Leicestershire Restaurant Guide

“Ordered too much and enjoyed it all” sums up the appeal of this Gujarati vegetarian, a Leicester institution with “lovely staff”, that opened on the city‘s ‘Golden Mile’ in 1976 and is now run by Dharmesh, son of the late founder Bhagwanjibhai Lakhani and his wife Manglaben. Top Menu Tip – book ahead for the £25 bottomless afternoon tea, hailed by Rick Stein on his BBC Food Stories show last year as an ‘Indian version of tea at The Ritz’.

2021 Review: Cyrus Todiwala OBE, the acclaimed Bombay-born TV-chef behind London’s Café Spice Namaste, has chosen a Grade II listed building in the city-centre for his first restaurant outside London; and will feature five separate areas over two floors, including a bar, casual dining and fine dining room. For the town with the biggest Diwali festival outside India, Leicester has always curiously lacked a go-to Indian dining destination – maybe this is it?

“Wonderful Keralan cuisine” – “fresh and full of flavour”; “mainly vegetarian but also excellent seafood” – is on the menu at this 20-year-old Leicester flagship near ‘The Tigers’ stadium. (It’s nowadays part of a group that now has spin-off venues in Nottingham, Leamington Spa and West Byfleet.)

“Exquisite cooking” using “quality ingredients” are the watchwords at this “thoroughly professional outfit” – a converted village forge from former Savoy chef Danny Jimminson and his wife Sandra. (This year’s biggest complaint? “We left feeling uncomfortably full. We think it‘s our age. The cooking is exquisite but for younger folks with bigger appetites!”)

With its oak beams and flagstone floors, this family-run rural gastropub between Leicester and Lutterworth continues to win a solid thumbs up from Midlands-based reporters in our annual diners’ poll. The fairly traditional, bistro-style cooking (e.g. chicken liver parfait, steak or seabass, panna cotta) is in a more ambitious mould than typical pub grub.