Derbyshire, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: This “old manor house” handy for Chatsworth (and “not to be confused with the Peacock Inn in nearby Bakewell”), may “feel old-fashioned”, but its “great food and interesting menu” (from tasting menus to more “relaxed” options, both taken in the “fine dining room”) make it “a pleasure” by all accounts. Local ingredients (beef and lamb, say) are sourced from the Haddon Estate on which it sits.

2022 Review: This “lovely gastropub” on the Duke of Devonshire’s Chatsworth estate gets mostly positive feedback for its “good food and real ales”. There’s sometimes a perception, though, that “it falls short” of its potential: “the cooking was fair, but it could be so nice here”.

2023 Review: “The days when this was a pub have long gone: it is an unashamedly ambitious restaurant which charges a full price for some very good cooking” – so say fans of this Peak District gastropub near the Dove Valley, who say “the chef knows what he is doing, and as long as you can afford it this is one of the best places to eat in the Peak District”. William Sitwell of The Telegraph paid it a visit in September 2022 and gave a similar but more nuanced view: the “cooking really is excellent and delicate with clever flavours” and “there is talent and charm by the bucket-load”, but he felt the dishes on the menu were presented and served in tiny portions, and he was encouraged to think of them as tapas. He declared, they “are the most un-tapassy things I’ve ever seen”.

2022 Review: A collaboration between Sheffield cook Richard Smith, his restaurateur wife Victoria and the award-winning craft brewers Thornbridge; “creative fish dishes” feature alongside meats – all well-singed on the fancy Bertha indoor charcoal oven – and the “great location” (skirting the Peak District) makes it particularly “good for outdoor eating”.

“Pleasant old pub, with a modern dining room at the rear, in the Derbyshire countryside near Ashbourne”. “Very competent” cooking emerges from the kitchen of chef Gareth Ward, “including top-class fish (from the same source as sister establishment The Cow at Dalbury) – not often do you find both turbot and halibut on offer alongside good-quality local beef and lamb”.

“Up some stairs so a bit unassuming from the outside” – this fixture of Nether Green is a well-known Sheffield destination and once inside is “smartly-decorated with effective ambient lighting”. There was a changing of the guard in 2024, and it’s now wholly owned by co-founder and sommelier Alistair Myers with Dan Conlon as head chef. One local notes that “it’s recovered from the loss of one of the original partners and is back to its superb best” with a “very professional approach to food and service without being pretentious”. There’s a range of menus (of four, six and ten courses) – “the food is beautifully presented” and “of the highest order”.

“What a stunner” – this “hidden gem in an old brick building on an unlikely side street” near the M1 serves “fabulous, beautifully composed” dishes in a “slightly playful style – a simple description defies the complexity of the cooking” – from chef-patron Nick Gillespie which “rivals and beats better-known names”. His very individual meals are complemented by an “extraordinary drinks list” and an interior which mixes untreated oak table tops with black granite.

2022 Review: No feedback as yet on this brave September 2020 opening – a tiny, 8-seat chef's table restaurant (all seats are at the counter) with an ever-changing and affordable tasting menu (7 courses for £30 on opening) from chef Luke Reynolds. Reports please!

The “unbeatable” combination of “delicious food, good menu options and excellent service” “never disappoints” at this modern British outfit in the Peak District. Chef-patron Lee Smith grew up in nearby Mansfield and made his name cooking at Jersey restaurant Samphire before crowd-funding his debut here in 2020.

This “superb country-house restaurant-with-rooms is a real delight”, with a “small-but-perfectly formed à la carte menu”, “professional and friendly staff”, and wines selected by sommelier-owner Alistair Myers – set in a “peaceful village in the Peak District”, it is an “offshoot of the venerable Rafters in Sheffield”. Last year Myers acquired the Old Eyre Arms in Hassop, an ivy-clad pub he passed regularly on the road between the two Rafters.

“In the middle of nowhere but definitely worth the journey” (even on a “very wet, very dark winter’s night”), Britain’s fifth oldest pub – formerly ‘Ye Olde Bull’s Head’, which was brought back to life by current owner Raab Dykstra-McCarthy, having fallen into disrepair in 2007. By all accounts, the 12th-century inn is a “special place for exquisite food” (“small and large plates eaten with a great view of the countryside”), and even if you go on “pie & quiz night, when pies dominate the mains”, all the cooking is “faultless”. Bonus points for the “well-spaced tables and calm atmosphere, so you can have a good conversation without having to shout”. They also have five bedrooms and a cottage if you wish to avoid a repeat of the “testing” journey by night.

2023 Review: “Nice, if somewhat out-of-the-way, neighbourhood-style spot serving small plates and good wine”, outside Sheffield – a bar / kitchen and shop that started life with sell-out pop-up dinners. Its cuisine was given a strong plug by The FT in early 2022.