The Top 33 Restaurants Near Exmoor Forest Inn

A Victorian inn sitting at the heart of its own working farm, which means the kitchen doesn't have far to look for ingredients. Expect the kind of pub food that earns its place: day-boat fish, a daily pie, proper Sunday roasts, and steaks from animals that were practically neighbours. The fire-lit lounge and eleven bedrooms make it a sensible base for walking Exmoor without having to think too hard about where to eat afterwards.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A hotel dining room perched above the Devon coast, Seacliff earns its keep with a terrace that looks straight out over the bay. The kitchen leans hard on local seafood, turning quality seasonal catch into colorful, composed Modern British plates. Service is the warm, unhurried kind you hope for in a place this size. A tasting menu with wine pairings is there if the occasion calls for it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name means "six" in Japanese, the address is number six, and the tasting menu runs six courses that change every six weeks. Restaurant Roku is a small modern Japanese dinner spot in Croyde, where the chef weaves Japanese flavors through a European framework, think tuna crudo with togarashi or shiso turning up in the pre-dessert. A three-course à la carte exists, but the tasting menu is clearly where the kitchen's attention lives.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A restored Grade II-listed pub in a tucked-away Devon village, with open fires, exposed beams, and just enough contemporary polish to keep it from feeling like a museum piece. The kitchen runs on produce from the team's own farm, hogget included, and the menus shift with the seasons. There's a tasting menu if you want the full arc, or Sunday roast if you don't. Stylish rooms are scattered around the village for those who misjudge the wine.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The tear-and-share cinnamon bun at the end of the meal is there because it reminds the chef of his grandmother's house, which tells you most of what you need to know about this intimate, one-Michelin-star restaurant in Penarth. James Sommerin runs the kitchen with his daughter Georgia, and the rest of the family fills the room around them. A surprise tasting menu changes regularly, leaning on local producers, and the whole thing feels less like dining out and more like being invited somewhere.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The winding lane through the Devon moors ends at a grand Edwardian mansion, and the dining room inside holds a Michelin star. This is country house cooking in the full sense: white tablecloths, produce foraged or grown on the grounds, and classically structured dishes that treat the ingredients as the point. Comfortable, unhurried, and unapologetically formal, it's the kind of place that makes driving down a very narrow road feel like a reasonable life decision.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A converted coal store on Oxwich Beach, with the Gower Peninsula right outside the window, sets the scene for this Michelin-starred restaurant. The chef, born in north Wales, writes menus in both English and Welsh and leans hard on Welsh producers, so the cooking has a sense of place that most coastal spots can only gesture at. Dishes are classical and composed without being fussy, flavours balanced so the main ingredient does the talking.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The blue-tiled kitchen counter is the thing to grab if you arrive early enough, which you should, because Touring Club doesn't take bookings. It's a relaxed small-plates spot in Penarth serving Modern British food with a light touch, the kind of place where Welsh rarebit makes a strong case for itself without fuss. Multiple spots to settle in, a terrace included. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the friendly room makes an hour turn into three.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The chefs greet you from the open kitchen the moment you walk in, which sets the tone for how the whole meal goes at this intimate, Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant on Kings Road. Tom Waters builds his menus around the Welsh larder, so seaweed and seafood sit alongside beetroot and beef rib, and the whole thing moves with a quiet confidence. Service is warm without hovering.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

You reach this bright, sleek Indian restaurant by climbing the stairs behind a glass door tucked between Cardiff shopfronts, which sets the tone nicely. Purple accents, exposed brick, and abstract murals line the walls. The menu covers familiar ground, lamb rogan josh and the like, but the kitchen's touch is a light hand with spicing that lets the produce speak. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the service is as warm as the food.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The restaurant's name is a Welsh word with no clean English translation, somewhere between homesickness and pride, and the cooking follows that logic closely. It's a tasting menu spot on Cowbridge Road East, drawing on local and foraged produce, some of it from the team's own smallholding. The room is small and unpretentious, the service attentive without ceremony, and the dishes tend to land hardest when they let the ingredients make the case.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Fridges stacked with ageing prime cuts line the walls of this relaxed neighbourhood restaurant inside the Pontcanna Laundry development, so the menu leans heavily into steaks and house-made sausages. The room has faux-industrial bones, the cooking is ingredient-led Modern British, and the profiteroles come finished with a Cointreau chocolate caramel sauce that makes skipping dessert feel unwise.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A light-wood counter and white surfaces give this Pontcanna neighbourhood restaurant a brightness that suits the cooking, which looks quiet on the plate but hits harder in the mouth. The menu leans on seasonal British ingredients with a real Italian thread running through it, daily focaccia included. The kind of place where the room feels relaxed and the food has a point of view, which is a harder combination to pull off than it sounds.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Pontcanna neighbourhood bistro where the blackboard changes, the natural wine list runs deep, and the cooking leans heavily on vegetables without making a fuss about it. Weekday lunches are sandwiches; evenings and weekends step up to proper plates built around what's good. Salt marsh lamb, chard, braised carrot, that sort of thing: hearty and pared back. The wines on tap draw the kind of regulars who actually read the lesser-known selections before ordering.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The sourdough comes from Ground, the team's own bakery down the street, and it sets the tone for what follows. Thomas is a neighbourhood brasserie in Cardiff's leafy Pontcanna that has quietly grown into something a local would never stop recommending. There's a formal bar for cocktails, then a choice of a cosy downstairs room or a moodier one upstairs. The kitchen leans hard into Welsh produce, Pembrokeshire oysters and lamb among them, handled with obvious technical care.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A coaching inn that's been around forever, with a glass-covered courtyard that makes a sunny afternoon feel like a good idea. Inside, the dining room runs modern and unfussy, with a seasonal à la carte and tasting menu that lean into colourful, well-composed plates. The attached deli and wet fish shop give you something to carry home, which softens the blow of leaving considerably.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The leather banquettes and attentive staff signal brasserie from the moment you sit down, and the menu leans hard on Welsh beef, with steak and ale pie on one end and a Chateaubriand for two on the other. It sits inside the Parkgate Hotel and feels the part, polished without being stiff. The Michelin Guide lists it as a selected restaurant. Save room: the tarte Tatin arrives at a size that dares you to share it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A wood-clad, firelit Spanish restaurant tucked inside a boutique hotel on Quay Street, built around an asador grill that earns its place at the centre of the room. Squid, celeriac, and rump steak all go over charcoal, and the wine list runs almost exclusively Spanish, with producers obscure enough to feel like a discovery. Grab a seat overlooking the grill or the glass-fronted wine cave, and let someone else order the boquerones with yuzu dressing so you can steal a bite.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A small Modern British restaurant tucked into a Swansea suburb, run by two chef-owners who apparently greet you themselves, which sets the tone for what follows. The menu shifts with the seasons and leans toward seafood, with an à la carte or a tasting menu if you want the longer ride. Wine pairings are priced to encourage saying yes. The Michelin Guide includes it among its selected restaurants.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Georgian manor house set in sculpted grounds above the Exe estuary, with a veranda made for a pre-dinner drink on the rare Devon evening when the sun cooperates. Michael Caines runs this Michelin-starred fine dining room, where the cooking is classical French in structure and very serious about local produce, without ever feeling like it's trying to impress you. Bedrooms are available for those who'd rather not drive home through the dark.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Animals raised on site, produce pulled from the kitchen garden, and the Blackdown Hills rolling out beyond the window. This is a proper country inn, the kind where slow-roasted pork belly makes complete sense on the menu. The cooking leans local and seasonal with enough creativity to keep things interesting, and the converted outbuildings mean you can stay the night and pretend the commute home doesn't exist.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A converted salt house in Sidford that's been feeding people long enough to earn the word "institution" without embarrassment. The dining room splits between the Abbots Den and the Garden Room, and the menu moves from small plates into straightforward, classically grounded mains. Afternoon tea is on if you're passing through, and a handful of bedrooms means you can stay and properly explore Devon rather than just driving back in the dark.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A former Georgian vicarage turned smallholding restaurant in deepest Devon, where the chef grew up and eventually came back to feed people on ingredients from the surrounding fifteen acres, pigs included. The tasting menu is unfussy country cooking explained by the people who made it, and the old house carries the kind of worn-in calm that makes you feel like you've been taken off the grid for a few hours.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A sandstone inn in a village so picturesque it feels slightly unfair to the rest of Somerset. Inside, old beams and exposed brick sit comfortably alongside more modern touches, and the kitchen's personality comes through in the kind of Modern British cooking that actually earns its rusticity. The team runs the bakery next door, and the sourdough that opens the meal makes the case early. Rooms are available for those who find leaving inconvenient.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A former village bank converted into a restaurant, and the bones of it still read clearly: high ceilings, interesting architecture, a distressed-chic dining room that somehow feels neither precious nor shabby. There's a kitchen counter if you like watching the work, and a rear terrace when Somerset obliges. The menus shift with the seasons, and seven rooms upstairs mean you don't have to rush back to anywhere.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sixteen covers in a snug Lyme Regis dining room, with a chef who grew up here and cooked his way back. The menu is Modern British with flashes of Italian running through it, unfussy and direct in the way that only confident cooking tends to be. The Michelin Guide has it selected. His partner runs the floor with the ease of someone who enjoys the work, and together they make a small room feel like exactly the right size.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant