottinghamshire, with a view over the local cricket pitch that does a lot of the decorating. The cooking is resolutely traditional, bangers and mash and Sunday roasts done with care, plus a weekly pie night whose fillings change to keep regulars guessing. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which feels about right for a place this unfussy and this good at the basics.
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Rank 9. The Martins Arms
British
The carved Jacobean fireplace in the bar is reason enough to take a seat and stay awhile. This is a traditional country pub and dining room in the Nottinghamshire countryside, doing hearty British cooking without apology. The local Stilton is the thing to order: Colston Bassett is one of only six places in the world licensed to make it, so skipping the cheese course here would be a genuine act of self-sabotage.
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Rank 10. Hammer & Pincers
Modern British
An old water pump out back is all that remains of the village forge this place used to be. Now it's an intimate restaurant in rural Leicestershire, running a seasonally driven tasting menu of ambitious, layered dishes. The beef Wellington arrives whole and gets sliced tableside, which sounds fussy but lands as genuine theatre. Boutique rooms are available if you'd rather not navigate country lanes afterward.
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American memorabilia lines the walls of this lively bar and casual dining spot on Saltergate, where line dancing nights sit comfortably alongside quiz nights and live sport on the same weekly calendar. The vibe is broadly Americana, the crowd is local and loyal, and the programming is restless enough that there's usually something on. It took the Admiral Taverns Pub of the Year at the 2025 Great British Pub Awards.
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A farmstead restaurant built with reclaimed materials from the very land it sits on, which tells you something about how the chef thinks. Jericho runs a surprise tasting menu, so the kitchen decides, and courses lean heavily on game, wood fire, and whatever the kitchen garden is doing that week. It's rural Leicestershire, deeply so, and the wine list follows the same logic: natural, organic, biodynamic.
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A former silk mill canteen beside a weir on the River Derwent, this modern brasserie has the kind of setting that does half the work. Ask for a window table upstairs or a spot on the narrow terrace and watch the water. The menu ranges wide, from wood-fired plates and pasta through to steaks, including a tomahawk built for two, so the table tends to last a while.
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A Neapolitan family runs this Italian restaurant out of a substantial Victorian building in an Anstey suburb, the contrast between the ornate exterior and the sleek, mildly glitzy interior being very much part of the charm. The open kitchen pass lets you watch the cooks, which pairs well with the kind of warm, unguarded service that makes a place feel like someone's actually glad you came.
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Rank 15. Stones Restaurant
Modern British
Floor-to-ceiling windows face the River Derwent, and a rear terrace puts you right above the water. This small Modern British restaurant sits at the bottom of a steep flight of steps off Dale Road, the kind of entrance that weeds out the faint-hearted. The kitchen cooks classic combinations with confidence rather than fuss, and the room has that easy warmth you get when the staff seem to like being there as much as the regulars do.
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Rank 16. The Bulls Head
Modern British
A full car park on a weekday night tells you something about a Derbyshire village pub. This one has built a loyal following by running tasting menus and an à la carte alongside the real ales, and by printing your name on the menu, which is either charming or slightly alarming depending on how you feel about being expected. The kitchen has genuine ambition, and the soufflés are the kind that make the table go quiet.
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Rank 17. Lighthouse Restaurant
Modern British
A self-taught chef running an intimate Modern British restaurant in the Derbyshire countryside sounds like either a love story or a cautionary tale; here it's the former. The menu swings between a full tasting format and a shorter sharing menu on weekdays, with the kitchen leaning hard into seasonal cooking and the occasional Thai-inspired detour, like a coconut and chilli broth that earns its place on the table.
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Rank 18. The Peacock at Rowsley
Modern British
Ivy-clad stone manor beside the River Derwent, with oak furniture carved by the legendary "Mousey" Thompson and antique oils hung alongside contemporary art. The kitchen runs the full range, from ploughman's lunches and afternoon tea to a proper dinner tasting menu with wine pairings, plus Sunday roasts that draw the Peak District crowd in from the cold. A Modern British restaurant with rooms, and the surrounding hills give you a reason to stay.
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Rank 19. Hitchen's Barn
Modern British
A converted stone barn on the edge of Rutland that feels like someone's particularly well-organized farmhouse, this Modern British restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and prices things accordingly. The seasonal menu changes enough to keep regulars coming back, and the front-of-house warmth is the unforced kind that's harder to pull off than it looks. The wine list matches the food's price point, which, in this economy, is its own gesture of goodwill.
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Rank 20. The Two Pigs
Modern British
The name changed from the Red Lion to The Two Pigs in 2023, and so did pretty much everything else. It's a gastropub in a Staffordshire village, doing modern pub classics with produce from local farmers and a micro-farm next door. Weekend brunches, Sunday roasts, seasonal cocktails, and bar snacks running all day give the place an all-hours, good-time quality that most gastropubs only manage for dinner service.
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Rank 21. Hambleton Hall
British
Rutland Water sits just outside the windows, which sets the tone before the food arrives. Hambleton Hall is a country house hotel dining room holding a Michelin star, where the kitchen has been run by the same chef since the early nineties, long enough to have a signature without trying. The cooking is classical but not frozen in amber, and the wine list runs to 400 bins, clearly someone's life's work.
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Rank 22. The Two Pigs
British
A snug bar, a slightly more formal dining room, and a terrace for when England briefly cooperates: this is a country pub doing what the form asks, and doing it with evident pleasure. The menu runs classic British, from Welsh rarebit through smoked haddock fishcake to pork schnitzel, and the trifle has a reputation. The same owner runs The Boat in Lichfield, so the hospitality instincts are well exercised.
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Rank 23. The Duncombe Arms
Modern British
A terrace overlooking the Staffordshire countryside and a red-brick barn converted into bedrooms next door make this dining pub feel like someone's particularly sorted country house. That someone rescued the village local when it closed, and the kitchen has since earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand turning out Modern British cooking that's hearty without being heavy. Prices stay honest, the portions don't.
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A stone former vicarage on the edge of Derbyshire, converted into a quietly ambitious fine dining room where the grounds alone are worth arriving early for. Two fixed-price menus anchor the experience, the longer of the two running through modern dishes built on serious sourcing, including game from estates you'd recognize by name. The setting has an easy grandeur that the cooking doesn't try to outrun.
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Rank 25. The Gallery Restaurant
Modern British
Oil paintings line the walls of this elegant hotel dining room on the Chatsworth Estate, and the beef on your plate likely grazed the same grounds you drove through to get here. The kitchen keeps things Modern British and unfussy, letting the estate produce carry the argument. The breads and desserts are quietly serious enough that you'll notice if you skip either.
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Rank 26. Lovage
Modern British
Beamed ceilings and exposed brick in a converted stable block, right in the middle of a market town that Michelin knows mainly for its pudding. Lovage is a cosy modern British restaurant where the team talks you through locally sourced dishes with the kind of enthusiasm that stops just short of theatrical. Classic pairings like roasted beetroot and goat's cheese keep things grounded. They run a more casual coffee shop next door, if you'd rather not commit.
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The Fischer family has been running this Edwardian manor on formal Derbyshire grounds for two generations now, which earns a certain ease. It's a country house restaurant with elegant dining rooms and the kind of service that irons its napkins. A Kitchen Bench seats you close enough to the kitchen to feel involved. Chatsworth Estate venison shows up during game season and tends to settle the question of what to order.
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Rank 28. Olive Branch & Beech House
Traditional British
Stone walls, wooden beams, and a fire that earns its keep make this Rutland village pub exactly what it promises to be. The kitchen leans into hearty British classics, sourcing locally and growing vegetables in their own garden. Confit duck, fish and chips, the kind of food you want after a country walk. Beech House, just across the road, handles the overnight question for anyone not ready to leave Clipsham quite yet.
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Rank 29. Upstairs by Tom Shepherd
Modern British
A tasting menu restaurant sitting above a jewellery shop in the middle of Lichfield, which is either the most unexpected address in the Midlands or a perfectly on-brand piece of theatre. Tom Shepherd holds a Michelin star, Staffordshire's first, and runs tight, unfussy modern British menus where each dish lands on two or three elements and earns every one of them. The room is 36 covers, warm, unhurried, and genuinely hard to book.
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Rank 30. Tom Lawson at the Psalter
Modern British
A bureau stuffed with the chef's own cookery books gives away the mood at this boutique hotel restaurant on the quieter south side of Sheffield. Tom Lawson runs a set seasonal menu, Modern British in spirit, that shifts with the market and reaches back to family memory, a cauliflower cheese that nods to his grandmother sitting alongside more classical technique. The room is warm and a little funky, the service confident without being stiff.
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Rank 31. Restaurant ELM
British
Vinyl on the turntable, retro furniture, shelves of books, and local Sheffield honey available by the jar on the way out. By day it's a coffee shop; come evening, candles appear and the room quietly becomes a set-menu restaurant serving British food that ranges from straightforwardly lovely to genuinely intricate. The kind of neighbourhood spot that doesn't need to announce itself.
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Rank 32. Rafters Restaurant
Modern British
Exposed beams and bare brickwork give this first-floor Sheffield dining room the feel of a converted loft that forgot to be pretentious about it. The tasting menu leans into modern British cooking with serious produce, and the Kitchen Bench seats you directly in front of the pass if you want to watch the work. A shorter set menu runs at certain times. The wine list is organised by style and character, which is more useful than it sounds.
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Rank 33. The Six Bells
British
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Rank 35. JÖRO
Nordic Japanese
A converted 300-year-old mill on the edge of the Peak District is a long way from a Sheffield shipping container, but the tasting menu restaurant JÖRO landed a Michelin star either way. The cooking fuses Nordic and Japanese ideas with Yorkshire ingredients, and the open kitchen means you can watch the whole operation. Rooms upstairs, two bars, and an outdoor terrace make it easy to stay longer than planned.
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Rank 36. The Boat
Modern British Pub
A Michelin-starred gastropub on a busy A-road outside Lichfield, which is either a strike against it or the whole point, depending on how you feel about destination dining. The kitchen runs a small on-site farm that feeds the menu, with local producers covering the rest, all handled with the kind of precision that makes a venison dish feel considered rather than merely seasonal. The chefs come out to explain what's on the plate, and somehow it doesn't feel annoying.
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A beautifully restored old inn sitting high in the Peak District, with an open kitchen on the upper floor and a rustic, cosy feel throughout. The menu is concise and seasonal, with enough international influence to keep things lively without losing the sense of place. Bedrooms in The Old Piggery sleep the walkers who take the nearby routes seriously, and the ground-floor rooms welcome dogs, which in Derbyshire is practically a civic requirement.
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A traditional pub in the heart of the Peak District where food waste gets fed into a machine called Greedy George and comes out the other side as compost for the kitchen garden. The team behind The George has turned sustainable pub-keeping into something closer to a vocation, running an allotment, growing produce for the menu, and finding uses for beer-line chemicals that would surprise most landlords.
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Dinner here begins with a walk through a restored Victorian kitchen garden, which turns out to be less preamble and more the whole point. Grace & Savour is a fine dining restaurant built into the walled garden of a country estate, with a long tasting menu shaped by what the soil is actually producing that week. A Michelin star and a spot on the National Restaurant Awards list. Foraging and preservation do a lot of the work on the plate.
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Rank 40. Opheem
Contemporary Indian
A self-described Brummie of Bangladeshi heritage, Aktar Islam runs this two Michelin star contemporary Indian tasting menu restaurant in Birmingham city centre more like a modern European kitchen than anything you'd expect. The space is strikingly spare, the cooking is deeply researched, and a single potato dish can involve three separate cooking methods before it reaches the table. The set lunch keeps it from feeling like a special-occasion-only proposition.
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Rank 41. Crown Wharf
British Pub
The brewery tap for Joules, Crown Wharf sits on the original site of one of their first breweries, built almost entirely from reclaimed materials by a two-man crew that kept going through the pandemic. It's a proper pub with a theatre and heritage centre attached, which is not a sentence you write every day. The Great British Pub Awards named it Overall Great British Pub of the Year in 2025, and Stone seems to agree, judging by the crowd.
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Rank 42. The Cross
Contemporary British Pub
The dining room here was once a schoolroom, and the hand bell wall lamps haven't let anyone forget it. This Michelin-starred gastropub in a restored Grade II listed inn does serious British cooking, the kind that follows the seasons closely and sources with equal care. The back room looks straight onto the kitchen pass if you want the theatre. The tasting menu is how the kitchen makes its fullest argument.
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A stone building on a quiet Staffordshire canal, The Flintlock is a proper sit-down restaurant with two dining rooms full of period features and the kind of unhurried charm that makes you linger. The chef is self-taught, which the cooking doesn't apologize for, leaning into a modern style that lets the room do some of the heavy lifting. A canal stroll before dinner is genuinely part of the rhythm here.
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Dark walls, a thumping soundtrack, and a kitchen that ages ingredients in-house set the tone at this Michelin-starred modern tasting menu restaurant in the Jewellery Quarter. Chef Alex Claridge has a reputation for cooking that surprises without showing off, pairing unexpected flavors and textures in ways that hold together. Wine flights and inventive non-alcoholic pairings both get serious treatment, so nobody at the table feels like an afterthought.
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Rank 45. Adam's
Modern New American
The art-deco dining room on Waterloo Street has been around forever, and the cocktail bar that greets you sets the tone for what follows: this is a tasting-menu restaurant that takes itself seriously without going stiff. The kitchen works modern and occasionally playful, letting high-quality ingredients do the arguing rather than oversaucing them. A Michelin star. The wine list runs deep, and the pairings will nudge the bill skyward in the most civilized way possible.
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Rank 46. The Pack Horse
Modern British
A stone gastropub on Market Street in Hayfield that walkers stumble into after the hills and rarely leave in a hurry. The kitchen runs on hyper-local sourcing, with lamb from a supplier four miles away and fish off the north-west coast, all shifting with the seasons. Open fires, warm service, real ales, and a quiz night keep it firmly a village local rather than a destination that's forgotten what a local is.
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Fourteen seats, a marble-wrapped open kitchen, and a tasting menu where every course is named after a single ingredient, which tells you something about the confidence level in the room. Kenny Atkinson's fine dining follow-up to House of Tides is a deliberately smaller, quieter thing, built around 15-odd courses of precise modern cooking. Newcastle, it turns out, can do this.
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Rank 48. Prévost @ Haycock Manor
Modern New American
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Rank 49. Deacon's Bank
Modern British
The chef's counter sits right next to the old banking vault, which is either a design quirk or a very pointed comment on where the real value lies. This Modern British restaurant in Chapel-en-le-Frith runs an ambitious tasting menu alongside a looser lunch of fish pie and grilled pork chop, and the range suits the room. A pair of apartments upstairs means you can eat yourself horizontal and sleep it off.
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Rank 50. Little Seeds
Modern British
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Rank 51. Lunar
Modern New American
The plates here are genuine Wedgwood, which makes sense given the address: a sprawling modern dining room inside the World of Wedgwood visitor complex, built into what used to be the factory canteen. The kitchen leans on prime British ingredients, there's a tucked-away bar worth finding, and a chef's table with a window straight into the action. Josiah himself would probably approve, or at least recognize the crockery.
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Rank 52. Chubby Castor
Modern British
The thatched roof and honey-stone exterior read as a classic English village pub, but the interior has gone a different direction, all smart lounge seating and glitzy finishes that ease into a linen-laid dining room. The cooking is Modern British rooted in time-honoured recipes, and the chef's experience shows in food that earns its place on proper tablecloths. A Michelin Selected restaurant tucked into the Cambridgeshire countryside, which is its own quiet kind of joke.
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Rank 53. Kynd
Contemporary British
Coal smoke and kitchen garden vegetables set the tone at this contemporary British restaurant tucked into an old furnace house on the Hampton Manor estate. It's the more relaxed sibling to the estate's fine-dining room, with open-fire cooking and produce pulled from the walled garden just outside. The wine list leans natural, biodynamic, and orange. In summer, the former greenhouse opens with its own terrace.
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The milk loaf arrives with malt vinegar and chicken fat, and the room snaps into focus from there. Glynn Purnell's modern sharing-plates restaurant sits among the glass towers of a newer Birmingham quarter, running a fluid menu of snacks, small plates, and platters that shift with what's good. The team knows the wine list well and will steer you without making it a lesson.
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Graffiti covers the walls, the music is loud, and the whole room is shot in monochrome, which is either very cool or a lot, depending on your tolerance for a statement. Inside Birmingham's old Custard Factory, this is a tasting-menu restaurant where the kitchen leans into playful, creative cooking, with unexpected flavour pairings and contrasts in texture and temperature driving each dish. The wine list is short but pours generously by the glass.
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Rank 56. Land
Pan-Asian Vegetarian
Tucked into the Victorian ironwork of Great Western Arcade, Land is a small, intimate vegetarian restaurant running a set menu that's almost entirely vegan. Pan-Asian touches show up throughout, carrot char siu sitting alongside sake lees and other quietly surprising moves. The menu shifts with the seasons, and the cooking has a genuinely inventive streak that doesn't feel like it's trying to win you over. Wine flights are available, and the service is warm without hovering.
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Rank 57. Folium
Modern British
A two-person operation in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, where one half cooks and the other runs the room with the kind of warmth that makes a small restaurant feel like a dinner party. The interior leans into neutral tones and pot plants, calm enough to let seasonal tasting menus do the talking. Modern British cooking with a personal stamp on the flavours and plating, served at lunch or in longer form come evening.
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Rank 58. Asha's
Indian
The restaurant takes its name from Bollywood legend Asha Bhosle, who is, among her many talents, apparently also a restaurateur. This Indian dining room in central Birmingham runs through the subcontinent's regions at some breadth, with tandoori kebabs as the anchor and a generous spread of vegetarian dishes alongside. The kitchen cooks with enough confidence that the menu's ambition rarely outpaces the plate.
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Rank 59. Albatross Death Cult
Seafood Japanese
The name comes from Coleridge's albatross, which is either a promising omen or a warning, depending on how you read the poem. Either way, this counter-dining seafood restaurant in Birmingham pulls you in fast: chefs, sommeliers, and servers all talk to you like they mean it. The Japanese-inflected tasting menu leans heavily on raw and cured fish, keeping preparations spare enough that the seafood does the actual arguing.
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Rank 60. Cheal's
Modern British
A model Spitfire hangs from the ceiling and Union Jacks line the curtains, so nobody's leaving confused about the theme. This is a polished modern British restaurant in a half-timbered Knowle building, running fixed-price and tasting menus built around prime British produce. The adjoining Warren's Bar does small plates if you'd rather keep things lighter, which is a genuinely useful option when the tasting menu commitment feels like a lot on a Tuesday.