Stretton, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: A “smart hotel” with its own lake set in the Staffs countryside, where the “cosy restaurant serves good value food using local produce”. Tuesday night is grill night – on other evenings steaks and pub classics feature on the menu alongside somewhat fancier fare.

A meal “certainly hits the spot” at this restaurant – part of a family-owned hotel and wedding venue that is a “star of the Shropshire scene”. Chef-owner Stuart Phillips, who trained at the Chester Grosvenor and Kensington Place, uses 50 varieties of herbs, edible flowers, fruit and vegetables from his own kitchen garden on his “well put-together menu”, along with game from the surrounding Apley estate and meat from nearby farms.

“In the middle of nowhere geographically speaking, but attentive service and innovative cooking make this a number one restaurant venue” – chef-patron Liam Dillon has transformed this former pub since 2017 into a champion of sustainability, with its own micro-farm incorporating a water treatment plant with ponds to breed trout and carp. It impresses all of the Midlands-based reporters who make the trip – at dinner there’s a short tasting menu for £75 per person or a full version for £110 per person (while at lunch, prices start at two courses for £42 for a short à la carte menu).

Opposite a leafy churchyard in a small town south of Stoke-on-Trent, this unassuming “gem” is rated on ongoing upbeat feedback from a small, dedicated fan base, praising its “fantastically skillful food with a brilliant balance of flavours”. Sophie Hardman & Jake Lowndes are celebrating their tenth year of business in 2026 and offer imaginative cuisine from either à la carte or tasting menus, the latter is £90 per person.

“Magnificent cooking” from Tom Shepherd justifies the bet made by his father four years ago when he commissioned the “smart” conversion of the first-floor space above his jewellery shop in the centre of town to accommodate a new 28-cover dining room with open kitchen to showcase his son’s cooking. Awards – including a position in the Harden’s Best UK Top 100 2025 – have followed for this “friendly, warm and unpretentious” venue, where you eat from a seven-course tasting menu of high ambition. Its ratings dipped a little in this year’s annual diners’ poll however, as a result of feedback which – though relentlessly positive – included more caveats than previously (“very good, but the very long waiting list made expectations hard to meet…”; “as popular as ever, but it all felt a little frenetic and prices seem to have risen steadily…”).