Kenilworth, British, Modern 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!!”.

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: 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: 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: The oak-panelled dining room at this Lutyens-style Relais & Château spa hotel makes a suitable setting for chef Paul Evans to showcase fresh produce from the hotel’s long-established kitchen garden. Long-serving chef-director Simon Haigh oversees the Eden hotel collection’s culinary offering from this flagship restaurant.

2022 Review: “A real gem in our local area” – this branch in the stylish, seven-strong Warwickshire-based 'Lovely Pubs' group has a lot to recommend it: “service is on the right side of friendly and very attentive”, they serve “great pub food, but restaurant quality” (including “fantastic seafood platters”), and if you stick to the main bar downstairs, there's plenty of atmosphere too.

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).

2022 Review: With its “lovely setting (indoors or outdoors)” and “nicely priced menu” of dishes from around the world – including a selection of “fantastic” small plates to share – this 200-year-old country pub with a contemporary brasserie extension is a useful option near Stratford.

This half-timbered town-centre fixture is useful for a “consistent offering” that includes “good-value lunch and pre-theatre menus”. “First ate here in the mid-80s with a Sixth Form school trip – it was good then and still is”.

Game guru Mike Robinson’s “lovely, spacious” Shakespearean-era beamed dining room in the “very smartly renovated Indigo hotel”; “head chef Greg Newman has revitalised the venue since arriving in 2022” and the food (“very generous, almost excessively so, portions of locally sourced food, with a particular emphasis on game and wood-fired cooking”) comes with “lots of flavour”.

“The location is great, the staff are helpful and a good ambience is generated by the pre-theatre buzz” at the RSC’s in-house top-floor venue. Food-wise, “there are better places in Stratford for a pre-theatre meal”, although some reporters reckon “the standard of cooking has improved” and it’s now “worth a visit even if you’re not going to the theatre”. Top Tip – “book early enough & you’re more likely to get a coveted window table overlooking the river and swans”.

“Just sit back and enjoy the spectacular cooking that comes from a passionate chef’s imagination… and Paul Foster’s imagination is worth the journey for an evening’s adventure in wonderland!” – This “rather quirky restaurant” in a timbered building is “more comfortable” after a recent renovation, and “the location close to a number of historical Stratford sites also adds to the pleasure of dining there”. “Dinner is tasting-menu only, but at an amazingly good-value price”; and “it’s a testament to the standard of cuisine that despite opening only a few years before Covid it survived and has now expanded to provide a chef’s table and cookery school”.

“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 year-old operation in a 200-year-old High Street building from the ‘Yummy Brummie’ chef serves “typically delicious Glynn Purnell food” – “well-cooked, high-quality versions of (often) familiar pub dishes” – and is already tipped as “the place to go to in Henley”. Several reporters point out that “the garden (weather permitting) and pub areas are preferable to the main dining room”, which “can be noisy”.

“This must be the most ‘undiscovered’ fine-dining restaurant in the West Midlands”, say fans of this yearling from locally born and trained Rob Palmer, formerly head chef at Hampton Manor, whose debut as patron is a 26-seat open-kitchen venue in a former computer game shop. “Food and service are first-class”, and if it’s “a little pricey, it’s worth it”. In the evening, the five-course menu is £85 per person; or there’s a seven-course option for £99 per person.

2022 Review: In a refurbished eighteenth-century boathouse (hence the name), this “excellent riverside bistro/café” delivers a “high-quality fish and seafood menu” – plus airy views of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from the balcony.