The Best British Food in the United Kingdom

A flower-covered courtyard tucked behind Sydney Street, with a lean-to glasshouse for when London remembers it has weather. Stanley's is a neighborhood restaurant in the fullest Chelsea sense: regulars who never open the menu, seasonal Modern British cooking that lets a leek or a pork chop do the talking without much fuss from the kitchen. On a sunny afternoon, the courtyard fills up fast, which tells you most of what you need to know.

Rose velvet banquettes, candelabra on every table, and a room so dim you'd miss it if you weren't looking: Kitty Fisher's is a small, romantic restaurant tucked into Shepherd Market that runs on British and Spanish instincts at once. The menu shifts with the seasons, but the kitchen's taste for punchy, carefully sourced ingredients stays put. Mayfair prices, obviously, though the room feels more like a secret than a scene.

Robert Burns used to drink here, which gives the snug's 300-whisky shelf a certain literary authority. The restaurant sits in a wood-panelled room named for the pub's founding year, complete with a Tam o'Shanter mural on the wall, and serves creative modern Scottish cooking that leans colorful and inventive. It's a proper pub dining room: atmospheric without trying too hard, and old enough that the history does most of the decorating.

A former village blacksmith's forge in the heart of Pooley Bridge, now a bistro-style restaurant doing modern British cooking with real conviction. The menu leans on Cumbrian lamb, beef, and Cartmel Valley venison, presented with enough polish to justify a tasting menu option but not so much that it feels precious. Eight rooms upstairs mean dinner can blur into a proper overnight stay.

On a clear day, the terrace here looks out over a sweep of English countryside that makes it hard to focus on the menu. This is a smart Modern British restaurant inside a Malvern Hills hotel, running both a tasting menu and an à la carte built around ingredients like Exmoor caviar and Evesham asparagus. The cooking wears its Britishness without apology, and the pace of service keeps the whole thing feeling relaxed rather than stiff.

A grand hotel dining room inside The Caledonian, where the lucky tables look straight up at Edinburgh Castle. Chef Dean Banks runs the kitchen here, trading the old tasting menu format for an à la carte that leans hard into Scottish produce, smoked lobster among the signatures. It reads like a special-occasion room without apology, which is more or less what it is.

The zinc-topped bar comes first, stocked with enough gin to keep you busy while you decide whether to stay or move through to the red-and-black brasserie beyond. This long-standing Modern British restaurant in Newcastle has been around forever and runs with the kind of quiet competence that doesn't need to announce itself. The menu leans classical and unfussy, the sort of cooking that makes you order the same thing twice.

Beef Wellington carved tableside and ice cream floats on the dessert menu sounds like a contradiction, but 45 Jermyn St pulls it off without irony. This bright, comfortable brasserie in St James's runs a menu of European and British classics, with a cocktail list long enough to make the decision genuinely difficult. The room has a quietly luxurious feel, a nod to its former life as Fortnum's Fountain, and the service is polished enough to notice without being stiff.

A snug period building on a quiet Cotswolds market town street, this neighbourhood restaurant runs on the warmth of a husband-and-wife team who seem to know every table personally. The cooking is generous and grounded in good British produce, Salcombe crab, Cornish monkfish, Orkney scallop, handled with enough confidence that classic combinations don't feel safe so much as considered. Small room, concise wine list, no pretension to speak of.

A bright, modern dining room on a quietly serious Fitzrovia street, this is the chef Ben Murphy's latest project, running the full range from set lunch to tasting menu. The kitchen leans into high-quality British produce cooked with enough precision to make a venison rump feel like an event. Ambitious without being stiff, it's the kind of place where the shorter menu at lunch is a perfectly reasonable way in.

A Victorian pub on the village green in Hertfordshire, reached by following a succession of narrow lanes until you're fairly sure you've gone wrong. Inside there's a warming fire and genuine old-inn character; in summer the covered terrace, fitted with sheepskin-lined benches for when the evening turns, is where you want to be. The kitchen does traditional British cooking with confidence, no flourishes required.

A dining pub on a village green that happens to share its postcode with the country's tallest maypole and a duck pond, which tells you something about the pace of life here. The rooms are full of beams and exposed brick, as required by pub law, but the kitchen ranges freely: dynamite shrimp and ceviche sit alongside fish and chips without anyone apologizing. Bedrooms lean pleasantly Scandinavian. Welcoming from the start.

A converted bank in the middle of Narberth that now feeds you slow-cooked duck egg and salt marsh mutton while the chef circles the room with top-ups and stories. This is a proudly Welsh modern restaurant, rooted in foraging and local produce, with the kind of warmth that makes a former vault feel like someone's front room. Occasional foraging days let you earn your dinner before you eat it.

Bare plaster walls and wooden tables set the tone at this contemporary British restaurant in Mayfair, where the chef Chantelle Nicholson runs a kitchen built around small producers, seasonal ingredients, and a genuine zero-waste philosophy. The cocktails are made from odds and ends most kitchens would bin, and the wine list is sourced from growers focused on soil health, which gives the whole place a coherence that most "sustainable dining" pitches only gesture at.

The black-and-white photographs and 1920s banquettes will feel familiar if you remember what stood here before, and that's rather the point. Arlington is a polished European restaurant in St James's where the menu stays firmly in the classics, dressed crab, chicken Milanese, a fishcake that regulars will argue about at length. The room runs with the kind of quiet efficiency that money tends to buy, and the back banquettes fill early.

A seasonal tasting menu restaurant tucked into a hotel on Camden Place, where an open fire does the welcoming in winter and bright artwork stops the spare, minimal room from feeling too serious. The kitchen leans into deep, slow flavors, the kind that come from duck leg suet pudding. Service moves at exactly the right pace, and the option to pair your way through with wine flights or beer keeps things from getting too reverent.

A country pub on the Longleat Estate, which means the game on the menu came from somewhere just beyond the window. Local ales go well with the open fire or the terrace, and the dining rooms feel genuinely cosy rather than decorator-cosy. The kitchen leans on local producers and estate meat, though haddock and chips remains a perfectly honourable order. Bedrooms upstairs if you'd rather not navigate the country lanes afterward.

A wall of more than 90 green plates is the first thing you clock in this all-day Modern British restaurant, tucked inside a former Georgian greenhouse with vaulted ceilings and whitewashed walls. The menu is short and restrained, letting the produce carry the argument. Counter seats by the windows are kept for walk-ins, and you can bring wine over from their sister Beckford Bottle Shop next door for a very reasonable corkage.

A pub sitting on the square of a small Wiltshire village, The Bell runs on produce from the vast Ramsbury Estate on its doorstep, which makes the sourcing story feel less like a marketing line and more like a geographic fact. There's a bar, a restaurant, rooms, and a café, so the place has clearly decided to handle everything. British cooking, classic in spirit, leaning seasonal.

The Guinness rarebit potato has been known to settle the question of what to order before you've even sat down. This cosy modern bistro on a student-heavy stretch of Smithdown Road runs on chatty, attentive service and cooking that's generous without making a fuss about it. Sundays bring a proper roast. The vibe is relaxed enough that no one feels like they're being watched.

The dramatically red banquettes inside this former banking hall do a lot of the heavy lifting before the food arrives. It's a French-leaning Modern British bistro on the ground floor of the Sofitel in St James's, positioned as the more relaxed, easier-on-the-wallet sibling to the Wild Honey next door. The menu leans Gallic with Mediterranean detours, and the prix fixe draws the kind of crowd that quietly congratulates itself for finding it.

Twelve seats is the whole restaurant, so booking is not a casual afterthought. Black Radish is a tiny Modern British dining room tucked inside Merton Abbey Mills, a riverside spot that has spent centuries being other things. The cooking leans on serious sourcing, with the menu shifting to whatever the chef has decided is worth getting excited about that week. The chef's table for two puts you right at the pass.

A fixed-price Modern British restaurant tucked into the heart of Norwich, where a "primo piatto" course quietly signals the chef's Italian background, brown crab risotto landing between the local asparagus and the Norfolk Black chicken. The room walks the line between neighborhood warmth and something a bit more composed, which is a genuinely hard trick to pull off. The kind of dinner where the menu has clearly been thought about.

The village of Trottiscliffe bought its own pub back from property developers, which makes Bowleys a Modern British restaurant with an unusually compelling origin story. The Yates family now runs the small dining room, turning out a concise menu of classically grounded, ambitious plates built around local produce, some of it their own. Even the butter is made in-house, which tells you something about how seriously they take the details here.

Two sandstone cottages on a Yorkshire high street that have been feeding people since before most of their diners were born. Box Tree is a formal tasting-menu restaurant where the chef grew up between Western Australia and Britain, and the menu quietly shows it, with Jarrah honey and Paddle Pop ice cream appearing alongside the kind of cooking you'd expect from a room this serious. The team pulls off warmth without dropping the white-tablecloth register.

A seventeenth-century manor house in the Kentish countryside, converted into a hotel with the kind of features that make architects slow down on country drives. The restaurant occupies a modern extension and keeps its focus squarely local, running Kentish produce through flavourful, unfussy dishes. Kent wines make a strong case on the pairing list, and there's a pub in the grounds if you'd rather start with something cold before sitting down.

Murano glass chandeliers hang above mirrored walls inside a stand at Craven Cottage, which is a sentence you don't get to write very often. This brasserie on the Fulham Pier development has a Thames-facing terrace and a menu that runs the full length of the pitch, from simple omelettes to whole butterflied sea bass. The kitchen is most at home with the classics, pie and mash included, and the produce throughout is the kind that does the talking for you.

A long counter wraps around an open kitchen where chefs work the grills in full view, which sets the tone for this small, convivial restaurant on Great Western Road. The menu leans into Scotland's larder, from coastal shellfish to foraged things, with natural wines to keep it loose. The terrace is a bonus when Glasgow remembers it has weather.

Bryn Williams's beachside brasserie sits right on the Colwyn Bay promenade, with the sea filling the windows and blue leather banquettes running the length of the room. The vibe is faux-industrial but easy, the kind of place where a relaxed lunch can stretch without anyone minding. The menu leans into local seafood, kept simple enough that the fish itself does the work. Busy enough to feel like somewhere people actually want to be.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Clwydian Range while you eat, which is a better view than most theatre intervals offer. This modern British brasserie on the first floor of Theatr Clwyd leans hard on Welsh produce, including the chef's own pedigree Welsh Black beef, which shows up in more than one form on the menu. The room is warm, the service runs smoothly, and the prices won't require a second look.

A chalkboard of daily specials and a menu that shifts with the seasons give this small Fitzrovia bistro its rhythm. It sits just around the corner from the British Museum, which brings in a mixed crowd, though the room feels more neighbourhood than tourist trap. The cooking is unfussy British contemporary, the service friendly without being performative, and the whole thing moves at the unhurried pace of somewhere that knows exactly what it wants to be.

Pewter tankards hang from the beamed ceiling, open fires flicker in the corners, and nobody seems in any hurry to leave. This West Hoathly village pub has been around forever and still feels like it belongs to the locals rather than the tourist trail. The kitchen sticks to hearty pub classics, the kind of cooking where a steak and ale pie with triple-cooked chips is exactly the right answer. Four bedrooms upstairs if you'd rather not drive home.

The animal-adorned wallpaper is a nod to Rudyard Kipling, who allegedly wrote The Jungle Book while staying at Brown's Hotel. It's a handsome, traditional hotel dining room: wood panelling, deep armchairs, and enough colour to stop it feeling stuffy. The menu leans Modern British with a Mediterranean drift, so the homemade pasta earns its place alongside the roasts. The kind of room that makes you feel you should be wearing a jacket, and you probably should.

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.

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.

An old building on Totnes High Street that has been, among other things, a cobbler's and a mayoral theatre, now doing its most convivial turn yet as a sharing-plates restaurant with a bistro hum. The menu leans on open-flame cooking and fermented flavors, and the owners are the kind who actually check that you're having a good time, which turns out to be a fairly reliable indicator that you are.

A Murano chandelier and a mounted stag preside over this hotel dining room inside The Fife Arms, where the tartan-clad staff match the cubist painted walls in a way that shouldn't work but does. The kitchen leans classical, pulling prime Scottish lobster and venison through wood-fire techniques that fill the room with a low, smoky warmth. In winter, the fire glows and the whole thing feels like Balmoral if Balmoral had better taste.

Old coaching inn beams meet clean, contemporary plating at this boutique restaurant-with-rooms in a quietly pretty Perthshire village. The kitchen leans on Scottish seasonal produce, so the menu shifts with what's good rather than what looks impressive on paper. The cosy bar keeps a respectable single malt selection, which makes lingering after dinner feel less like an indulgence and more like common sense.

Named after a Victorian courtesan, which sets the tone nicely, this contemporary British restaurant occupies a handsome Covent Garden townhouse a short walk from the Royal Opera House. The room has a cosy, bistro warmth that manages to feel both lively and unhurried. The menu keeps things short and seasonal, letting British produce do the heavy lifting without fuss. The chips, apparently, are a thing.

The panelled dining room at this Cotswolds country house hotel keeps its original bones but layers in enough modern touches that it doesn't feel like eating inside a heritage listing. The kitchen leans Mediterranean while shopping British, and the madeleines come warm from the oven at dessert, which is the kind of small thing that lingers. A drink in the sleek bar first is the right move.

A converted quayside warehouse in Falmouth where the open kitchen takes the center of the room and every dish on the set menu is named after a local farmer or place that inspired it. The chef grew up in Cape Town, so a South African note turns up occasionally among the foraged and hyper-local Cornish ingredients. The pared-back interior feels elemental rather than austere, and the glass-walled wine cellar is worth a look.

A Kickstarter-funded modern British bistro on Harborne High Street, small enough that the lively soundtrack fills every corner. The menu chases the seasons hard and keeps things unfussy, which turns out to be exactly the right instinct. Rhubarb frozen with peanut brittle and vanilla ice cream is the kind of dessert that reminds you restraint is its own technique. The room hums with the particular contentment of people who found somewhere good in their own neighborhood.

The Cotswolds mothership of the now-ubiquitous Daylesford café chain, this is where you walk through the farm shop to reach your table. Choose your room: the Legbar for charcuterie, the Old Spot for wood-roasted pizzas, or the Trough Café for something more sit-down. Everything is organic and much of it comes from the farm outside, which makes the salads, quietly the star of the menu, taste like they have something to prove.

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.

Counter seats and high-topped tables fill a converted cloth shop on the High Street, where the menu reads like a tour of north Wales without the car journey. This relaxed sharing-plates restaurant leans hard into Welsh produce, from Menai oysters to mutton belly sourced just up the road. Order à la carte or hand the decision to the kitchen entirely, which is an option more places should offer.

A bakery by day and a neighbourhood restaurant by night, Don't Tell Dad takes its name from a sibling tradition the owner would rather not elaborate on. The room has a vintage feel that suits Queen's Park well, and the menu runs from truffle and cheddar beignets through to sharing cuts of beef with bone marrow butter, closing with freshly baked madeleines. The kind of place that makes you wish you lived two streets away.

A pub sitting at the end of a quiet lane in the Lake District fells, the Drunken Duck pours ales brewed on the property to wash down a kitchen that takes the gastropub brief seriously, running to venison loin and hazelnut-stuffed celeriac alongside the bar buzz. The crowd runs to walkers who had every intention of just stopping for a pint. Boutique rooms with fell-view terraces are available for anyone who finds that plan unraveling.

A fire-roaring, eclectically decorated Yorkshire pub that's been around forever in a genuinely sleepy hamlet outside Crayke. The menu runs long and leans British, with hearty, unfussy cooking that changes with the seasons. In summer the courtyard earns its keep; in winter the bar stools near the hearth go fast. Cosy rooms upstairs mean you can order another round without doing the maths on the drive home.

Six tables in a narrow shopfront on Great Junction Street, easy to walk past and painful to have missed. Dùthchas is a set-menu dinner spot where the chefs come out to talk you through each course themselves, which sounds precious but lands warmly. The cooking is seasonal and quietly inventive, and the wine pairing leans into obscure bottles rather than safe names, which is half the fun.

Brightly colored chairs against whitewashed brick, shelves stuffed with cookbooks, and an open kitchen keeping the whole room buzzing. This relaxed Modern British restaurant on the Cornish coast is a family operation: Nigel cooks, Kelly runs the floor, and their daughter Edie lends the place its name. The food is unfussy but clearly well-practiced, built on flavor combinations that actually make sense together rather than showing off.

To get here, you drive through the working organic farm that grows much of what ends up on your plate, which sets the tone nicely. Eight is a modern British restaurant with bright, colourful interiors that feel deliberately cheerful against the Lancashire fields and Pendle Hill beyond the windows. The home-reared beef is the throughline, and the Sunday roast draws accordingly. Farm-to-fork as a concept rarely comes with this much literal farm.

The team behind The Gannet opened this friendly bistro in the same Finnieston spot, which is either a tribute to the neighbourhood or extremely efficient use of a lease. The menu moves from bar snacks and lightly glazed milk bread through to cockles and chalked-up specials, and they'd clearly prefer you started with a martini or, given where you are, a Rob Roy. The Michelin Guide has it selected.

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.

A cake trolley doing the rounds in a room of Georgian plasterwork and an open kitchen sets up exactly the right amount of contradiction. This is a brasserie inside the Francis Hotel that runs on seasonal British produce with a Mediterranean lean, sourcing its catch from a Cornish market. The menu moves with the seasons, and the counter seats put you close enough to watch the kitchen work through whatever they landed that day.

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.

A single communal table under a Glasgow railway arch, close enough to the open kitchen that the chef can tell you exactly where dinner came from. Trains rumble overhead while the menu pivots around whatever Scottish produce is worth talking about that week. The room holds a small group, which means the cooking is almost conversational. Seasonal modern Scottish, with a wine flight if you want someone else to do the thinking.

A converted barn on a working farm in deepest Cornwall, where the menu changes with whatever the land is producing that week. The dining room is unhurried by design, the kind of place that makes you slow down whether you planned to or not. Modern British cooking with a produce-led ethos, so expect the plate to look as considered as the sourcing. On-site cottages mean you can stay and do the whole thing properly.

A self-taught chef runs this snug Modern British restaurant tucked down a cobbled lane near the Shambles, where the blackboard menu shifts constantly and almost nothing goes to waste. The name maps the sourcing: fish from small boats, game from local shoots, and meat raised with some attention to how the animal actually lived. It's the kind of cooking that sounds earnest on paper but tastes like someone means it.

Twinkling lights draped over a period stable conversion on a working estate in deepest Cornwall set the scene before you've even pushed open the door. Flora is a modern British restaurant where estate-grown produce shapes a menu that moves with the seasons. The log fire does its job, and the team does theirs. Follow the estate's own directions to get here, not your GPS, unless a detour through a field counts as atmosphere.

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.

Down a narrow lane in the Ribble Valley, this stone village pub runs an open fire and antique furnishings that make the interior feel like it was assembled over centuries rather than decorated. The kitchen leans Modern British, pulling from local producers for dishes that have a bit of ambition about them. Four seats at the Chef's Bench put you in the middle of the kitchen, which is either a thrill or a lot of eye contact, depending on your disposition.

Counter seats face a fully open kitchen at this sleek modern restaurant in central Brighton, where the chefs often bring the food out themselves. The cooking draws on seasonal British produce with a creative, internationally inflected edge, the kind of menu that changes with what's good rather than what's safe. The room mixes vintage and contemporary pieces in a way that shouldn't work but does.

A pub in a Warwickshire village that was boarded up not so long ago, now running as a handsomely kept inn with rooms and a kitchen that moves between prawn cocktail and confit duck without breaking a sweat. The menu knows its British pub classics and leaves them mostly alone, then gets quietly playful when the mood takes it. The kind of place where the décor and the cooking are equally considered, and neither is trying too hard.

A thatched pub on the edge of the woods in the South Downs, run by Brighton's Gingerman Group as their country escape. The menu keeps one foot in the classics, Welsh rarebit, prawns with Marie Rose, and extends the other toward something with a bit more ambition, with the kitchen applying equal care to both. Local wines on the list, cheerful staff throughout, and a room that feels genuinely tucked away from everything.

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.

A flagstone-floored country pub with a roaring fire in winter and a terrace when the sun shows up, run by the team behind nearby Grantley Hall. The menu is a study in British comfort, braised beef and ale pie, sticky toffee pudding, trifle, all the classics done with care. Old trinkets line the walls, the room feels genuinely lived-in, and the cooking asks for nothing more than your full attention.

A country pub in a blink-and-miss-it Suffolk hamlet, sitting in the shadow of the local church and making very good use of fire. The kitchen keeps things straightforward, cooking over open flame and leaning on honest produce to build the kind of big, unfussy flavours that feel made for a pub lunch or a long Sunday afternoon. The team runs the room with the warmth of people who actually want you there.

The path to the dining room winds through a kitchen garden where lunch is already growing. Hambledon is a Modern British restaurant set inside an old English commercial vineyard, all timber and glass with the South Downs rolling out beyond the vines. The wine list starts close to home, as you'd hope, and the cooking keeps things seasonal and unfussy. Bring someone you want to impress without making it obvious that's what you're doing.

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.

A wood-fired hearth anchors the open kitchen at this Modern British restaurant, tucked into the old part of Hull among some handsome Georgian streets. The ground floor doubles as a bar and bakery; head upstairs for the rustic two-room dining room, where small plates and grilled larger dishes share the menu. Check the boards for seasonal specials, and start with the sourdough before anything else.

A surprise tasting menu in a Cotswolds market town, run by two friends who named the place after the town's original medieval name. The kitchen leans on local produce and keeps the best dishes refreshingly unfussy. The service team can actually talk you through the food, which matters more than it sounds. Go with the wine pairing if you're in the mood to commit, and you probably will be.

Racing memorabilia covers every wall of this Cotswold village pub, and if the afternoon card is running, it's probably on the TV above the bar. Settle in with a local ale and the daily lunch deal, or move through to the beamed dining room for the kind of food a pub should serve: Scotch eggs, gammon chop, black treacle pudding. The crowd knows which horses to back and which table to book.

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.

A stone farmhouse on the North York Moors that the team has turned into a small, unpretentious restaurant where the menu reads like a map of the surrounding landscape. Moorland roe deer, Whitby crab, and whatever the kitchen garden is offering all find their way onto plates that lean hearty rather than fussy. The sauces in particular do a lot of quiet, convincing work.

A glass-fronted dry-aging cabinet sits behind the bar of this nautically themed pub on the Humber estuary, which tells you roughly what kind of night you're in for. The kitchen leans into proper British cooking, with produce from their own smallholding and meats finished in a Josper oven. The cement works next door is not glamorous, but the estuary views go some way toward balancing the ledger.