Chipping Campden, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

This “unpretentious but good restaurant” serves “outstanding food for the price – much cheaper than establishments where the food is nowhere near as good”; “service is very friendly and correct”, too – which indicates that a change of ownership a couple of years back has failed to dent a consistent performance stretching back over two decades. The premises was originally the workshop of furniture designer George Russell, remembered in the name. Top Tip – “great fish ’n’ chips are found at the rear of the main restaurant” (under the same ownership).

2024 Review: James Martin is the latest in the line of c’leb chefs to have his name over the door of the barrel-vaulted dining room of this historic Tudor coaching inn (which accommodated both Charles I and Oliver Cromwell at different times during the Civil War). Iconic Luxury Hotels Group (who run Cliveden and Chewton Glen) have managed the property for some time, and pre-rebrand the feedback continued the downbeat tenor – “such a disappointment…”, “trading on its name and reputation” – of recent decades. Here’s hoping James can bring some of the magic here that’s created in Chewton Glen and that this fine space finally starts to live up to its potential.

Owned by the nearby Donnington Brewery – a “popular, comfortable, attractive and welcoming” roadside inn with five bedrooms and a rangy garden in a “very picturesque” setting. The classic British cooking features a generous dose of grilled meats and game. While, for the odd reporter, it’s “OK but not exceptional”, for fans it “achieves all it sets out to do”.

2023 Review: A “country house atmosphere”, “excellent service” and “delicious food” win praise from fans of this “beautiful” Cotswolds hotel – owned by greetings card mogul Andrew Brownsword – and it “should please every romantic”. Ratings were dragged down, though, by other reporters who feel that the house is “lovely but tired”, while “the food is good-ish, but certainly could be better”.

“Traditional pub/small country hotel with nice touches”, nine miles south of Stratford, where the northern Cotswolds intersects with Shakespeare – you’ll find “very good local real ales plus superior pub grub, friendly staff and good-value set lunches”. It’s owned by journalist Andrew Knight, who ran both the Telegraph and Times newspaper groups.

“Really deserves to be up there with the best” – a “very attractive” restaurant-with-five-flashy-rooms set in Georgian premises, and luring diners to this quaint market town betwixt Stratford-upon-Avon and Chipping Norton. There’s considerable flair to the British cooking (they offer à la carte or a tasting menu), which nods to honest produce like trout and quail.

2022 Review: On the banks of the Avon, this riverside eaterie boasts an excellent terrace overlooking a scenic Saxon bridge. It serves a modern bistro menu, with char-grilled steaks the prime attraction.

This “wonderful old Cotswold inn” has been “beautifully renovated by the Daylesford owners” who took over in mid-2021, and now features stately equine paintings and lemon trees in the foreground of its mullioned windows. While it’s “larger and a bit more of a machine since becoming part of the Bamford empire”, the atmosphere is “lovely” (not least in the courtyard garden) and on the food front it is seen as “reliable”, with much sourcing from its famed sibling Daylesford Organic, and a crowd-pleasing menu of pub classics, wood-fired pizzas and fancier seasonal dishes.

2024 Review: “The Fox has had a major makeover since the old days when it had the ambience of a venerable Cotswold pub” – as you’d expect since the July 2022 takeover by Lady Bamford and her Daylesford empire. Some old timers feel “the money lavished on its gentrification has not resulted in improvement”, although they concede the result is “very comfortable” and deliver a thumbs-up to its selection of posh pub grub (pizza, steak, burgers and Cornish fish for the most part). In early 2023, Giles Coren declared himself a fan too, even if there was nowhere close to park that wasn’t already taken by “gleaming Land Rovers and Porsches, piled three deep in the narrow lanes and stacked on pavements”.

Highly rated village pub on the edge of the Cotswolds from Richard & Solanche Craven where “originality and local resourcing are dominant concerns” – “Richard’s cookery is always spot-on, and his love of game shines through in the fantastic dishes he serves up”. In late 2025 the couple launched a second venture in the village: a daytime bakery, ‘Ferment & Flour’, that turns into ‘Ricardo Bastardo’s’, a trattoria using English produce, in the evening.

“Comfort through and through” helps characterise this luxurious Cotswolds retreat – a “lovely building and grounds” with a “gorgeous” elegant interior. Chef Charles Smith provides “superlative presentation, taste & seasoning, with every element of each dish perfectly prepared”. from a nine-course menu in the evening for £130 per person. (There’s also the simpler Dining Room where you can enjoy high quality but more straightforward dishes).

2022 Review: Limited but upbeat feedback on this relatively recent (2019) addition to the well-known Cotswolds manor house, with Charles Smith delivering a nine-course tasting menu for £95. Fans do say it’s “wonderful”, but we have to leave a rating till we have a few more reports.

The cornerstone of Lady Bamford’s organic empire, this farm shop and café (juggling Michelin Green Star dining room ‘The Trough’; pizza and small plates joint ‘The Old Spot’; and ‘The Legbar’ for snacks), “remains a modern oasis amidst all the pubs serving the same menu” in this bucolic corner of The Cotswolds. It “can be a bit haughty” given its Chipping Norton set clientèle (and it remains “pricey”), but then again “perhaps the greatest plus is people-watching and seeing how the other half sometimes behave!”.

“A wonderful outlook”; that it’s “convenient while attending the theatre”; and that you should “book early if you want a riverside view from your table”, are undisputed points regarding the RSC’s top-floor dining room. More positive reports say that it has a “nice menu” and that “the food quality has improved recently”. Others, though, continue to find it “all round disappointing”, with “function-style fare” in a room that’s “drab” if you don’t get one of the good seats.

“Excellent game – particularly venison, cooked to perfection over an open flame” – is the prime attraction at this Grade II listed building, which was standing in Stratford when Shakespeare was a boy. Wild-food specialist Mike Robinson presides over the kitchen, where game from their own estate and produce from their own botanical and herb garden is cooked over charcoal or wood (mostly oak and elder). Top Tip – “we’ve had Xmas lunch here for the last few years: always wonderful!”.

“Everything is cooked to order” using “first-class local produce in wonderful flavour combinations” by chef-patron Gus Ashenford, who trained under the late Michel Roux senior and once cooked for then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Kremlin. He took over this former village tea shop with his wife Kate in 2003, and fans reckon it’s still “the best restaurant for miles around”.