Coventry Restaurant Guide

“In the Premier League of food pubs”, this “beautiful old building with a pleasant garden and an intimate atmosphere” offers highly ambitious “fine dining” food that’s both “delicious and prettily presented” from Adam Bennett, formerly head chef at the grand Simpson’s in Birmingham (a sister venue also owned by Andreas Antona). The cooking is “very well executed, while service combines the professional with the friendly”. “Prices are inevitably rising, but it’s always good value” and “still the local top restaurant” – “there’s nowhere else we prefer to go… after 125 visits and counting!!”.

2023 Review: “A great surprise! An authentic Italian restaurant with a broad menu of very good food and wine” – “delivered with panache and generosity”. The “beautiful and romantic decor, with cherry trees garlanded with tiny lights” only adds to the appeal.

2023 Review: “The epitome of the proper French bistro as you would have found in France 25 years ago”, owned by acclaimed butchers, Aubrey Allen. “Pascal the patron excels at providing excellent meat and fish dishes that are always reliable, and service is friendly even when they are packed!”

2021 Review: “Pleasant and friendly” venue off the main drag: modern British dishes are “clearly made with both love and knowledge” in the semi-open kitchen, and “it’s good to interact with the chefs as they serve a course”; reasonable prices too.

2022 Review: It’s “nice to eat outside by the canal on a sunny day” at this well-run casual spot, with a useful menu of grills and sarnies.

2022 Review: This former fishmonger, butcher, casino, tailor etc. is acclaimed by locals for its “perfect fine dining in an intimate setting”. After pandemic lockdowns, it’s “back with a subtle but impactful makeover and a great new tasting menu” – now the only option, and ringing in at £65 for six courses.

2022 Review: Hilary & Barrie Cload's homage to Royal Thai cuisine (est. 2004) enjoys a “very pleasant” art gallery setting, and its “wonderful, beautifully presented” food just “never disappoints”; they also do a “great deal involving ‘lunch boxes’ which are delicious”.

Stop Press – in February 2023, ex-Simpson’s head chef Matt Cheal closed down his popular Henley-in-Arden venture, which was too small for his planned expansion, and upped sticks eight miles down the road to Knowle High Street, where he now co-runs things with the manager of the Jacques fine dining restaurant which previously stood in the new location. According to early reports, “the exceptional quality of Cheal’s food, not up till now as appreciated as it ought to be, has not deteriorated in its relocation”, while the new space – a former bank with a posh cocktail bar – is “comfortable” (if “a little too glitzy” for some tastes).

“A unique setting in a building in the garden area of Hampton Manor, and a dining area that’s spacious and modern and crisp” both help inspire a wave of superlatives for this hip yearling, built into the walled Victorian garden of Hampton Manor (and, according to The FT in April 2023, an ‘epicurean delight’ that’s already ‘a byword for chic sustainability’). It didn’t win top ratings in our annual diners’ poll due to the odd accusation that “it may have grace, but definitely lacked flavour! (the surroundings were stunning but the food was not worth the trip”). That’s very much a minority view of chef David Taylor’s cuisine, though – more commonly it’s acclaimed as “an exceptional dining experience with a 15-course tasting menu for £155 per person made up of finely judged, precisely prepared, often original dishes” (“modern British cooking at its best – the mushroom broth was my favourite dish of the year”).

This “atmospheric restaurant” serves “excellent, very tasty and well-presented dishes” cooked over fire – appropriately in an old Victorian furnace house in the walled garden of Hampton Manor (“close to Grace & Savour and a short distance from the Manor itself”). Head chef Stuart Deeley won MasterChef: The Professionals in 2019.

“Creative and interesting chef” Gerald Maguire is behind this idiosyncratic townhouse indie, whose website baldly announces that its “aim is to improve your life, not f*** it up” via surprise Spanish food; there’s “no menu, you just eat the six courses he puts in front of you and relax and enjoy with a glass of one of his recommended wines... bliss”.