Flitwick Restaurant Guide

“All food pubs should be like this!” – according to fans of this “perfect pit stop” on the outskirts of town. “You can’t fault the intent or enthusiasm of the service and the food, if unadventurous, is very decent”.

2021 Review: This former ballroom gains most praise for its “great breakfast/brunch” that makes “a brilliant way to start the weekend, with lots of free top-up coffee and newspapers to read”. In addition to “the best brews, home bakes and bagels”, there’s also a full dinner menu featuring sustainable local produce.

2021 Review: Afternoon tea is “a real treat” in the “wonderful and friendly surroundings” of this country house hotel and spa, whose claim to fame is that it appeared in ‘Four Weddings’. Reports of more substantial meals here are more up-and-down.

2023 Review: This village pub-with-rooms just off the A1 offers “attractively presented food” on a menu which is “a cut above standard gastropub fare” – best enjoyed in the “new outside dining area, which in summer evokes a lovely Mediterranean feel”.

This “very comfortable” 15th-century farmhouse half an hour from London makes an ideal setting for a hotel restaurant with a “lively, vibrant atmosphere”‚ “keen and attentive staff” and “plenty of traditional dishes” on its menu. A meal here is usually “enjoyable”, if not gastronomically distinguished.

“Stunning tasting menus” prepared by chef Steven Barringer provided a couple of reporters’ best meal of the year at this “intimate dining room” – a high-ceilinged, midnight-blue room on a road into the town. It’s sign bills it as a ‘Relaxed Fine Dining Restaurant for Everyone’, inviting passers-by to ‘Come in and enjoy our tasting menus’: but you’d have to have a little time on your hands, with the options being either five or seven courses, starting at £70 per person for the former.

Two minutes from the station, a scion from the dynasty behind the famous Brilliant Indian restaurant in Southall has spread her wings to open a 150-cover venue in the shiny new Unity Place development in late 2023; dusting off some of her family’s oldest recipes (and there’s an in-house microbrewery too). No survey feedback as yet, but in her June 2024 review, The Guardian’s Grace Dent declared it one of the best things to have happened to Milton Keynes in ages – “absolutely charming” once you leave the exterior streetscape behind, with “light, thoughtful cooking that determinedly sets out to incapacitate you, with lovely, kind service”.

“A top-notch restaurant in a pretty standard pub” – fans feel “the always excellent food deserves a better location” than this venue on the edge of the Common, run by local lads Matthew Reader (chef) and Michael Singleton. “West End-quality cooking and ingredients mark out the tasting menu” or you can go for the ‘Pub Sharing Menu’: “a short list of daily specials and little sharing plates, fairly priced in light of their high quality”. “Staff are knowledgeable and the dining room feels spacious, despite it being quite small”.