Kingston Upon Hull Restaurant Guide

Set on the site of the medieval Dunswell Forge – and featuring a maze-like interior packed with thrifted curios – Hull’s first vegetarian restaurant has been marching to the beat of its own drum for over 25 years. Highly unusually, the “unique” concept it espouses means that the “menu is set by the first booker for that day”, meaning that you might turn up to find a spread of “great” Cajun dishes, but it could equally well be Mexican or Japanese. Another oddity: the starters are ferried to the table, whereas mains are served as an all-you-can-eat buffet.

2023 Review: “Good food overlooking the marina” is reported in all accounts of this swish contemporary Indian. Even someone who feels its expensive-looking styling is “all a bit too grand for its own good” says “the food is well cooked and comes in generous portions”.

2022 Review: “Amazing breakfast” and “great coffee” keep the regulars coming back to this all-day café “with gorgeous views of Hull Marina”. “The chairs are a bit on the wonky side, but that definitely adds some quirky charm”. Top tip: “the chorizo ragu with fried eggs”.

2023 Review: This “very good fish restaurant backing on Beverley railway station” (it occupies the old waiting room) was opened by chef-owner Tina Cerutti in 1989; she still runs it with her brother Tony, who closed the Hull branch in 2019. With roots in southern Italy, the family have been a fixture of the Yorkshire dining scene for 65 years.

2022 Review: “Vaut le voyage!” – Julian & Rieko Ognio-Stamford's smart Japanese first-floor dining room is something of a rarity in these parts, turning out “exceptional fresh sushi” and sashimi, alongside “generous portions” of “cuisine with a Yorkshire twist” (think pork loin and beef).

2022 Review: John Robinson’s restaurant-with-rooms again wins very consistent support, especially from local fans of its “amazing and fresh-tasting menus”: a four-course menu for £35, or a nine- course taster for £65. He took the opportunity of lockdown to give the place a significant refurb – new kitchen, new dining room, new garden…

Matt & (twin sister) Michele Barker rule over this stalwart British restaurant in the wing of a Georgian courthouse (with a glamorous cocktail bar upstairs, plus a heated, covered terrace). By unanimous verdict, it’s the “really good value set lunch” which is the highlight of the “wide-ranging” yet “sharp” British offering, whose focus is on meats ‘a la plancha’.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover: this may not look much from the outside, but views of the Humber are impressive, the food is top-notch and waiting staff really friendly” – chef-patron Slawek Mikolajczyk worked his way up in the kitchen at neighbouring culinary heavyweight Winteringham Fields, opening this “wonderful” gastropub-with-rooms in 2015, where he has developed a zero-waste ‘whole animal project’. Last year, he opened Dom (meaning ‘home’ in Polish) along similar sustainable lines in Scunthorpe.

With an “amazing restaurant” upstairs for “outstanding” small and large plates, and “an equally incredible bakery downstairs” for brunch, this collab between chef Ryan Telford, manager Ian Pexton, and baker Caitlin Ogden, ex-of The Ritz, is “well worth two visits” to this location near Hull Minster to fully sample its charms. “It is hard for cafés and restaurants to survive in our area, but this spot is making a good go of being both”.

Can ‘glamourous’ and ‘Hull’ exist in the same sentence? Perhaps so, with this Winter 2024 launch of a 200-seat rooftop cocktail lounge and meat-lovers haunt in a glass-and-steel rooftop add-on to a previously vacant 1930s building. At the heart of the menu – a variety of 32-day dry-aged steaks – served alongside a selection of burgers and non-meat options.