Ellesmere Restaurant Guide

“Having relocated from the original site on the Wirral to rural Shropshire”, Marc Wilkinson “greets, cooks, explains and serves a range of incredible dishes in his new venue near Oswestry”: part of his home (with the address provided on booking) and now more in the format of a chef’s table experience than during his days in Oxton. “Marc is a consummate professional and never fails to impress” with his £130 per person tasting menu (with bookings released on the 1st of each month): “a truly unique dining experience unlike any other”. As yet he is unlicensed, so you can BYO! – an incredible boon with a meal of this quality.

2023 Review: Chef-patron Mark Sebastian & Michelle Fisher’s “newly decorated restaurant-with-rooms only gets better” – after more than three decades – “and is always full”, a tribute to the “high standard of its French-influenced food”. Set in three seventeenth-century cottages knocked together, it’s a “quiet place to satisfy the foodie in you”.

Stuart Collins racked up a stellar CV (via stints with Gary Rhodes, Michael Caines and Gordon Ramsay) before launching this “very intimate” fine-dining outpost, which landed like a foodie comet in this market town just east of the Welsh frontier in 2017. Still warmed by the mediatic glow of Stuart’s cameo on the Great British Menu, its classically informed cooking (FOH is overseen by wife Frances) revolves around an £85 tasting menu which now plays out over ten courses, rather than nine, making a “favourite difficult to decide” (but what matter when it’s all “simply superb”?).

Sixteenth-century inn ‘the Pant’ (as owners Brunning & Price fondly call it) occupies a substantial, “very comfortable” Victorian property a short drive outside Wrexham; and its conversion has created “a great pub: warm and bustling in the winter, loads of outside space in the summer” and offering a “reliably good beer selection” too. Given its high standards, the odd reporter this year did quibble with the food, but overall this “very busy” destination remains a “favourite year after year”.

“Adjacent to the River Dee and with decking over the water”, this “consistent Brunning & Price establishment” in an old watermill certainly has “an idyllic setting, particularly in the summer months” when you can “spend a lazy few hours just absorbing some of the good things in life”. The food (“high-quality” gastrogrub fare) also elicits positive comments but it is indeed “the location which sets it apart”.

“Almost next to Cholmondeley Castle gardens”, the ‘Chum’ is an “interesting conversion of a village school” (complete with “much educational memorabilia”) into a “quirky but deservedly popular inn” serving an “excellent selection of comforting local food”. It also “prides itself on having 366 gins at the bar” – “their own is excellent”. Top Menu Tip – “the steak-and-kidney pie is stonking, but not for the faint-hearted”.

This appealing indie café/restaurant, in a quiet side street, has a modish industrial-style interior, while the open kitchen turns out seasonal eats spanning small plates, steaks and lots of snackable ‘things on toast’.

“This excellent local trat epitomises cheap ’n’ cheerful in this increasingly foodie town” – a relaxed, decade-old Italian that combines “genuinely friendly service”, “brilliant” food and a “great atmosphere”. Even if you’re not from these parts it’s “worth travelling” for – “if you can get a table”, that is (“locals book it from week to week”).

“An interesting, well priced menu, with friendly and prompt service” continues to inspire fans of Mel & Martin Board’s converted coaching inn, by the village’s ancient church (which they launched three years ago after a £2m refit). It also has a fan in the form of the Mail on Sunday’s Tom Parker Bowles, who is in his May 2024 review approved of a “rather lovely pub, recently refurbished, and smart but not showy” (although he cautions that although it serves “what appears to be an upmarket gastropub menu… what appears is rather more cheffy… if it’s pub grub you‘re after, you’d best look elsewhere”).

“Great food, with all the elan of an Elite Bistros venue, but in a pub!” – Gary Usher’s crowd-funded boozer is “a pub AND restaurant, as opposed to a ‘gastropub’, and it does both jobs very well”. “Staff here are real stars and make everyone feel very welcome” and serve a “longer and more exciting menu than Kala and Sticky Walnut – amazing value for the creativity and quality of cooking”.

Local lad Ben Hall worked at the acclaimed Gidleigh Park, among others, before teaming up with partner Carla Cook to launch this ambitious five-year-old; in November 2022, they upped sticks from their former premises in Roushill to a larger, ex-warehouse setting on Claremont Bank in the city centre. The “really excellent food” (tasting menu only on Fri/Sat nights) remains intact at what is, for fans, “the best restaurant in Shrewsbury”.

2023 Review: “An excellent addition to the town” – this year-old bistro occupies a “quirky and enchanting” sixteenth-century merchant’s house (the old Drapers Guild Hall) that “is worth a visit in its own right” and was “once a setting for the TV film adaption of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol”. “The food is very good indeed, based on local ingredients and the menu changes regularly.” “Wine is from the long-established local wine merchants Tanners.”