Northleach, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: Superdry sartorial star Julian Dunkerton, behind the Lucky Onion Cotswold group, owns this “reliable and buzzing” country hotel, where “amazing local ingredients” are “beautifully cooked in a gorgeous setting”. The odd service blip but it's “overall a very memorable eating experience”.

This archetypal Cotswolds manor house, just outside Bourton on the Water, occupies a seventeenth century property that’s nowadays part of Andrew Brownsword’s hotel group. The cuisine – under chef Nik Chappell – wins a consistent thumbs-up (“we do enjoy going here... results can be a bit hit and miss, but are mostly good! while service is very good and the dining room attractive”). As well as a fairly pricey à la carte (three courses for £80) there’s a relatively affordable all-day menu served in the bar and lounges (with dishes such as omelette Arnold Bennett, steak, posh sarnies, and so on).

This “beautiful” honey-coloured Cotswolds country hotel with grand gardens dates back to 1649 and is a regular fixture on round-ups of romantic UK getaways. On the food front, there are two options: fine-diner Atrium, offering a “flawless” tasting menu (one sitting only at 18.45), and more casual spot The Dining Room, where reporters “could not fault the quality of the food” (and where, profiting from the hotel’s canine-friendly ethos, you can “eat with our dog at dinner and breakfast”).

2022 Review: Limited but upbeat feedback on this relatively recent (2019) addition to the well-known Cotswolds manor house, with Charles Smith delivering a nine-course tasting menu for £95. Fans do say it’s “wonderful”, but we have to leave a rating till we have a few more reports.

2021 Review: Owned by the same folk as The Village Pub, just across the road, this “very fancy” boutique hotel turns out “solid cooking with bold flavours”, and uses “a lot of produce straight from the garden”.

“In a beautiful Cotswold village with stunning views” (over the Evenlode valley), this converted malthouse has won renown for its “exciting” cuisine over the years, and you can eat here à la carte or go for the six-course tasting menu, which comes in at £85 per person. (Reports were fractionally more up-and-down this year, perhaps reflecting the switchover of chefs, with Renemar Pinedo taking over from Matt Weedon in early 2024).

This five-year-old venue set in a huge stone-built former barn – part of a sprawling family-run project in the Cotswolds also incorporating a spa retreat, a pub and a beauty business – serves “reliably good food. Nothing fancy, just great local ingredients cooked to perfection. Yum”. Chef Charlie Hibbert trained under Jeremy Lee at Quo Vadis; his mother Caryn led the redevelopment of the estate. Top Tip – “if you have a meal here, make time to walk around the grounds and take in the great views”.

2023 Review: “Excellent food” and a “lively atmosphere” can be found at this brasserie set in the Corn Hall covered market in the centre of town, that has developed over 15 years from a deli and was formerly known as Made by Bob… although the founder is James Parkinson.

2021 Review: “A real pleasure” – takeover by a chain (Cardiff’s Barkby Group, at the helm as of 2018) hasn’t led to a fall in fortunes for this eighteenth century village boozer; it continues to deliver “very enjoyable”, “well-sized and well-priced” grub (including the “perfect Sunday roast”) that’s “worth travelling some way for” – and, while it “gets pretty packed, it appears the kitchen is used to that and copes admirably”.

“Delicious, innovative food served in an intimate setting” has been the draw at chef Gus Ashenford and his wife Kate’s former Cotswold village tearoom for 22 years. The cooking is rooted in the classical French cuisine of Gus’s mentor, the late Michel Roux senior, but the ratings were dragged down this year by a reporter who felt “the food is interesting and individual, but not as exceptional as my last visit some years ago”.

“The Fox has had a major makeover since the old days when it had the ambience of a venerable Cotswold pub” – as you’d expect since the July 2022 takeover by Lady Bamford and her Daylesford empire. Some old timers feel “the money lavished on its gentrification has not resulted in improvement”, although they concede the result is “very comfortable” and deliver a thumbs-up to its selection of posh pub grub (pizza, steak, burgers and Cornish fish for the most part). In early 2023, Giles Coren declared himself a fan too, even if there was nowhere close to park that wasn’t already taken by “gleaming Land Rovers and Porsches, piled three deep in the narrow lanes and stacked on pavements”.

This “wonderful old Cotswold inn” has been “beautifully renovated by the Daylesford owners” who took over in mid-2021, and now features stately equine paintings and lemon trees in the foreground of its mullioned windows. While it’s “larger and a bit more of a machine since becoming part of the Bamford empire”, the atmosphere is “lovely” (not least in the courtyard garden) and on the food front it is seen as “reliable”, with much sourcing from its famed sibling Daylesford Organic, and a crowd-pleasing menu of pub classics, wood-fired pizzas and fancier seasonal dishes.

2023 Review: “High-quality pub food” and a “lovely setting by the river” earn high ratings across the board for this traditional Cotswolds inn. “On a brilliant sunny bank holiday Saturday, The Swan was rammed but the amazing staff never missed a beat – the chef & kitchen churned out really delicious food, and nobody was less than delighted with their choices”. Top Tip – “the sticky toffee reaches new heights of orgasmic satisfaction”.

The original farm shop and café in Lady Bamford’s organic mini-empire celebrated its 20th birthday in 2022, and now contains three dining spaces: the Michelin Green Star ‘Trough Restaurant’, ‘The Old Spot’ for sharing plates and wood-fired pizzas, and the more casual ‘The Legbar’ – all of which showcase an aesthetic that’s “quite Nordic but still warm”. The “child-friendly” (and Chipping Norton set-friendly) spot was praised this year as a “perfect location for a late breakfast” – and, while there are still those for whom the “high prices are not justified”, more sanguine reporters feel that they’re “not so shocking now that other restaurants have caught up!”

“Much more restaurant than pub, and with a car park full of Chelsea tractors”, Lady Bamford’s “picture-postcard” 18th-century inn “does rather seem like an extension of West London” (and “with prices to match”). It’s not just “very easy on the eye”, according to most diners, however. As often there is the odd cynic for whom the overall experience is “very average”, but by most accounts chef Sam Bowser (whose CV includes Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons) oversees “very good” food with original touches, that makes this “a real find hidden away in the Cotswolds”.

With its “fantastic country pub atmosphere”, this well-known Cotswolds watering hole has long been a key venue for the Chipping Norton set; and current owners Matt & Katie Beamish run it as part of a trio of pubs-with-rooms in the district (with the Milton Hare and the Crown at Church Enstone). All reports acknowledge “tasty food that doesn’t cost the earth”, although the most sceptical diner feels that “it mixes pub standards with more ambitious fare (maybe too ambitious at the top end as those dishes failed to zing… maybe it was chef’s night off)”.

“Champignon never fails to deliver outstanding cooking and amazingly good value” and “it is remarkable how such high standards have been maintained over such a long time” – that’s the unanimous verdict this year in the good number of reports on this famous foodie Mecca: a traditional temple of gastronomy run by David & Helen Everitt-Matthias since 1987, which famously closes whenever David cannot be at the stoves. The cooking continues to be truly accomplished and shouts out the personality of the chef: qualities which remain exactly the same as those which guests have experienced for decades. Each year, reporters say that “this remains the standard to which I compare other places” – the cooking is “always original, seasonal, well judged, and carefully presented (whilst avoiding the irritating Instagrammability sometimes found elsewhere)”. “Service is both friendly and professional, and Helen presides over the room and the wine with grace”. There is a notably strong wine list and also an “amazing cheese selection”. Even fans note that “some might find the room sedate”, while adding: “I’d prefer to say serene; tables are well-spaced and the atmosphere is calm and good-humoured. If there is a better place to enjoy terrific cooking whilst having a good conversation, I’d like to know about it!”

Just off the high street, this “understated” indie from Gareth Fulford pairs sustainably caught seafood with top Cotswolds produce. In addition to their excellent-value set lunches, tasting menus and bi-monthly-changing à la carte, they’ve “just started doing a once-a-month small- plates evening” showcasing British seafood, and the results are “very tasty and enjoyable”.

This “lovely cosy country pub” (with rooms) is the brainchild of born-and-bred Cotswold gents Peter Creed and Tom Noest, who reopened its doors back in 2017. The “really nice menu includes wood-fired pizzas and flatbreads” plus hearty British pies and unusual meat dishes; if you’re the sporting type, they advertise packages including a range of activities (game shooting, deer-stalking and other very English pursuits).