The best restaurants with rooms in the UK
There’s a new breed of British restaurant prioritising ingredients above all else. The kitchens pickling their radishes, whipping their butter and rearing, then curing their own pork – putting provenance at the front and centre. The addition of a bedroom or two – possibly, upstairs, maybe over the road – in a lot of the cases is secondary, designed to keep on top of the demand for tables. There are, of course, wonderful British hotels with destination restaurants attached (Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons or Heckfield Place, for example), as well as pubs with rooms dishing up next-level pies and puddings. But these guesthouses centre first and foremost around the restaurant – they are the destinations that have caused hotels and inns all over the country to up their gourmet game. These are the restaurants worth planning a trip around, with beautiful bedrooms to boot.
1/9L’Enclume, Lake District
This is the farm-to-table pioneer responsible for spawning Cumbria’s Michelin-star scene. But it’s also the blueprint for restaurants with rooms the UK wide. It all began in the little village of Cartmel, in a former blacksmith’s that dates back to the 13th century, when Simon Rogan combined the idea of farm-to-fork cooking with a mad-cap 16-course tasting menu. Over the years, he has experimented with molecular techniques, but these days he focuses on a plant-first menu celebrating the best British ingredients. Everything is beautiful, considered and just a little bit wacky, with produce almost entirely sourced from Our Farm, the chef’s biointensive 12 acres. There is a theatrical performance to the pine-cured trout served on smooth pebbles, and mint chocolates that actually look like stones. Bedrooms are dotted in various medieval buildings in the village and breakfast of homemade halloumi and fermented tomatoes is served at bistro Rogan & Co around the corner.
Cavendish Street, Cartmel, Grange-over-Sands LA11 6QA; lenclume.co.uk
Ed Schofield2/9Holm, Somerset
In a little-known region of Somerset, this restaurant in South Petherton’s former bank aims to celebrate the emerging area and its beautiful dairy, livestock and growers. Really it’s a neighbourhood restaurant – with the residents of South Petherton popping in for coffee and cinnamon buns on a Saturday morning. But with a neighbourhood that stretches to diners from Exeter and Bristol willing to get in the car for a seven-course tasting menu of sea bass crudo with blood orange, smoked potato tortellini and venison with beetroot ketchup. For those travelling from even further afield the seven bedrooms are pitch perfect. In Elm, there’s a sleek four poster and an indulgent bathtub in the bedroom; in Juniper, plasterwork walls and a feature fireplace. Each one is kitted out with earthy linens, dried flower displays and across the hotel, artwork selected by chef-owner Nicholas Balfe and his wife Natali that is so well judged, guests will reconsider everything on their walls at home. The breakfast – a set menu of sorts with a simple choice of bacon, trout or mushrooms – is one of the best in the business.
28 St James's Street, South Petherton TA13 5BW; holmsomerset.co.uk
Tom Griffiths3/9Coombeshead Farm, Cornwall
The team here are constantly working towards a closed field-to-fork ethos. All meals start with the insanely good sourdough, now found up and down the country, and then the menu is set – to allow complete flexibility to the ingredients in the kitchen on any day. This might be fruit and vegetables grown in the garden alongside free-roaming chickens and wiry-haired Mangalista pigs reared on site, as well as various pickles from previous seasons. There are also five active bee colonies producing honey and beeswax used to polish tables. Guests are encouraged to treat Coombsehead as an open house – say hi to the pigs, explore the garden, join a bread-making or butchery workshop and then wake up to a breakfast of bircher, jams, curds, and Coombehead’s bacon. This is the restaurant responsible for trailblazing much of Cornwall’s now-brilliant restaurant scene.
Lewannick, Launceston PL15 7QQ; coombesheadfarm.co.uk
4/9Black Swan, Yorkshire
While the Black Swan may be housed in the 16th-century Banks family pub, this is most definitely not a place for a swift pint. Upstairs, the minimalist dining room was one of the first of its kind when in 2006 son Tommy was put in charge of the kitchen. The restaurant was awarded a Michelin star when he was still just 24 and in the years since the dedicated chef has continued to put everything back into this extraordinary restaurant. Stand out flavours include a miraculously meaty beetroot cooked in beef fat and for pudding a rhubarb ice cream sandwich. These days, it has a Michelin Green star too, for its use of the kitchen garden and there are bedrooms scattered throughout the village’s rose-covered cottages to house the diners who travel far and wide to taste Tommy’s plates. For those that can’t bag a table, try the chef’s newer, more low-key Abbey Inn overlooking the ruins of Byland Abbey five minutes away.
Oldstead, York YO61 4BL; blackswanoldstead.co.uk
Steven Joyce5/9Updown Farmhouse, Kent
This listed red-brick farmhouse is hiding one of the country’s best restaurants in a vine-clad conservatory filled with heat lamps. Most dishes come straight off the wood-fired grill: an Aberdeen angus T-bone served with morels and wild garlic perhaps, or grilled pork with chickpeas and turnip tops. Sleepovers in the main house feel like you’re staying with a friend who’s just that little bit more daring with their interiors – sitting rooms in tangerine or deep blue depending on the mood, and an additional guesthouse with a bunk bed for families in a clever combination of pinks and red. At breakfast there might be homemade rhubarb and ginger jam to spread on sourdough fresh from the original farmhouse bread oven. And all just 10-minutes from seaside Deal and its cluster of great homeware stores, independent galleries and antiques markets.
Updown Road, Betteshanger, Deal CT14 0EF; updownfarmhouse.com
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6/9Glebe House, Devon
When Hugo Guest’s parents threatened to sell their family home – at the time a small B&B – he decided to make a massive change. Moving to east Devon from London with his wife Olive and their then three-month-old baby the couple completely reworked the Georgian home. The vision for the interiors took inspiration from Chatsworth House and so the couple have injected fun colour at every turn in the form of mustard-yellow French antique beds, tulip printed wallpaper and mint-green fireplaces. Glebe House takes inspiration from Italian agriturismos and so food was always central to the mission with Hugo signing up to six intense months at cookery school on leaving his job in insurance. The guesthouse remains a family affair with Hugo’s mum Emma serving in the green-and-white-striped restaurant as guests tuck into mussels with grilled leeks, dulse and rock samphire. Glebe House is undoubtedly the lunch spot to book en route to or from Cornwall, but it’s an even lovelier spot to bag a bed for the night and enjoy breakfast of Aga eggs and still-warm frangipane pastries in the morning.
Southleigh, Colyton EX24 6SD; glebehousedevon.co.uk
Dave Watts7/9Briar at Number One Bruton, Somerset
Enter through the sunshine yellow door at Number One and you’re immediately onto a good thing. In the sitting room is a photography collection capturing Sixties London by Don Mcculin and David Bailey, and in the bedrooms, Fermoie fabrics and Morris & Co wallpaper. There’s also a slab of the best local cheddar and sparkling apple juice made at nearby The Newt awaiting guests, because Number One has always really been about the food. Initially at the brilliant Osip which has since moved down the road, and now at Sam Lomas’s Briar. Sam, most recently head chef at the wonderful Glebe House, has painted over a cool spearmint in the restaurant with a warm Trumpington by Edward Bulmer and it has shifted the atmosphere completely. The daily-changing blackboard menu is still hyper-local, but dishes of Somerset sobrasada on toast and rabbit and chickpea ragu are designed to share. This is a celebration of unfussy cooking that is full of creative flavour keeping Bruton right at the heart of the west country’s food scene.
1 High Street, Bruton BA10 0AB; numberonebruton.com
8/9Campania & Jones, London
Lots of people will be familiar with the aesthetic of this much-photographed southern Italian restaurant tucked away behind Colombia Road’s cobblestones. It was once a working dairy farm with stables and these days there’s a unique warmth to the glow inside – tables filled with diners feasting on plates of pappardelle ragu and radicchio salad dressed with anchovies and parmesan. But what many don’t know is that above the restaurant is a stunning two-bedroom apartment to rent with exposed brick walls and dark green paintwork detail. Owners, husband-and-wife duo Emma and Benito (whose parents are from the Campania region) designed the space and sourced all the furniture. In the little kitchen is an old-school gas cooker and a hamper filled with the ingredients along with a recipe for spaghetti Arrabiata for guests taking a night off from the restaurant downstairs. There really aren’t many more lovely places to wake up on a Sunday morning – pop into the flower market first thing and then listen to musicians playing on the street below with the windows flung open.
23 Ezra Street, London E2 7RH; campaniaandjones.com
9/9Monachyle Mhor, Perthshire
This pretty pink 18-century farmhouse overlooks not one but two lochs: Loch Voil and Loch Doine joined by a narrow isthmus in front of the hotel. Tom Lewis is the self-taught chef who grew up here, and while not in the kitchen any more it is his seasonal ethos that is behind the menu. Sourced mostly from the family farm there might be Scotch lamb with pomme dauphine and chimichurri, or North-Sea monkfish with parma ham and fennel. There’s now a mini Mhor empire too – with motel Mhor 84, bakery Mhor Bread and lifestyle shop Mhor The Store. Bedrooms range from cosy rooms in the farmhouse to The Trees, a dramatic cubist-style tower made up of three black geometric timber blocks. For breakfast, don’t skip the Isle of Bute smoked trout with scrambled eggs followed by a stroll in the Highland wilderness.
Balquhidder, Lochearnhead FK19 8PQ; monachylemhor.net
