Looking for an activity to treat your favourite gin lover? Here our the top gin experiences in the UK, from gin tasting experiences to gin distillery tours and even hotels with a gin theme!
A laidback bolthole on Cornwall’s south coast – close to Looe, Fowey and Polperro – Talland Bay Hotel combines pretty, light-filled rooms (think luxe country cottage) with dreamy sea views and lush, sub-tropical gardens.
Take advantage of the 80 gin-strong bar at the hotel, or book the Cornish Gin Odyssey package, which includes two nights in a classic room (with breakfast), a three-course dinner in the hotel’s double AA rosette restaurant, a complimentary G&T and a tour of nearby Colwith Farm Distillery (plus tastings of its Stafford’s Gin and Aval Dor Vodka, both made from potatoes grown on the family farm).
Rugged coastlines, unspoilt beaches and the chance to spot rare corncrakes await as you disembark the ferry at the remote Hebridean island of Colonsay, home to the Wild Thyme Spirits distillery. Book the latter’s Gin Lover’s Retreat and you can settle in for a full-board, weekend stay in one of two comfortable double bedrooms (there’s also a shared lounge complete with wood-burning stove, jigsaws and board games).
Make the most of Wild Thyme’s gin collection (200 bottles and counting, as well as their own Colonsay Gin, produced on the island), enjoy pre-dinner gin cocktails, a gin tasting and the chance to explore the island’s wild interior.
More and more distilleries are setting up their own ‘gin schools’ where visitors can learn how to distil their own bespoke spirit. One such spot is Spirit of Masham, in Yorkshire, which offers the chance to take over one of its copper stills and choose from 100 different botanicals to blend your own take on a London dry gin. Head distiller Jake Wilson is on hand to offer advice on ingredients, and at the end of the three-hour experience you’ll have a 70cl bottle to take home.
Spirit of Masham
You’ll also get a tour of the distillery and three gin-based drinks. In Fife, Darnley’s Gin School at Kingsbarn Distillery offers a similar package, allowing visitors to distil their own bespoke botanical recipe at one of its stills, while down in Devon Salcombe Distilling Co will help you craft a bespoke blend before heading over to the distillery’s waterside bar to taste the final result and play around with different garnishes and tonics.
Salcombe Distilling Co
Distill your own gin in London
For a more urban gin experience make a beeline for 186 Portobello Road in West London, home to The Distillery (makers of the acclaimed Portobello Road Gin) – and its lodgings, bar and gin school. At the distillery’s ‘Ginstitute’, a ‘ginstructor’ will give you a quick recap on gin’s sordid history before taking you to the distillery’s blending rooms, where you’ll combine gin cocktails with blending your own bespoke batch of the juniper stuff to take home (as well as a bottle of Portobello Road gin).
Make sure you also visit The Resting Room bar, and check out the Distillery’s eclectic range of house spirits, which range from butter gin to asparagus vodka. If you’re feeling too well lubricated to head home, book a stay in one of the distillery’s stylish bedrooms; these come with choice views of Portobello Road, Rough Trade-curated vinyl playlists on the record player and sharing martinis.
There are several hotels across the UK that offer more than your average lodgings where gin-lovers are concerned, whether it’s their own bespoke brand or extensively stocked gin bars. Tucked between woods and sea on the Isle of Mull, Tiroran House is a country hotel that produces its own Whitetail Gin; made with foraged heather and sea kelp, it’s named after the white-tailed eagles that nest nearby. Buy it in the hotel’s shop-café to take away, or enjoy it as an aperitif before tucking into the likes of Inverlussa mussels and fillet of Highland longhorn beef at the hotel’s restaurant.
Down south, in Oxfordshire, Woodstock’s The Feathers hotel is a charmingly rambling sort of place with colourful interiors and a gin bar stocked with 400 bottles (do explore its roster of gin flights, which take you through different flavour profiles). Even more impressive is the gin bar at Holborn Dining Room, part of the Rosewood London hotel; it’s stocked with 500 gins, 30 tonics and 14,000 possible G&T pairings to choose from.
Finally, if you’re in Carmathenshire head to Ginhaus Deli in postcard-ready Llandeilo; as the name suggests it stocks some 400 gins, 10 of which are Welsh, plus locally made Coaltown Coffee, cheese and charcuterie.
Holborn Dining Room’s gin bar
Visit Bombay Sapphire Distillery in the English countryside
Hidden deep in the rolling Hampshire countryside, among the picture-perfect flint and thatch cottages of Whitchurch, you’ll find Laverstock Mill. With a history dating back to the Domesday book, this was once a working mill making the paper for bank notes, but now, this complex of beautiful red-brick Grade II listed buildings is home to Bombay Sapphire.
Wander across the courtyard from the glass houses, and you can really immerse yourself in the botanical room, where you’re encouraged to touch, smell and taste the carefully-sourced botanicals, before going through to the still room and seeing the process in action.
Plenty of London’s gin distilleries have opened their doors for gin fans to visit, so take a tour, try the gins and even make your own to take home with you…
Looking for places to eat in Monmouth and in the nearby Severn and Wye Valleys? Head on a foodie road trip through the Wye Valley area of outstanding natural beauty, stopping off in towns and villages including Newnham-on-Severn, Awre, Whitebrook and Monmouth…
Where to eat and drink in Monmouth
A border town, on the crossing of the Wye and the Monnow, Monmouth has recently upped its gastronomic game. In pretty, pedestrianised Church Street, for instance, Munday & Jones greengrocers (mundayandjonesmonmouth.co.uk) has been joined by #7 Church Street (numbersevenchurchstreet.co.uk), a café-restaurant owned by Roux-trained Mark Turton, former head chef at The Whitebrook, whose gutsy pulled beef main and buttermilk panna cotta dessert hit the spot; and nearby is Madeleine’s (madeleinesbakery.co.uk), a dinky artisan bakery run by illustrator-turned-baker Dilly Boase (yes, her repertoire includes Proust’s favourite sponge cakes, too).
In Monmouth Priory, another sourdough supremo, cookery tutor Katherine Marland (katherskitchen.co.uk), hosts a fortnightly cooking club. And down the road you’ll find all things honey-related at the charity-run Bees for Development shop (beesfordevelopment.org).
Monmouth’s main drag, Monnow Street, is home to two more foodie stalwarts, Fingal-Rock (pinotnoir.co.uk) wine merchants and Salt & Pepper kitchen shop (saltandpepper.co.uk) whose upstairs café does brilliant cakes, plus ice cream made in the valley by Brooke’s Dairy (brookesdairy.com), using milk and cream from their pedigree Jersey cows (Welsh Gold honeycomb is my winner).
Other must-visits include Monteas (monteas.co.uk), for over 80 loose-leaf teas, and The Marches Deli (marchesdeli.co.uk) – if you’re lucky you’ll find both single Gloucester and Wye Valley mature cheese (lowergockettfarm.co.uk) in stock; a fitting taste of these two mighty rivers.
Severn & Wye Smokery
Millions of transparent elvers (baby eels) arrive in the Severn at the end of their epic journey from the Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda. In days gone by they would have been turned into a fishy fry-up by locals. In the ’70s, food writer Jane Grigson helpfully advised anyone buying them: “Take along an old pillowcase so that the fishmonger can tip them straight into it.” With eels now endangered, such shopping tips are redundant.
One resident is trying to save the river’s eels: Richard Cook, who owns the Severn & Wye Smokery on the western banks of the Severn, south-west of Gloucester, which is a great place to start a gastro-tour of the lower Severn and Wye valleys.
The Smokery is netting elvers and raising them to maturity in tanks, a process that takes just two years, compared to the 16-plus it would take in the wild. Most are kept for breeding but a few are smoked and sold in the shop-café-restaurant, which has recently moved into state-of-the-art premises. The highlight is a gleaming fish counter run by Clive Rowlands while the restaurant, headed by Mike Benjamin (ex Calcot Manor and Gidleigh Park), offers fishy delicacies from kedgeree to salmon sides cured with yuzu, ginger and shiso and Mediterranean fish soup.
Wye valley asparagus and Welsh coracle-caught sea trout join the menu, too, and from June you might even find wild Severn salmon – but get in quick as only 200 are licensed to be caught each year and many of them get snapped up by London’s Ritz.
Heading south, stop in stately Newnham-on-Severn, one of the vale’s best-kept secrets; try Gloucester Old Spot sausages at Cameron’s Butchers (cameronsqualitybutchers.com). Blakeney, next along, houses Legg Barn (leggbarn.co.uk), a chic b&b run by Paddy Harris. Paddy used to teach cookery and hasn’t lost her culinary touch, so breakfasts – including home-reared eggs, Cameron’s meats and homemade jams – are a feast. Twist her arm and she’ll cook you dinner, too.
Severn Cider, Awre
In Awre, on a bulge of the river, Nick Bull’s family has been making cider there for three generations in their four acres of orchards. Nick’s father bought the smallholdingafter being forcibly retired as a pilot. Sid, the labourer whom he inherited with the property, was used to receiving tots of cider at lunchtime and after work, so the tipple had to be made.
The hobby turned into a business, Severn Cider (severncider.com), and now uses unsprayed fruit from the family’s and neighbouring orchards to make cider, perry and cider vinegar. This time of year is awaited with particular excitement as it’s when the new draft ciders and perrys are released, many from single local varieties including the Box Kernel apple, thought to originate from Awre itself.
Gloucester Cheese, Birdwood
In the ’70s the Gloucester, a chocolate-coloured cow whose milk was traditionally used to make single and double Gloucester cheeses, nearly died out. Happily, cheesemaker Charles Martell rescued it from the brink, and now six farmers are making cheeses from Gloucesters’ milk once again.
Among them is Rod Smart who, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can watch pressing curds into cloth-lined moulds in his dairy. Double Gloucester is now made everywhere, but single Gloucester has a protected name, which means it can only be made on Gloucestershire farms with pedigree Gloucester cows. “Traditionally farmers skimmed the cream off the evening milk to make butter, then mixed the skimmed milk with the morning’s whole milk to make single Gloucester, so it has less fat than double Gloucester, which is from whole milk,” Rod explains. “Single Gloucester was ripened for just two or three months and was what the farmer and his workers ate, while the richer double Gloucester was sold to provide an income.” Nibble slivers of Smart’s single Gloucester. Its flavour is gentle, like the Gloucester cow itself.
From Birdwood head over the hill to the next river, the Wye, which forms the natural boundary between England and Wales. Stop at St Briavels, on the English side, which on the first Saturday of each month hosts a small farmers’ market, then at a wooden building between Brockweir and Hewelsfield that houses a thriving community shop/café. Run by 60 volunteers, it stocks a feast of local produce, from Preservation Society preserves (thepreservationsociety.co.uk), to wild boar sausage rolls from Cinderhill Farm (cinderhillfarm.com), which manager Alison Macklin tells me are a hit with local workmen, her husband, and Offa’s Dyke walkers alike.
The valley’s star attraction, of course, is Tintern Abbey, on the Welsh side, whose romantic ruins sent Wordsworth and Turner wild. Its Cistercian monks may well have cultivated vines at the site of Parva Farm vineyard (parvafarm.com), high on the hillside, whose wines (notably its Dathliad Sparkling) are winning serious prizes.
For booze of the real ale sort, head next door to Kingstone Brewery where Edward and Tori Biggs brew 10 happily hoppy beers in their microbrewery-in-the-woods, including a Tudor Ale based on a recipe from 1503. Try their Brewery Experience days, which include lunch and a box of ales, or stop off on the first Saturday of the month, for stone-baked pizzas in the log-cabin taproom (try the meat feast, peppered with salami from Monmouthshire’s Trealy Farm). Winding back to the road, pick up vegetables, fruit and eggs from Medhope Organic Garden.
Next stop is Whitebrook, where Chris Harrod draws on the valley’s produce in his stylish restaurant-with-rooms, Michelin-starred The Whitebrook (thewhitebrook.co.uk). It is, along with the Tudor Farmhouse (tudorfarmhousehotel.co.uk) over the river at Clearwell, one of the Wye’s culinary high-flyers.
“We serve the Wye valley on a plate,” says Chris, a protégé of Raymond Blanc. Star ingredients include wild boar, which is slow-cooked until meltingly tender and served with pine-roasted cauliflower. “Boar’s a pest around here, so locals are delighted we have it on the menu,” he laughs. Chris’s passion, though, is locally foraged plants, such as menthol-scented mugwort, which he partners with pork or oily fish. Another favourite is sweet woodruff – Britain’s answer to vanilla – used at The Whitebrook to flavour a white chocolate ganache to fill nettle macaron petits fours.
Humble by Nature school
On the windswept plateau above, TV presenter Kate Humble’s 117-acre farm accommodates both Welsh mountain sheep and the Humble by Nature (humblebynature.com) rural skills school. Come here to master sausage-making or meat-curing with local charcutier Graham Waddington, make wild salsa verde with forager Liz Knight or crack the art of breadmaking or cooking in a wood-fired oven. If you don’t fancy driving afterwards, stay overnight in the farm’s accommodation – which includes the Humble Hideaway with its lovely shepherd’s hut. Kate provides recipe books and gear for campfire cooking, but if you’re not in the mood, head to The Inn at Penallt (theinnatpenallt.co.uk) for top-notch pub grub.
Old Lands farm shop, Dingestow
For fresh, seasonal vegetables and honey to take home, head west to the farm shop at Old Lands (old-lands.co.uk), an ancient eco-minded estate whose owners, the Bosanquet family, have revived its walled garden and orchard, before making a final stop at sedate Monmouth.
WHERE TO STAY IN THE WYE VALLEY
Double rooms at Legg Barn cost from £80, b&b. The Humble Hideaway shepherd’s hut costs from £220 for three nights, including basic breakfast provisions.
Looking for food festivals to visit in August? Here’s our round-up of the best food festivals taking place this month, from one of the hottest food events in Oxfordshire, to a craft beer festival in London. Check out all of August’s foodie events, here…
The Big Feastival
A star-studded line up in both music and food sees the likes of Clean Bandit and Craig David sharing the spotlight with Mark Hix, Tommy Banks and Richard Bertinet at this ever-popular Cotswolds festival.
Well-loved street food trucks will be there to offer sustenance after dancing the night away – try Oli Bab’s halloumi fries, Made of Dough’s top-notch pizzas and Breddos Tacos’ baja fish – or head to the NEFF Big Kitchen where award-winning chefs Raymond Blanc and Will Bowlby will demonstrate some impressive kitchen tips and tricks. Supper clubs (including a tequila-fuelled Mexican dinner with Patrón and Breddos Tacos), a cheese hub and a vintage funfair will also be part of the festivities.
One of the hottest food events of the year, Wilderness festival in Oxfordshire combines the off-beat fun of the modern British music festival (woodland walks, feasts around the campfire, wild swimming, and, of course, a top-notch music line-up) with seriously good food: join one of the long table banquets to enjoy fine wines and bespoke menus from Yotam Ottolenghi and Simon Stallard of the Hidden Hut.
Why not sit in one of the festival’s beautifully decorated field restaurant tents – try Italian delights from Café Murano or a seasonal menu in the Petersham Nurseries tent. Some top chefs will also be hosting chefs’ tables – indulge in a Swedish feast from Michelin star restaurant Agrikultur who will be cooking using locally-sourced produce they find in the area.
With appearances from many other restaurants – including Patty & Bun, Salon and Som Saa – this festival is a one-stop trip around some of Britain’s finest restaurants.
The Chinese Food Festival returns to Potters Field Park for one weekend this August under the theme of ‘Night Market’. Over 20 vendors will be serving dishes that each give a flavour of seven different provinces across China. Expect jian bing packed with pork from Pleasant Lady, Taiwanese snacks from Jiaba and wuhan chilli oil braised crayfish from Chilli Legend.
London’s Tobacco Dock will come alive for three days of beer, breweries, food and music this August. Over 65 craft breweries will be showcasing their beers, from big names like Brewdog to the lesser known Affinity Brew Co. and Ireland’s Whiplash.
Vist The Vaults, where HonestBrew will be doing a tour of exciting up-and-coming breweries, or sample some exclusive Wild Beer barrel-aged brews including Velvet Underground, Wineybeest and Sourdough.
London’s finest restaurants will be serving up dishes to soak up the ale, so stop by Luca for plates of pasta, Pitt Cue for wood-smoked ribs or Hoppers for Sri Lankan dosas.
Seafood lovers rejoice: Lymington festival is back for two days of fish-based culinary wizardry in the New Forest. Steve Bulmer, Jane Devonshire and Alex Aitken are amongst the line-up of chefs showing off their skills in the demonstration kitchen, or join author Richard Fox for a seafood BBQ masterclass.
Over 90 food and drink stalls will be offering up produce to graze on, as well as live music from the likes of The FB Pocket Orchestra and local musician Lucas Raye.
Now in its second year, London’s espresso martini festival gives you the chance to try the cocktail (made with Mr Black liqueur) at many of the city’s best bars for just £6. Head to the festival hub at the Old Truman Brewery on the Thursday night to get in the spirit with a free taster, or visit across the weekend to kick back with live music, nibbles and espresso martinis made with salted caramel and popcorn.
Head to London’s Victoria Park over the Bank Holiday weekend to soak up four days of workshops, demos and sessions dedicated to performers, artists and chefs. Explore Russia’s food history with a supper club run by Alissa Timoshkina (of KinoVino), learn how to ferment a range of vegetables with food writer Charlotte Pike, or discover the techniques of food-styling with photographer Patricia Niven.
This August, London’s Carnaby Street is showcasing the best of the West End’s food and drink with a summer party. Expect lobster buns from Claw, plates of fresh pasta from Pastaio and dumplings from Jinjuu, all at discounted prices.
Visitors will be given the chance to dine al fresco as communal picnic tables line Carnaby street (handily also making it easier for you to go back for seconds). If you need a place to relax after all the indulgence, head to the Newburgh quarter which will be kitted out with bean bags, deck chairs and live DJs.
A must for meat-eaters, Meatopia is chiefly concerned with how to cook various meats over an open flame and many of the demo dishes being showcased here have been created exclusively for the event. Plus, there’ll be the chance to get the lowdown on craft beers at Melissa Cole’s Craftopia.
Try smoky barbecued delights from one of olive’s favourite Middle Eastern and North African restaurants, Berber & Q, or taste one of the best burgers in town from Patty & Bun. New for this year, Freddy Bird of Bristol’s The Lido and Sam Bryant of Coal Rooms will be joining in on the fun.
Looking for restaurants in Aarhus? Want to know where to eat in the Danish city? Local food writer Elly McCausland shares her insider tips for the best restaurants in Aarhus, along with where to find the best cinnamon buns, hip coffee shops and seafood bistros.
La Cabra – for coffee in Aarhus
At stylish café La Cabra, in the Latin Quarter, they roast their coffee in-house. Pair a cup with a freshly made cinnamon bun or some avocado toast. Or join one of the café’s home brewing classes.
You can’t visit Denmark without indulging in a buttery baked good or two. Langenæs Bageriet is a great bakery and stocks everything from rye bread to cinnamon horns and chocolate Danish.
Enjoy the cosseting Danish concept of hygge by piling your plate with waffles, granola, salads, fresh fruit, cakes, crusty bread and roast salmon at Globen Flakket, a cosy canal-side restaurant. The hot chocolate is good too.
Haute Friture is a Latin Quarter institution, known for its gourmet hotdogs; the Hot Duck features duck confit in a spring roll with chilli, mushrooms and cranberries, topped with chilli and soya mayo and a wakame seaweed salad, all tucked in a bun.
An atmospheric cross between a British chippy and a French bistro, Oli Nico serves fabulously fresh fried fish (to take away or eat in) and great value three-course set dinners; think cured salmon, apple and fennel salad, beef bourguignon and blueberry and white chocolate cheesecake.
Nordisk Spisehus – for New Nordic cuisine in Aarhus
For exciting modern cooking with a delicate Scandinavian influence, book a table at Nordisk Spisehus. Every two months its set menus take on a new theme but typical dishes include ox with artichoke and sage or blackberries with marzipan and honey.
Set inside Godsbanen, a converted railway station that’s home to flea markets and pop-ups, Spiselauget is a relaxed, modern restaurant serving gastropub-inspired food: seasonal dinner options include trout with kohlrabi and smoked yogurt.
Aarhus Central Food Market – best food market in Aarhus
Near the station, Aarhus Central Food Market is the perfect lunch spot for indecisive foodies. Browse the stalls for classic smørrebrød (open sandwiches), organic juices, Asian street food and fresh seafood. Hip porridge stall Grød serves everything from chia seed porridge with peanut butter to dal and congee.
At organic restaurant L’Estragon expect artistic and seasonal plates, such as cod with pumpkin, fennel and blackberry or local mussels with potato, spinach and apple. Go the whole hog and order wine pairings to match your chosen menu.
A volunteer-run, non-profit café and bar that supports a range of charities Fairbar’s big attraction – aside from its regular live music nights – is its wide range of Danish and foreign craft beers. Look out for warming winter ales from local brewery Humleland.
Looking for Lisbon restaurants? We’ve gone beyond the tourist trail to find where to eat in Lisbon like a local. From the best Lisbon bars in the Bairro Alto area as well as the trendy outer-city hipster hub, LX Factory, to Lisbon’s food markets and neighbourhood tavernas specialising in traditional Portuguese dishes.
Here are the best places to eat and drink in Lisbon on a budget…
Lisbon restaurants
For the best tavernas specialising in traditional Portuguese cuisine in Lisbon, to restaurants serving contemporary dishes with Portuguese ingredients…
Ramiro – best seafood
If you’re after great-value seafood served in a rustic setting, Ramiro is your spot. Make sure you turn up early, or be prepared to queue; this is, arguably, the most popular restaurant in Lisbon.
There’s a warren of rooms upstairs, but the front room on the ground floor is where the action happens – fish is fried, lobsters are plopped into pots, wine is poured – so hold on a little longer to bag a table in this section and soak up the buzzy atmosphere.
Huge tiger prawns come butterflied and bathed in lashings of bright yellow butter, smaller prawns sizzle in ramekins filled with garlic butter, and rare steak is sandwiched into crunchy rolls. Bottles of pale vinho verde are plonked on paper tablecloths in bespoke silver wine coolers.
Book a table at this light and bright restaurant in the Baixa district to dine beneath hanging plants alongside in-the-know foodies. The menu focuses on modernising Portuguese traditional dishes, executed with fresh, seasonal ingredients – little bites of crisp galega cabbage leaves sandwiching silky steak tartare, a clean bonito broth with wafer-thin slices of green radishes and rare bonito pieces, and fresh goat’s butter and whipped Iberico pork fat to slather onto springy sourdough bread.
There’s an impressive list of natural Portuguese wines, with plenty of vinho verde options – green and flinty Aphros Daphne, fresh and citrusy Casal Figuiera Antonio from north Lisbon and complex Tiago Teles Raiz.
A Primavera Do Jerónimo – best traditional taverna
The sheer volume of traditional Portuguese taverns you can duck into off Lisbon’s cobbled hills can be overwhelming, but this one has our stamp of approval. A hearty welcome (it gets very busy so book ahead) is followed by carafes of vinho branco (white wine) plonked on to the table along with a mountain of crusty bread rolls, little packets of mimosa butter and old-school sardine paste (a bit of nostalgia for locals).
The Portuguese are famous for huge bashed copper plates sloshing with soupy rice dishes, peppered with chunky pieces of fresh fish and shells to prize open in search of salty mouthfuls. The flaky oven-baked cod in a creamy sauce in a sizzling terracotta dish is especially comforting.
Sweet little Sol e Pesca, a fishing tackle shop that doubles as a tinned fish café. A funky spot, with formica tables and stools, it serves only fish straight from the can accompanied by corn bread; you can try octopus, sardines and anchovies, and work out which tins you want to take home.
Head to Nova Pombalina to eat juicy suckling pig sandwiches, served in a crusty roll with crackling and gravy. It’s a workers’ lunch institution, the city’s best porcine sandwich by a mile.
R. do Comércio 2, 00 351 21 887 4360
Pork sandwich at Nova Pombalina
Bom Jardin – best piri piri chicken
Lisbon institution Bom Jardim is known as ‘king of chickens’ and chicken, fries and a glass of house wine costs about €10.
Travessa de Santo Antao, 11; 0035 12 1342 4389
Mini Bar – best modern tapas
In the last decade, Portugal’s capital has undergone a culinary revolution that is truly thrilling. 35-year-old José Avillez is at the vanguard of this gastronomic blossoming, elegantly proving that there’s a lot more to the city’s menus than custard tarts, sardines and salt cod. Since 2010, the former head chef of local fine-dining stalwart Tavares has opened five game-changing restaurants. First was Cantinho do Avillez, then came Belcanto, which won its first Michelin star 11 months after opening and its second last year.
For a more affordable way to sample his cooking, we head to Mini Bar, a cocktail lounge with a menu of snacks and small dishes, like codfish nuggets with ‘Bulhão Pato’ emulsion, Algarve prawns in ceviche and a mini burger of PDO beef. There’s also a street kiosk outside Mini Bar where you can try Avillez’ take on pastéis de nata and savoury pies.
The flaming chorizo is the fiery standout on the small but perfectly formed menu at Dona Quiteria. This teeny bistro, in a 19th-century grocer’s, is a cool new addition to a residential hilltop overlooking the Cais do Sodre nightlife district. Garlicky gambas and delicate bacalhau are also a must.
Around the corner at Flores do Bairro, on the ground floor of the Bairro Alto hotel, young chef Vasco Lello also embraces the new Portuguese cuisine, taking traditional recipes and styling them up to great effect. There’s an exquisite fish soup topped with a slender crab crostini, the wafer-like biscuit dotted with sweet threads of white crabmeat. The room itself feels a bit too much like a hotel lobby for our liking, but the food is terrific and well priced, with an ‘Os arrozes do Bairro’ menu of rice dishes – including snails, quail and oregano – at €12.
Here are the best local drinking spots for ginja cherry liquor, along with coffee shops and the best bars to watch the sunset in Lisbon…
A Ginjinha – for ginja
Don’t miss Lisbon’s iconic cherry liqueur bar, A Ginjinha, a hole-in-the-wall big enough for just three people. Order glasses of the house-made Morello cherry spirit and choose ‘com ou sem elas’ (with a cherry or without). This little bar has been here since 1840, and has passed through the hands of four generations of the same family. Lisbon may be experiencing a culinary revolution, but some things resolutely remain the same.
Largo de São Domingos 8, no phone
Quiosque Príncipe Real – for drinking with the locals
On the edge of Lisbon’s leafy Príncipe Real park lies an unassuming kiosk, fondly known by locals as “O Oliveria”. For a slice of local life, order a ginja shot, or coffee, and kick back on a cream-coloured chair on the cobbled pavement to soak up the late afternoon sun and watch men with crinkled faces gather over chessboards beneath billowing trees.
Praça do Príncipe Real, +351 21 342 8334
Ginja at O Oliveira
Rio Maravilha – for sundowners
Ascend four levels of concrete stairway at the far end of LX Factory’s main street to find this trendy bar, set over numerous higgledy-piggledy levels. There’s a loose Brazilian theme, but the space is characterized more by its industrial interiors – metal chairs in primary colours, exposed pipework ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows.
Make sure you climb higher to the upper level and venture outside onto graveled terraces to find a huge multi-coloured patchwork Christ the Redeemer replica greeting Lisbon’s original across the river. The cocktails are fab – try the pineapple rum sour, spiced with rosemary and paprika.
Both of Fabrica’s outlets are cosy places to while away an afternoon and watch Lisbon’s young folk and commuters pass through. The pasteis de nata here look particularly homemade and rustic, and make a perfect accompaniment for the house blend of Brazilian and Ethiopian beans.
Where to find the best pasteis de nata (Portuguese custard tarts) in the centre of Lisbon and nearby…
Manteigaria
Have a peek through the glass window at the back of the shop at the bottom of Bairro Alto to watch some of the tightest pastry work you’ll ever come across – stunning spirals of butter and pastry that are then baked to form crisp little wheels filled with delicately scented custard.
Stand at the counter and pop a couple of tarts with an uma bica, the short and strong coffee that locals drink. There’s also a small outlet in the Mercado da Ribeira Time Out market so you can grab and go while you explore the market stalls.
Rua do Loreto, 2
Antiga Confeitaria de Belem
Climb the famous Belem Tower for brilliant views and be sure to buy at least one pasteis de Belem (custard tart), 90 cents, from Antiga Confeitaria de Belem.
Mercado da Ribeira (Time Out Market Lisbon) – best food market
Imagine a place where 30 of the city’s best chefs sell small, reasonably priced plates of their top dishes, alongside local wines and fresh lemonade, from a gathering of stalls. That’s exactly what’s on offer every day at Lisbon’s Mercado da Ribeira in the Cais do Sodré area. With dishes ranging from €5-8 each, pile your wooden table with crunchy tempura-battered green beans from Café de São Bento, platters of cheese, ham and sausages from classic Lisbon charcuterie house Manteigaria Silva, and piri-piri chicken with double-fried chips by Miguel Laffan of Michelin-starred restaurant L’And Vineyards in the Alentejo.
Over glasses of red wine, also from the Alentejo, and a platter of Iberian ham that includes a finely aged reserve from Trás-os-Montes and a pica pau – beef with pickles and olives – from chef Miguel Castro e Silva, local journalist Célia Pedroso, of food tour company Eat Portugal (eatportugal.net), explains the petiscos renaissance. ‘These small plates were once relegated to humble tasca bars, but now they’re everywhere, with chefs competing to attract diners with the best cod cakes or the most tender prego (steak sandwiches).’
In an adjacent section of the 19th-century building merchants sell fish, meat and vegetables. We buy fresh piri-piri peppers, bay leaves, garlic and almonds from women with life etched on their faces.
Mercado de Campo de Ourique – best local food market
Lisbon’s revamped Mercardo da Ribeira may have hipster food trucks, but the pretty 1930s Mercado de Campo de Ourique stocks a no-nonsense range of Portuguese goods; look out for classic pasteis de nata (custard tarts) from Pasteleria Aloma.
Hop on the tram out to Calvario in the West of the city and walk to the Ponte 25 de Abril suspension bridge; beneath it Lisbon’s young creatives have set up shop in dozens of old fabric factories.
For an experience not quite like any other, delve into lofty Ler Devagar bookstore, climb the steel stairs, and sit on a balcony overlooking thousands of titles with a hefty slice of pavlova from O Bola da Marta.
There’s a flea market every Sunday, where you can pick up artisan products and vintage trinkets, or peruse the shelves of the more permanent shops for Nordic accessories.
Where to find the best foodie gifts, traditional Portuguese products and sweet treats in the old town and among Lisbon’s backstreets…
Conserveira de Lisboa
If you want to shop for foodie souvenirs in Lisbon, then head to classic tinned goods retailer Conserveira de Lisboa where you can pick up tins of sardines in technicolour retro packaging. There’s a large store in the centre and a little outlet in the Mercado da Ribeira.
In a sidestreet in the Chiado area, seek out the glorious shopping cornucopia that is A Vida Portuguesa, where shelves are lined with reissued kitchen packaging classics. Buy a sardine grill for the barbecue, a stove-top toast maker, orange and red melamine plates, and yet more twinkly tins of fish.
Following the calçada-lined streets downhill from Chiado to Rossio, stick your head in Confeitaria Nacional, an old-school pastry and jam shop complete with rococo mirrored ceiling and marble counter.
It’s easy to make a pig of yourself ‘at the pork place’, aka Manteigaria Silva, where shelves of spiced, cured and smoked porcine produce fill the cabinets of this 100-year-old deli. Delivered to port-barrel tables out front: plates of requeijão (ricotta), marmelada (quince paste) with delicate dried figs and silken slices of 24-month-cured presunto (aged ham) from Portugal’s Barrancos region.
Having started the day with a shot of ginginha (sour cherry brandy) at the eponymous, neighbouring bar, you might
welcome these gourmet stomach-liners, but there’s more to come.
These are just two of many stop-offs on a new, two-offs on a new, two-hour walking tour hosted by Lisbon’s Inspira Santa Marta Hotel, themed around petiscos, the Portuguese answer to tapas. These aren’t just the ‘small plates’ of the worldwide bar-snack type, but rather an excuse to graze or to dine with friends on deli dishes or half portions. Hosted by local food experts from Eat Portugal, these bespoke tours are a great introduction to Lisbon’s affordable food scene.
Lisbon hotels
The best boutique hotels in Lisbon and foodie hotels in Lisbon centre…
Hotel do Chiado
Hotel do Chiado inhabits the top two floors of the famous Armazens do Chiado building and has one of the city’s best locations, overlooking the historic centre and with views of São Jorge Castle and out to sea.
Inspira Santa Marta Hotel
This boutique eco-hotel offers petiscos tour packages for €548 for two people, including two nights’ b&b and a guided petiscos tour.
inspirahotels.com
The Valverde Hotel
Plush Valverde Hotel has a contemporary, dark colour scheme with pops of bright colours – mustard yellow throws, teal blue velvet chairs. There are nods to Portuguese design and traditions throughout, from pretty tiles to modern artwork. The hotel has a serene inner courtyard, providing a peaceful oasis to enjoy afternoon tea or a pre-dinner cocktail, or tuck into traditional rice and seafood dishes at the Sítio restaurant.
How to get to Lisbon
Return flights from Heathrow or Gatwick to Lisbon cost from around £95 (flytap.com). More info: visitlisboa.com
Written by Alex Crossley and Audrey Gillan
Photographs by Alex Crossley (Header image from Getty)
olive magazine podcast ep72 – Morocco with John Gregory-Smith
This week on the olive magazine podcast, the team discuss Portuguese custard tarts after this week’s Bake Off technical challenge – how to make them, and where to buy them in London, Lisbon and beyond.
Looking for the best restaurants in Hastings? We’ve found the top places to eat in Hastings, a coastal town in East Sussex, for fish and chips, Italian gelato and plenty of artisan food and drink shops…
The Thai café at Boulevard Books
No trip to Hastings is complete without an amble down George Street. It links the Old Town to the seafront and is lined with independent coffee bars, sweet shops, vintage emporiums and quirky little restaurants – our favourite being the Thai café at Boulevard Books, owned by husband-and-wife team Graham and Natthawan (aka June) Frost.
During the day it’s a higgledy-piggledy secondhand bookshop, with creaking floorboards and a maze of narrow corridors. But come 6:30pm and those same corridors are crammed with tiny tables (the cosiest of which is in the ‘political books’ section), laden with Thai food cooked by June. Ingredients are imported from Thailand to create as genuine a menu as possible (£13 for a starter and main), and it’s great for vegetarians – you can substitute the meat for tofu in almost every dish. Plus they’ll even provide a cooler for your wine (it’s bring your own).
Also on George Street is Hastings’ favourite ice cream parlour – Di Polas. The Italian owners make all their gelato on site, and regularly changing flavours include passionfruit; honeycomb; apple and ginger; sea salt caramel; and, our favourite, Oreo. It’s particularly milky ice cream, distinctively whippy and smooth in texture.
A. G. Hendy & Co.
Step back in time with a visit to food journalist and photographer Alastair Hendy’s Georgian shop and kitchen. He spent three years restoring the High Street building to its original state, and the result is so utterly convincing – symmetrical window displays, heavy dark wooden-panelled rooms, enamel factory lights and a front desk mahogany counter that hides the electric till – as to leave visitors spellbound.
The dining room and outdoor courtyard is out the back, and to get there you have to walk through an irresistible shop stocked with vintage crockery, Denby teacups, rolling pins, Kilner jars and even enamel buckets. Food is simple sharing plates with a focus on (you guessed it) fresh fish landed by the local fleet – skate wing and capers; fish, crab and shellfish pot; and juicy brown shrimps with kohlrabi and tarragon. A word of warning: you can only eat lunch at the weekend here, with last orders at 4pm.
A charming little deli, with smart golden signage and an old-fashioned bay window piled high with artisan cheeses, wine, Trealy farm cured meats and Monmouth coffee. It’s a great place for a picnic lunch – try one of their hickory-smoked sausage rolls, or a Bombay potato bomb. There’s also a tasting room at the back that serves deli platters and craft ales for lunch.
Another great Hastings Old Town spot, this time set away from the crowds on All Saints Street. It’s an independent pub, contemporary in style with local art on the walls and a dog-friendly attitude. It’s less “cosy fireside pint” and more “lively dining room”, with a sophisticated menu that makes the most of produce from over 20 local suppliers.
The Stade, a shingle beach near the town’s funicular railway, captures the essence of Hastings. It’s lined with colourful fishing fleets, wooden huts that sell the former’s catch every day, and stacks of famous ‘net shops’ – tall, tarred wooden sheds that were built to provide shelter for fishing equipment.
Just past the net shops is an upturned boat hull, which locals Tush and Pat use as a base to cook and sell their fishermen’s rolls. They take whatever fish is fresh that day, fillet it, fry it in olive oil, and stick it in between a bap. The pearly white fish is delicate and flaky enough to eat with your fingers.
Rock-a-Nore Fisheries
Another must-visit if you’re in The Stade area. Hungry humans and seagulls alike form a queue at this place, their beady eyes on the mounds of fresh cockles at the front of the shop. It’s a family business over 30 years old that specialises in smoked fish (especially salmon, kippers, conger eels and prawns) – in fact, the family smokes nearly 300kg of fish a week.
If you’ve only space for one thing, let it be the hot-smoked salmon – it was invented by accident when, one Christmas, the sawdust that keeps fish cool during smoking caught fire… the punters loved it so much that it’s now made on purpose.
Sit in the café of the handsome Jerwood Gallery and sip excellent cappuccino while admiring a seascape that includes Hastings’ unmistakeable black wood fishermen’s net huts, tall and eerie even in the blazing sunshine. Some are now fishmongers, selling a transfixing selection of fresh fish and seafood, bright of eye and gleaming of fin on their icy beds.
This fish and chips café, set among the net shops, permanently sports a ‘fully booked’ sign at the bottom of its rickety stairs, and no wonder: the vast, pearly fish in its light batter escapes from the confines of its plate; the chips – crisp and floury, always double-fried – are some of the best we’ve tried. Cod and haddock comes from the fish market directly underneath it. We exit stuffed, our coats fragranced with frying and vinegar, happy as clams.
(Fishmarket, Rock A Nore Rd, 01424 430205)
Food and drink shops in Hastings
Unlike many slightly sadder British seaside towns (I know – I live in one), Hastings is lucky enough to have been colonised by people who care about food. The Old Town bristles with intriguing, independent stores: pioneering Judges organic bakery, for instance, or neighbouring cheese and wine specialists, Penbuckles.
Two Bulls Steakhouse
Over at clever Two Bulls Steakhouse gelato from Di Polas is served as part of the unabashedly calorific dessert offering. This former pub has become very close to locals’ hearts thanks to some very fine Irish steak – mine, a 28-day dry-aged Angus point end (aka ‘butcher’s secret’) is as good a piece of meat as we’ve had outside the spendy London steak temples at a fraction of the price.
Where to stay in Hastings…
Swan House
It calls itself a guest house, but with its mix of high comfort and the kind of mildly distressed chic, it’s like staying with a stylish pal. That pal is owner, Brendan McDonagh, whose breakfasts are legendary: kippers from Rock-A-NoreFisheries, maybe, or green bacon and fat sausages from Archers of Westfield. It’s in the heart of Hastings Old Town, which has grown into its beauty, with clapboard houses, tiny twittens (alleyways) and designer shops. But it’s over in St Leonards’ that the edgier kids are coming out to play.
The Laindons
We knew we were in for a treat when, despite arriving at an unsociable hour, hosts Sara and Jon brought up a tray of posh welcome snacks: homemade pitta chips, hummus, olives and – as long as you quote ‘olive magazine’ when booking – a mini bottle of ice cold prosecco. Talk about making a good impression.
But it’s more than nibbles that makes The Laindons a favourite B&B in Hastings. Location-wise, it’s ideal – right in the heart of the Old Town, with both the First In Last Out pub (which brews its own ales) and the Electric Palace arthouse cinema a stone’s throw away. The rest of the High Street is a jumble of vintage shops, delis and Georgian Grade II listed buildings, including The Laindons itself, which sits above a coffee bar, No. 23, also owned by Sara and Jon. That means good aromas filling the building every morning.
Rooms are Scandi coastal in design – greys, white and blues, influenced by the time Sara and Jon spent living in Sweden – and the beds are made from recycled wood, crafted by local carpenters. We loved the original fireplace in our room and giant crossword poster in the bathroom, designed around Hastings and its attractions. Extra personal touches include earplugs for those guests bothered by seagulls; a wicker basket full of treats on the landing (just pay for what you eat); and a converted loft that acts as a bar – help yourself to a chilled glass of local sparkling wine.
Breakfast is taken at the back of the house in a sort of suspended conservatory that overlooks the tufty East Hill nature park. The room is cheerily bright, being so flooded with sunlight, and perfectly matched to bedrooms: there are chunky wooden tables and squashy couches for post-breakfast lounging.
Food is elegant and delicious – toasted fruit bread is topped with ricotta, nectarine slithers and almonds; muesli is homemade and packed with coconut, caramelised bananas and lime zest; vibrant jams are made locally by Martha & Ed’s Kitchen; and pear and apple juice comes from Ringden Farm, less than 20 miles away. Don’t miss the coffee – Jon roasts it downstairs and, if you’re interested, he can tell you about the origin of that day’s bean.
*First In Last Out – High Street pub with its own microbrewery. thefilo.co.uk
*Borough Wines, Beers & Books – a local spin-off from a London company, it opened in Hastings in 2015. Look out for evening events, including literary readings. boroughwines.co.uk
Written by Charlotte Morgan and Marina O’Loughlin
A. G. Hendy & Co. images courtesy of Alastair Hendy
Looking for food festivals to visit in September? Here’s our round-up of the best food festivals taking place this month, from a cider festival in Northern Ireland, to a food festival in Wales. Check out all of September’s foodie events, here…
North Norfolk Food and Drink Festival
Taking place at Holkham Hall, the North Norfolk Food and Drink Festival will see over 60 local food producers come together for a weekend of feasting, talks and workshops. This year’s line-up includes Bon Bakery offering their artisan biscotti, local honey from Leigh’s Bees and fermented sauerkraut from Le Digestif.
Festival No. 6 has one of the most striking settings of all this month’s events. Taking place over the second weekend in September in Portmeirion, a small costal village in Snowdonia that looks like something transplanted from the Amalfi Coast – and was famously the backdrop to cult 1960s TV series The Prisoner (hence that No.6) – the whole village will come alive with music, food, drink and performances. It prides itself on being a festival like no other and with a music line up including The The, Franz Ferdinand and Friendly Fires, it may well live up to the hype. The food line-up is just as impressive. Check out Claw for lobster rolls, indulge in toasties from The Cheese Truck, or head to Dinner at Clough’s for a feast from Calum Franklin, Aiden Byrne and Gareth Ward.
Good music, good chat, good craft and, most importantly, good food. Founded by four friends in 2014 – one of them Cerys Matthews – The Good Life Experience takes place on the Hawarden Estate, in North Wales. Sign up and go stargazing or cocktail crafting, dance to the likes of Jeff Buckley or the Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band, listen to talks by Unbound editors and Beginners Guide to Veganism author Edward Daniel and enjoy campfire cook-ups by Gill Mellor, Trine Hahnemann and Matthew and Iain Pennington.
Head to the small Welsh town of Abergavenny for a weekend of feasting, foraging and cooking over fire. The festival, now in its 20th year, will see Cabrito founder, James Whetlor, cooking goat meat over fire, Zoe Adjonyoh showing the crowd how to make simple vegan summer food and Nargisse Benkabbou rustling up a Moroccan supper.
On the Sunday, make a beeline for chef Matt Powell, who will be serving a hyper-seasonal menu of Cardigan bay crab, lamb hot pot and Welsh rarebit bite. Or head to the town’s market hall to feast on British charcuterie from Trealy Farm and real ales from Tudor Brewery.
If you want to get more hands-on, head to the festival’s cookery school where Honey & Co. will be demonstrating how to whip up a Middle Eastern feast at home, and Skye Mcalpine will be showing how to make the perfect pasta dough.
Liverpool’s Sefton Park will turn into a foodie playground in the middle of the month, with a weekend of chef demonstrations, masterclasses and pop-up versions of some of Liverpool’s best bars and restaurants. Buy from local food producers in The Market (look out for The Cumbrian Pie Company), watch Raymond Blanc demonstrating his skills or get your street-food fix by indulging in falafel wraps and tandoori naans.
Now in its 13th year, the Hastings Seafood and Wine Festival brings together local restaurants and vineyards across the area to celebrate the best local produce. Pig and Porter will be serving craft beers (brewed in Kent), Olly’s Fish Shack will be dishing up baja fish tacos and grilled prawn rolls while Carr Taylor will be offering English wines from its local vineyard. There’ll also be live music and cooking demonstrations.
Look out too for the Hastings Fish brand, a new initiative launching at this year’s festival. A stamp of approval, if you spot the branding you can be sure your fish has been locally, sustainably caught by the Hastings fleet.
For the second year, the Yorkshire Dales is hosting a festival dedicated to dairy. The main event – a medley of cheese-making, pairing demonstrations and tastings – will be taking place at Wensleydale Creamery, in Hawes, while smaller gatherings will be happening across the whole county throughout the festival’s two-week run. Head to Redmire for a Lancashire vs Yorkshire cheese tasting competition or pop back to Hawes for a morning of cheese scone-making.
Celebrate all things cider at this four-day festival in Northern Ireland. There’ll be the chance to wander around orchards to learn about apple growing as well as taking part in a cidery tour in Portadown. On the Friday evening, enjoy a harvest supper, cooked by chef Mervyn Steenson, where each course will be paired with a cider.
Join chefs such as Tim Anderson, Thomasina Miers, Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer as they descend upon the riverside shops and galleries of Snape Maltings, just west of Aldeburgh, for this produce-rich food festival. Over 90 Suffolk food and drink producers will gather to showcase organic vegetables, sourdough breads, ciders and more. If you want to get hands-on join on of many masterclasses, from chocolate tasting with local Pump Street Bakery to Indian street food with Chetna Makan.
If you’re passing Manchester’s Albert Square at the end of the month don’t be surprised to find an array of street-food stalls, supper clubs and live cookery demonstrations under way. This year’s Manchester food & Drink Festival will also play host to a cookery theatre where Jack Monroe will be preparing a vegan feast, and Mary Ellen-McTague will show you how to bake bread with. On the Monday night, 20 Stories will be offering a three-course menu with wine flight, while new food pop-up Hatch will be staging a supper club on the Thursday. The festivities will include cider tents, G&T bars and a dedicated wine festival, too.
Winchester, 2016’s ‘best place to live in Britain’*, is indeed a beautiful city. In the space of a 10-minute walk you can enjoy Winchester High Street peppered with talented buskers, imposing views of Winchester Cathedral and the River Kitchen, which passes through the National Trust’s city watermill. But it’s Winchester’s restaurants and foodie scene that attracts us the most – take a look at our top 10 suggestions for where to eat and drink in Winchester.
Hannah’s b&b – best place to stay in Winchester
Hannah’s B&B is a cleverly converted dancehall designed and run by Hannah McIntyre, who lives on the premises. It offers complimentary afternoon tea on the patio, a genius idea and one that encourages guests to treat their B&B like home. If the weather doesn’t suit, take tea in the library instead, complete with cosy log fire and arched bookcase.
Hannah makes everything herself, including aromatic honey, lavender and Earl Grey loaf (her own recipe); and raw chocolate brownies. Take as much as you want, but leave room for the Winchester Cocoa Company chocolate bar on your pillow upstairs.
Breakfast is taken in what used to be a garage – hard to believe, given the platform-raised oak piano in the corner and exposed wooden beams. It begins with homemade granola (“I always serve a ‘starter’ at breakfast,” says Hannah), fresh berries, yogurt and sticky marmalade loaf. Next, buttery mushrooms, creamy scrambled egg, bacon, sausages and oregano-roasted cherry tomatoes with toast, and a glass of freshly squeezed pear and pineapple juice.
Hannah has an eye for tasteful, contemporary design and has decorated the B&B herself. There are trendy industrial elements to the rooms, including towel racks made from copper pipes and matching copper washbasins. We loved the little basket of easy-to-forget items (like a toothbrush) in the bathroom, too.
King-size beds fitted with Egyptian cotton sheets, free (yes, free!) Netflix, chunky wooden floors, Hannah’s own fig and vanilla bath products and the slipper bath upstairs make this one of the most luxurious B&Bs we’ve stayed in.
Dhan Tamang, 5-time reigning UK latte art champion, travels the country making coffees look beautiful. You can find him most regularly behind the coffee machine at this smart coffee shop in Winchester.
The Roasting Party roasts the coffee, with a bespoke house blend called Create. The knowledgeable and passionate barista team also serves guest blends and single origin coffee.
Which coffee to order: The flat white made with house Create blend, the flavour is just delightful, with milk chocolate and strawberry jam notes.
A top spot for lunch (although they do serve dinner on Fridays and Saturdays), Forte Kitchen on Parchment Street is easy to miss – the entrance may be tiny, but inside it’s a large, airy space with charcoal grey walls and clusters of industrial lights that look like giant spiders.
There’s plenty to choose from for lunch, but we like the sound of honey and orange roast ham with fried, free-range eggs and hand-cut chips; or the pastrami sandwich with gherkins and mustard.
Just a short walk from the house Jane Austen once lived in is The Wykeham Arms, an apparent favourite of Colin Firth and Robert Plant. It’s an 18th century coaching inn with beautiful curved, Georgian bow doors, a cosy but bright bar that’s managed to escape modernisation (we loved those tankards hanging from the ceiling) and a separate dining room decorated with wonky framed photos, Persian rugs, gnarled oak chairs and more tankards. It’s easy to imagine Austen in here, scribbling away by one of the original fireplaces.
There are rooms upstairs (including superior doubles with four-poster beds) and it’s a popular place for dinner – book in advance for prettily presented plates of ambitious seasonal food, including tempura oysters with wasabi ice cream; Hampshire ribeye steak; and chicken and pig’s trotter pie with mash and liquor.
The Black Rat – best Michelin starred dining in Winchester
The Black Rat is perhaps Winchester’s best spot for modern British dining. Once a pub, this 18th century Chesil Street restaurant achieved a Michelin star just one year after opening thanks to an innovative menu centred around local produce (the restaurant has its own professional forager) and ingredients from the kitchen garden.
It’s a refined, mature menu (only children over the age of 12 are allowed for dinner) that includes at least six mainly meaty options for each course. Try pigeon breast with blue cheese, grated cauliflower and red grapes to start, pressed pig’s head with beetroot choucroute (sauerkraut), pineapple puree and crispy ears for your main and matcha ice cream with sea buckthorn posset for dessert.
The Corner House – best brunch in Winchester
Our first recommendation that shirks wooden beams in favour of modern, fashionable interiors. Furniture is shabby chic, the atmosphere is informal and food is served all day, including homemade cakes and an imaginative cocktail menu – try a Danebury Wallop, made with Danebury Cossack sparkling wine (from a Hampshire vineyard), elderflower cordial and fresh mint, served with an After Eight mint.
Food ranges from sharing platters to butter bean and lime salsa salad for lunch, Hampshire lamb rump for dinner and sporadic vegan and vegetarian nights – we like the sound of courgette noodles with marinated local mushrooms and crushed cashews.
River Cottage Canteen – best vegetarian lunch in Winchester
Right in the heart of Winchester is the River Cottage Canteen, set inside the beautiful grade II-listed Abbey Mill. It’s a bustling atmosphere, with regular live music, meet-the-producer events and a clean, open-plan seating area with lights hanging from chunky fishing ropes, bright white walls and splashes of colour throughout.
Food is, as expected, local and seasonal. Lunch is served from 12-3 and is a good option for vegetarian diners – try slow-cooked cauliflower with flat bread, Laverstoke buffalo mozzarella with heirloom tomatoes, or a vegetarian meze board including split pea hummus, asparagus crumble and squash croquettes.
The Chesil Rectory – best gastro pub in Winchester
Both inside and out, The Chesil Rectory looks like it belongs in Godric’s Hollow. The building dates back to 1425 and is charmingly wonky, with an original black-beamed frontage and tiny entrance door that livestock once trampled through.
There’s a romantic, candlelit atmosphere (see how many vintage chandeliers you can count) and a delicate style of cooking. To start, a vibrant risotto made from local Secrett’s Farm beetroot was ever so slightly sweet, with a subtle tang from Hampshire goats’ cheese and fresh, herby rocket pesto.
Rosemary gnocchi, another starter, was crispy but buttery soft inside; it came with charred onions for a pleasant, barbecued taste. Peppered Hampshire venison was a minute-or-so undercooked, but still impressed with the intensity of flavour, matched by a syrupy blackcurrant jus and rich confit root vegetables.
Caramelised poached pears were balanced on a sable biscuit, with billowy Chantilly cream for company, and a precise slice of chocolate tart was decorated with candied almonds, coffee cream and a scoop of malty ice cream.
Relatively new to Winchester’s foodie scene is Palm Pan Asia on the High Street. What used to be a Blockbuster video store is now a modern, unfussy Thai and South East Asian restaurant that’s already gained a loyal local following. The Koong Chu Chi (prawn red curry) is one of their signature dishes.
Rick Stein – best high street restaurant in Winchester
Rick Stein’s High Street restaurant was the first of his chain to open outside Cornwall. There’s a set lunch menu, separate children’s menu and an evening à la carte that includes crab linguine, gremolata prawns, langoustines on ice and an Indonesian curry with sea bass, cod, prawns and crispy shallots.
Perhaps the best place for Japanese food in Winchester. It’s ultra-modern inside (bright pink walls and shiny wooden floors) but the food is time-honoured and authentic – choose from sushi, sashimi or teppanyaki dishes, the latter of which involves chefs cooking on hot iron plates in front of diners. Highlights include lobster teppanyaki and wagyu beef teppanyaki.
Looking for Helsinki restaurants? Want to know where to get the best coffee in the Finnish capital? Nordic food culture is fashionable, but Copenhagen and Stockholm usually pip Helsinki to the post when discussing culinary weekend getaways. In this feature we make the case, instead, for Finland’s edgy, design-led capital.
From cute cafes to hip cocktail bars, smart restaurants to local street food spots, Helsinki has it all. You just need to know where to find it, and that’s where our guide to eating and drinking in the city comes in. Plus, explore Helsinki’s new crop of vegan and vegetarian-friendly cafés and restaurants.
Sandro – best brunch in Helsinki
On a rainy weekend in Helsinki trendy locals head to Sandro for bottomless lunches and weekend brunches. The stripped-back décor at its two branches (one is in Helsinki’s design district, the other in edgier Kallio) allows the kitchen’s North African food to steal the limelight.
Colourful Moroccan ceramic plates are piled high with an array of salads – think chickpea with carrots and beetroot, jewelled couscous and tabbouleh, and pickled cauliflower with crunchy toasted almonds. There’s plenty of choice where dips are concerned – silky, smoky baba ganoush, zingy pistachio pesto and cucumber and lemon labneh – plus freshly baked crusty spiced bread.
Finish this veggie-focused spread with coffee or mint tea and tiny squares of chocolate cake and baklava.
On a sunny day in Helsinki, wrap up warm, run down to the western banks of Töölönlahti Bay, bounce along a wooden jetty to this little café in a wooden hut and bask in the sunshine on one if its deckchairs.
This lake-like slick of saltwater here is a reminder that Helsinki spreads out across an archipelago and there’s an almost beachside feel to the setting. The friendly Finnish girls behind the counter will tempt you with cinnamon bun biscuits topped with flaked almonds, nettle and peppermint tea and indulgent croissants filled with huge wedges of brie, strawberries and a drizzle of balsamic.
If you don’t fancy the jetty deckchairs, there’s a separate seating area, still overlooking the water but where tables and chairs are delicately screened off from the bay by giant plants.
Lakeside cinnamon buns in the sun at Kahvila Tynni cafe
Kahvila Sinisen Huvilan – for ice cream with a view
Stroll 10 minutes or so round Töölönlahti Bay to its eastern shore and you’ll come across a beautiful blue clapboard house. Tucked behind it, set back from the water’s edge, is a tiny blue shed that’s home to another charming café.
Grab a cone brimming with Finnish blueberry ice cream and lounge on one of the wooden chairs scattered beneath the birch trees. Idyllic.
Hop on the little ferry from the southern shore of Helsinki to reach this restaurant and party spot. Tuck in to thin, crisp pizzas so large that they curl up at either end like a Viking longboat. Toppings are Finnish – try chorizo and crayfish or rainbow trout and summer veg with plenty of dill. Snuggle up under blankets as DJs hang around the decks waiting their turn to spin their mixes out into the crisp air.
Juuri, meaning ‘root’ in Finnish, is where to head to for Finnish tapas, or ‘Sapas’. These stunning little tasting plates adorned with edible flowers, sprigs of dill and botanicals taste great too. Try grouse with birch, chargrilled swede, little salty fried fish – vendace – with creamed potatoes, and beetroot mousse with roasted goat’s cheese.
With a generous bread basket from Juuri’s own bakery, this is an ideal light dinner. The compact restaurant wouldn’t be out of place in Helsinki’s design district with its wooden tables, wine-red walls and modern light installations.
Good Life Coffee – for the best coffee in Helsinki
Helsinki’s most trendy coffee shop is the perfect spot to watch hip young residents of Kallio pass by. The barista is so chilled that a queue often forms but the house-roasted coffee is worth the wait (ideally pair it with a huge chocolate pastry twist). Sit at the communal table and enjoy the calm, Finnish ambiance.
Sauna culture is a way of life in Finland. Moments of silence are not considered awkward but a chance just to sit and enjoy another person’s company. Try it for yourself at Loyly, an upmarket sauna that’s perched dramatically on the seafront just south of the city centre. Sip champagne by its log fire between sauna sessions and chilling dips in the Baltic Sea.
After your two-hour sauna session head out onto a series of wooden decks to enjoy a restorative tipple overlooking the sea. We liked the Napue gin (distilled to the north of Helsinki in Kyro distillery) with Finnish botanicals of meadowsweet, sea buckthorn, cranberries and birch leaves.
This may look rather severe and unwelcoming on the outside but head into the stark white building in Helsinki’s trendy Kallio district and you soon discover why it’s a local institution. Essentially a posh kebab shop, it’s a great place to get a slice of local life.
Order a pitta filled with halloumi and aubergine, or a lamb burger, then sit in the window and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a trendy Finn. There are 13 outposts in the city, ranging in size, so hunt one down when you need a quick fix.
This ancient café dates back to 1957, and is the perfect spot to enjoy a comforting bowl of lohikeitto, a creamy salmon soup topped with mountains of fresh dill (try our lohikeitto recipe here). Alternatively go for breakfast and knock back a Finnish coffee and a Korvapuusti cinnamon roll.
Bar Lilla E may be a hotel bar but it is a destination in itself for those in the know on Helsinki’s hip cocktail route. The spot-lit wooden bar (which sits next to a crackling fire) makes a stylish backdrop to a menu of Nordic-inspired cocktails.
Try a Midsummer’s Eve, which recreates the scent of a Scandinavian summer with spring birch-infused Tanqueray gin and St Germain elderflower liqueur (a tumbler is filled with flowers and birch branches are set alight to infuse the cocktail and its immediate surroundings with a smoky aroma), or a Strawberry Cake (wild Finnish strawberries are whizzed up with lemon balm, skyr and Finlandia vodka to create a sweet, creamy drink).
Each cocktail comes with a little extra, be that a tiny cheese triangle and small cup of black coffee on the side, a little juniper salmon smorrebrod or a tiny bed of grass to enhance the freshly mown smell.
Miisa Mink, co-owner of the Nordic bakery, a Scandinavian style café chain in London, shares her favourite places to eat in Helsinki…
Atelje Finne – for seasonal Finnish food
At Atelje Finne, Chef Antto Melasniemi serves seasonal, local food in a minimalist, stylish restaurant where original art and furniture creates 50s flair. The menu is based on seasonal vegetables, foraged ingredients such as mushrooms and berries and local fish and meat. Booking is recommended.
At Pastis restaurant, cooking is based on French cuisine using fresh Finnish ingredients. Lunch is great value at €25/ two courses, €30/ three courses. (Pieni Roobertinkatu 2, 00130 Helsinki, tel. 010 29 28 990)
Rosalind butchers – for burgers
The city’s most vibrant indoor foodhall is Hietalahden Kaippahalli. Brave the queue at Roslund butchers to order its Rosburger, dubbed Finland’s best burger.
Lönnrotinkatu 34
Adjacent to restaurant Ravintola Juuri is Latva , a contemporary bar serving wines and champagne from small producers (Serge Mathieu Brut Prestige) organic beers (Prykmestar Organic Pilsner) plus ciders and locally created cocktails. The service is friendly and knowledgeable.
Hakaniemen Kauppahalli – best food market in Helsinki
Locals get their food fresh from the market. Venture to the Hakaniemen neighbourhood for its authentic market (Mon-Sat 6.30am-3pm). Don’t miss Reitin Kala, a beautiful family-run fishmonger, or have a cup of coffee and munkki (cardamom doughnut) at one of the outdoor stalls.
Helsinki is littered with restaurants serving great food made from local ingredients, focusing on uncomplicated flavours. Book in advance if you want to taste some of the best examples of this at the new Gastrobar Emo. Can’t get a reservation? Try Toca, Aitoor Kolo.
Helsinki has plenty of restaurants ideal for vegetarians. Check out these vegetarian and vegan-friendly spots in Helsinki from Finnish chef, food writer and forager Sami Tallberg…
1
Andante
Top-notch service is a key element at Andante, a hip flower and coffee shop. The team serve mean coffees and matcha lattes, and the talented pastry chef has a passion for raw cakes; try a blackcurrant and lingonberry cupcake.
Blackcurrant and lingonberry cupcake
2
Cargo
Vegetarian café, Cargo, takes its name from the container stores it’s bolted together from. Order a purple haze mocktail, made with wild Finnish berries and rose petals, and a kale caesar with avocado or a vegan burger with wild herbs and cauliflower fritter. It also has one of the best terraces in town for open-air dining.
3
LOKAL
Local Finnish design shop LOKAL is great for quality souvenirs (look out for Anna Kantanen’s elegant coffee pots). It also has a coffee shop that serves local ice creams in summer – try the blackcurrant leaf.
Slick interiors at Lokal
4
Grön
New Nordic Restaurant Grön does New Nordic cooking extremely well, using a wide range of ingredients. You’ll find wild plants, preserved foods and natural wines on the menu all year round – there’s always a choice between à la carte or a four-course menu of the day. Typical dishes include milk ice cream, roasted sunflower seeds, green coffee bean oil and roasted sunflower seed caramel. It’s great-value fine dining.
5
Date + Kale
The spanking new restaurant area on the fifth floor of Kamppi shopping centre is home to some great spots for a quick lunch overlooking the city. Favourites include Date + Kale, which does a busy trade in raw rainbow brownies and energising plant-based food bowls and dips; think coconut curry with sweet potato, cauliflower, lentils, coconut milk, pomegranate, coriander and black rice.
6
The Cock
Expect new-wave brasserie food at The Cock. Run by Ville Relander and Richard McCormick, two stalwarts of the local restaurant scene, it’s known for its relaxed atmosphere (everyone is welcome, dressed up or down, at any time of day). Try the broccoli tempura with wasabi yogurt and avocado or the arancini with spicy tomato sauce and kale pesto.
7
BasBas
A warehouse-style venue with modern bistro food, BasBas is also home to the best wine bar in town, with a hip clientele and small plates to share; think avocado and fennel on toast. The main menu is strong on classic French dishes made with quality ingredients. Great service is also part of its success.
Pre-dinner wine at BasBas
8
Maja
A tiny coffee roastery and café, Maja is set in a 1970s shopping centre on the outskirts of the city, close to some lovely wild spaces. Fuel-up with a Kono drip coffee then head off island-hopping on foot or by bike. Close by are Lehtisaari and Kaskisaari, two of my favourite foraging spots for wild berries and mushrooms. Follow @majacoffeeroastery on Instagram.
9
Silvoplee
Going strong for around 20 years, Silvopleeis the best-known vegan restaurant in town. No-one goes there for the decor but the lunchtime buffet (plates are priced by weight at the till) is packed with delicious homemade salads, dips and bakes. There’s also a café attached, serving smoothies, coffees and a collection of raw cakes.
10
Vinkkeli
A simple, stylish bistro serving classic Scandinavian dishes with great care, little fuss and a modern twist, Vinkkeli is one of the best restaurants in the city. Seasonality is big here – dishes often come laced with just-picked ingredients, such as a white chocolate panna cotta dotted with redcurrants – and it offers great wine pairings.
Where to stay in Helsinki
Double rooms at Hotel Lilla Roberts cost from £150 per night, b&b.
Looking for the best foraging courses UK? We’ve found the best places for foraging in the country…
While spring brings wild garlic and summer offers an abundance of blackberries, autumn is a great time to throw your boots on and head out into the hedgerows to forage for wild mushrooms in the UK, as well as sloes, rosehips and beech nuts.
If you’re new to foraging, it’s best to head out with an expert so you know what you’re picking is safe (and that you don’t accidentally collect a rare species). However, if you’re heading out solo, pop the Field Studies Council’s handy pack-away foraging chart in your pocket for guidance.
Wild food is essential to wildlife so it’s important to only pick what you need, and leave plenty for the birds to nibble on, and to tread carefully so as to avoid trampling other wild foods that might be growing.
Fat Hen, Cornwall
Named after a common edible plant, Fat Hen cookery school offers a variety of foraging courses, from seaweed foraging to wild Italian cookery.
Perfect for active families, the wild food cycling day is a chance to experience the on- and off-road routes of West Cornwall, stopping to explore woodlands along the way, foraging for herbs, fungi, seeds and berries.
Depending on your foraged finds, you’ll have the chance to make sea buckthorn berry cake, seaweed poached mackerel and elderflower fritters.
Lead by James Wood, the latter course gives you the chance to explore the grounds of the Welbeck Estate, learning how to identify species and harvest wild ingredients. Get hands-on afterwards learning how to sort, clean and cook with your finds before feasting on your foraged goods.
For a high-end, chef-led take on foraging, head to The Whitebrook for a trip into the Monmouthshire countryside with chef Chris Harrod and forager Henry Ashby.
The three-hour adventure will be spent searching for produce that will then be used in the Whitebrook restaurant later in the day. Produce changes from one day to the next, so expect anything from sea spinach and rock samphire to hop shoots and mugwort.
If you’re looking for a weekend of foraging in Scotland, head to Gartmore House, on the edge of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park for a dedicated foraging break.
Dinner on the Friday night will include a chat with tutor Andy Fraser about foraging, before guests head out with him the next morning to explore the local wild foods.
The half-day course focusses on easily identifiable plants which stand out for their flavour (and which will be used in dinner that evening).
Surrounded by woodland and walking trails, Lee Byre, outside Okehampton, is a true rural retreat. Stay in a smartly converted barn and feast on warm banana muffins and fresh bread spread with honey before heading out to forage with owners Guy and Kathrin Barnes.
Exploring the bucolic patch of West Country terrain that surrounds the B&B, you might find wild garlic, pennywort, Jack-by-the-hedge or sorrel, depending on the season.
All of these are then used back in Lee Byre’s kitchen, where chef Nina puts together wild salads, courgette cannelloni with parmesan cream, and lamb and mint pies with new potatoes and pennywort for dinner. If all that indulgence leaves you hungry for further exploring you can head out again for a stargazing stroll after supper.
If you want to include the whole family on a foraging adventure, head to the Brecon Beacons. Here, the elegant Angel Hotel, in foodie Abergavenny (don’t miss a visit to the excellent Kitchen At The Chapel, tucked behind the town’s market hall) has recently launched specialist Foraging Fun weekends. These are led by expert local guide Adele Nozedar, who has recently published a book about foraging with children, so you’ll be in good hands.
Head out on a gentle three-hour walk, through urban and rural terrain, to track down fungi, berries and nuts then return to the hotel to feast on chargrilled lamb with new potato and pea ragù, or herb-roasted fillet of cod with squash gnocchi.
After an overnight stay wake up to eggs Benedict or French toast with bacon and maple syrup before heading home.
If meat and fish aren’t really your game, sign up for Taste the Wild’s vegetarian food cookery course, a day which showcases wild edible plants at their best.
Based in a barn near Boroughbridge, the day will focus on cookery but will also include time spent foraging in the neighbouring woods before returning to rustle up a feast of nettle pasta ravioli filled with ricotta and wild garlic, plus thistle and rosebay stir-fry and burdock crisps.
On the shore of Loch Fyne, The Creggans Inn is a cosseting, family-run hotel with stellar views and home comforts (think bowls of porridge laced with cream and the snap and pop of a proper log fire).
Foraging breaks here are informal: owner Gill MacLellan takes guests out, on request, for a couple of hours’ foraging in search of brambles, blueberries, wild yellow raspberries, elderflowers, chanterelles, wild garlic or whatever else happens to be in season.
Back at the hotel the kitchen will use your foraged finds in its dinner menus (think homemade seafood pies, venison steaks and classic British puds). The next day, borrow fishing rods and cast off the hotel’s little pier, or carry on eating and exploring your way.
If you’re looking to cook your own supper, you can go one better by signing up for one of Fore Adventure’s coastal foraging and food trips on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast.
Its Kayak, Fish, Forage and Feast tour takes participants out by kayak to catch their own fish, seaweed and sea vegetables before stopping at coves to hunt through hedgerows for more wild edibles.
After a day of activity, you’ll head back to shore to set up camp and cook seabass parcels stuffed with herbs and lemon for an al fresco dinner.
Forager Matt Powell spent years as a chef before moving back to Wales and attempting to rise to the challenge of working only with what the local area has to offer.
Join him near Pembroke for a day spent exploring local shorelines, hedgerows and woods on the hunt for seaweed, edible plants and fungi before heading back to Matt’s kitchen to enjoy an elegant, eight-course feast cooked by Matt using produce either found on the walk, grown by Matt or sourced from hyper-local suppliers.
Nestled in the Wye Valley, the Tudor Farmhouse is a rural retreat serving home-cooked seasonal food, most of which is sourced within a 20-mile radius of the hotel.
Spend the morning with in-house forager Raoul van Den Broucke as he ventures around the Forest of Dean, collecting wild ingredients to be cooked with later that day.
Depending on the seasons you can expect to find a variety of produce, from pennywort and wimberries to marsh samphire.
Foraging courses and trips don’t have to be out in the wilds. Strap your walking boots on and head to Bristol for a half-day, urban mushroom walk with Martin Bailey.
Over three hours you will learn how to identify, pick and eat wild edibles, learning which to take and which to leave alone, and gather ideas for how to cook with your crop.
If you’re not a Bristolian, Martin also runs foraging trips in Bath, Wales and the New Forest.
Planning a Sardinia holiday? Read our guide to some of the best bars, restaurants and places to stay in Sardinia, Italy. From small plates of antipasti to large plates of charcuterie and cheeses, and, big bowls of homemade pasta and bubbly bellinis. Here are to some of the best places for Sardinian food and drink in Sardinia.
The north coast of Sardinia is famously flashy. This is not the low-key luxury of private hideaway-peppered Italian islands such as Pantelleria and Panarea. Ever since the Aga Khan spotted the potential of this wild, untrammelled stretch of coastline from his yacht in the late 1950s, and went on a monumental building spree, bling has been king. Among its rocky coves, sugary sand and languorous seas Prince Karim Aga Khan IV created an exclusive playground and renamed this jewel-like enclave the Costa Smeralda, or Emerald Coast.
Porto Cervo, Sardinia
The north coast’s hub, Porto Cervo, a pseudo terracotta-trimmed fishing village, is a kind of Sardinian Bicester-on-Sea. Pedestrianised streets form a necklace strung with wallet-draining restaurants and designer boutiques – Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada – while its marina is packed like sardines in a tin with gaudy super-yachts. Princess Margaret, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot and Peter Sellers once partied here. Today, you might still glimpse Hollywood A-listers, icons of Formula One, ageing rock stars and a Russian oligarch or two.
A pasta dish at Miraluna restaurant
Costa Smeralda, Sardinia
The Costa Smeralda slinks seductively along the shore for a mere 34 miles, however. Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily (read our guide to the best places to eat and drink in Sicily, here). Dip inland, or wind your way further around the coast, and you’ll find another, more authentic, side to the island. In the region of Gallura, around Arzachena, a sprawling archaeological park is littered with Neolithic remains and Bronze-Age Nuragic settlements.
A world away from Porto Cervo, the landscape here has been sculpted by the elements, dramatic granite rock formations dubbed the Dolomites of Sardinia whipped into shape by wild winds. Olive trees prick the stony ground, along with ragged myrtle (used to make the syrupy Sardinian digestif mirto). The scrubby vegetation or macchi a (maquis) is a fragrant mix of Mediterranean herbs, a tangle of rosemary, thyme, mint and oregano. There are twice as many sheep as people. And row upon row of vines.
Siddura vineyard
Maddalena Archipelago, Sardinia
For now, however, we are living the high life, lounging on deck as we scud across the waves to explore the Maddalena Archipelago, a cluster of Instagram-ready islands in the Bonifacio Strait, which separates Sardinia from Corsica.
Our skipper, Andrew, tells us that every type of fish in the Mediterranean swims through this channel, from John Dory to grouper, gilt-head bream to the majestic tuna. He has sailed these waters since 1976, once working on Norfolk turkey baron Bernard Matthews’s yacht. Dropping anchor just off Budelli Island for lunch, we slip into the sea for a swim, the water a vivid turquoise, shoals of shimmering sea bream swirling around us.
“Sometimes I drop a hook and line over the side while guests are swimming,” he tells us. “Then I dig up a couple of potatoes and pick the salad from my garden, and that’s dinner sorted.”
Andrew barters fish for cheese with local farmers. Ittico Sarda, in Arzachena, is the best fish market, he tells us. The best restaurant for fish? La Gritta in Palau. All the local villages have fresh produce markets, stalls piled high with wonky, garden-grown, pesticide-free fruit and veg. You don’t need to scratch too far beneath the surface to find Sardinia’s rustic roots and farm (or sea)-to-fork ethos.
Cannigione’s weekly market
Siddura Vineyard
Near the medieval village of Luogosanto, the Siddura Vineyard is cradled by craggy hills. It’s a bucolic location, with 22 hectares of the 200-hectare estate planted with vines and harvested by hand. The subterranean state-of-the-art winery has architectural wow factor, half-burrowed into the hillside.
After wandering through the vineyard we take a seat in the ancient tasting room (now decked out with striking modern art) where a handful of bottles are lined up. The first, Spèra, is a vermentino, the most famous of the region’s grape varieties that thrives on the granite terroir. The second, Maìa, won a Decanter award. It’s also a Vermentina di Gallura but is more full bodied. It’s one of the reds that I fall for, however: Bàcco is made from the cagnulari grape. It’s intensely ruby red, smooth and velvety but almost medicinal on the nose – think Fisherman’s Friend with a hint of farmyard.
Our hotel, the Relais Villa del Golfo & Spa, a cluster of pretty adobe-style buildings linked by cactus- and oleander-fringed paths, tumbles across a hillside above the sea in Cannigione. It has a Santa Fe New Mexico feel about it – and a focus on food. The open-air MiraLuna restaurant, overlooking the Gulf of Arzachena, dishes up starters such as shrimp with potato purée and mint and almond foam followed by pan-seared sea bass with pea and sea urchin purée.
The Hotel Relais Villa Del Golfo & Spa’s vegetable patch
A view from the Villa Del Golfo
La Colti agriturismo
Villa del Golfo also has an organic agriturismo venture and farmhouse restaurant nearby, La Colti, which specialises in local Gallurese cuisine. Everything at La Colti is produced on its own 120-hectare farm, where they breed pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and rabbits, and keep chickens and bees. As well as producing their own honey, they grow all their own vegetables. Arriving as the light starts to fade, the farmhouse courtyard is floodlit. Rustic-chic communal tables are dotted under the trees. As soon as you sit down the antipasti start to arrive, large plates of charcuterie and cheeses: ricotta, pecorino, goat’s cheese and spicy farmhouse salami, bowls of fava beans, homemade pasta and zuppa cuata – a meaty sheep’s broth packed with cheese, aromatic herbs and bread.
The main event, however, is the porcetto or suckling pig, a Sardinian speciality. In an open-sided barn a huge fire crackles. Splayed out and sizzling on racks is the porcetto. The roasted pork is chopped into rough chunks, the meat soft and succulent, the skin crisp and coated in sweet fat. For dessert, another local speciality: seadas – deep-fried ravioli stuffed with a mild cheese and soaked in hot honey. Heavenly.
The hotel offers cookery classes where you can learn how to make homemade pasta and dishes such as chiusoni Galluresi (Sardinian dumplings in a rich tomato and sausage ragout), ravioli Galluresi (pasta stuffed with ricotta and lemon) and seadas. It also organises private tours to an off-the-beaten-track winery not generally open to the public.
Hotel Su Gologone
We’re venturing further off the beaten track for the next few days, winding into the Barbagia mountains to the Hotel Su Gologone. Just a two-hour drive from the Costa Smeralda this is more bandit than paparazzi territory – probably one of the reasons Madonna hid out here, although she could have been swayed by the hotel’s gob-smacking beauty, hippy chic vibe and gourmet credentials.
Food is at the heart of Su Gologone, which started life as a restaurant in the 1960s. Today, it might be a chic, art-themed hotel – a pretty huddle of whitewashed buildings laced with vivid purple bougainvillea and bedded into the mountainside – but it’s still famous for its food. And the family’s matriarch, Mrs Pasqua, is still there every night, although her daughter, artist Giovanna, now runs the hotel.
Giovanna’s vibrant artworks pepper the bedrooms’ walls while the corridors are hung with traditional embroidered skirts and shawls. Secret alcoves are dotted around the gardens, there’s an open-air cinema and pool, a small spa, rooftop lounging areas for stargazing and a fabulous bar– whitewashed, open-air, scattered with white cushions and teetering above the valley. Sip a frothy bellini here, as the sun sinks, soaking up the Ibiza vibe and jaw-dropping views.
What you’re gazing at is the Supramonte Massif, a 35,000-hectare protected site, riven with deep gorges, cliffs and canyons, and laced with mountain trails lined with wild rosemary and juniper bushes. Scrabbling up a dirt track during our stay we explore Bronze Age remains and a Nuragic village, and plunge into deep limestone caves where shepherds once brought their sheep to drink from the icy pools inside. Wild sheep and wild boar roam the woods of holm oak here and golden eagles soar overhead.
Colourful cooking pots at Su Gologone
It’s a good idea to work up an appetite. The natural larder in this remote region is overflowing. Nearby Oliena is famous for its olive oil and wine. Su Gologone buys its sheep’s cheese and lamb here. “It’s important for us to have a low carbon footprint,” Mrs Pasqua explains. They make their own bread and handmade sweets using local almonds. The hotel has a farm and organic kitchen garden, and in the nido del pane (bread nest) local women dressed in traditional costume give guests breadmaking demonstrations, including the local pane carasau, a crisp, wafer-thin flatbread baked in a brick oven.
At the hotel’s open-air restaurant, with its brightly painted tables and chairs, and sweeping views, one of the dishes is filindeu, a sheep’s broth with a bird’s nest of pasta. Originally eaten by the poor, the handmade pasta contains no eggs – just semolina wheat, salt and water, dried into laces in the sun – and it’s now a local delicacy.
Sardinian flatbread pane carasau
We gorge ourselves on homemade fennel and gnochetti ravioli with an earthy wild boar sauce. The star of the show has been cooking all day, however. In two giant open-air fireplaces racks of porceddu allo spiedo are slowly turned. Su Gologone is famous for its suckling pig – bred on the family farm, cooked over an open fire and dished up to raucous, chattering tables of hungry diners. Su Gologone is not fancy but the hearty, field-to-fork food is fabulous.
WHERE TO STAY IN SARDINIA AND HOW TO GET THERE
Citalia offers seven-night holidays to Sardinia from £1,235 per person, including four nights’ b&b at the Hotel Relais Villa del Golfo & Spa, three nights’ half board at Su Gologone, car hire and return flights from London Gatwick to Olbia with easyJet (citalia.com).
Check out the best restaurants in Birmingham and other places to eat and drink in Birmingham with our local foodie guide…
Opheem – best new restaurant in Birmingham
Originally from Aston, North Birmingham, with Bangladeshi parents, Aktar Islam has made a name for himself as one of the Birmingham’s leading chefs, and Opheem is his first solo restaurant. Focussing on Indian culinary traditions married with modern techniques, this is fine dining with dialled-up flavour. Choose from Herdwick lamb loin with tongue beignet and bone marrow sauce, or tandoori cauliflower with lentil bhaji and coconut milk, and curd dumpling with milk sorbet and finger lime.
The room is dark with a large twinkly-light chandelier dominating the dramatic space, with brown leather chairs, clothless dark wooden tables and grey walls. There’s also a private dining room, and a bar, where you can have small plates and snacks.
Chef Aktar Islam opens his latest restaurant Opheem on Summer Row.
Purnell’s – best for service and fine dining in Birmingham
“Fine dining doesn’t have to be stuffy,” says Sonal Clare, sommelier and restaurant manager of Glynn Purnell’s eponymous Birmingham restaurant. Sonal won Best Sommelier at this year’s GQ Food and Drink Awards – a timely accolade for his 10th year of working at Purnell’s, where he started as a waiter.
For the past five years, he has been restaurant manager, during which time he has stamped his personality on the relaxed-but-professional service style. Sonal has also curated the Book of Wine, a 25-page drinks list that includes a section of wines currently being enjoyed by the staff, as well as vintage champagnes at £3,400 a pop.
“We don’t have linen tablecloths or serviettes, but what we try to do is pass on the philosophy, ethos and personality of Glynn through the food and service. People see his fun personality on TV, so that’s what they come to the restaurant for.” With a Michelin star since 2007, Purnell’s has forged a national reputation for its food and service; Sonal says it’s all about adding theatre to a meal.
“I don’t see a problem with a bit of romanticism or ‘va va voom’ during the dining experience. There’s nothing nicer than a smart and sophisticated waiter or waitress attending to your table, and as long as the table chat is genuine and in good nature, then everyone leaves feeling happy. Personalities are very important here at Purnell’s – we certainly aren’t robots who all look and act the same.”
Weekends are built for brunch in Birmingham, as is small local chain, Yorks Bakery Café. Head to its latest opening, in the Ikon Gallery, and order a locally roasted coffee while deciding between avocado smash (with feta, sumac, mint and lemon) and shakshuka. yorksbakerycafe.co.uk
Loaf – best bakery in Birmingham
Distract yourself from Cadbury World, just down the road, by taking a cookery class at Loaf in Stirchley. Learn to make your own sourdough, dosas, danish pastries and more (there are also expert pig-butchery courses), then grab a croissant from the bakery on your way out. loafonline.co.uk
The Wilderness – best British restaurant in Birmingham
Cooking that focusses on native, often foraged, British ingredients and a theatrical, boundary-pushing approach (don’t be surprised to find an arrangement of ants on your plate) have made The Wilderness the hottest restaurant in Birmingham. Book early and enjoy the ride.
Warehouse Café – best vegetarian food in Birmingham
Allison Street has played host to a vegetarian restaurant for over 30 years and the Warehouse Café is a Birmingham institution. Visit for unpretentious vegetarian and vegan food such as spinach and buckwheat fritters, tofu curries or beetroot bhajis. thewarehousecafe.com
Opus – best value meal in Birmingham
If you want a real treat but you’re on a budget, book a table at Opus and order from the prix fixe menu: £25 buys you three elegant courses such as ham hock terrine, Brixham Market fish of the day and vanilla crème brûlée. opusrestaurant.co.uk
Raja Monkey – best curry house in Birmingham
Birmingham is famous for its baltis and the Balti Triangle, in the south of the city, is where you’ll find the highest concentration of curry houses. If you’ve only got time for one, head to Raja Monkey on the Stratford Road. It does great dosas and puris but the thalis are the way to go here; the Rajasthani version includes a rich mutton curry. rajamonkey.co.uk
The Edgbaston – best cocktail bar in Birmingham
The art deco-inspired cocktail lounge at The Edgbaston is the ideal spot for a tipple. Toast your evening with a Howzat Highball (Tanqueray gin, elderflower, cucumber, fino and violet leaf) or go earlier in the day for afternoon tea with a kick. theedgbaston.co.uk
Digbeth Dining Club – best street food in Birmingham
The area around Eight Foot Grocer, in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, is becoming known for its bars and restaurants as much as its gold, and this pint-sized deli is a great place to stock up on locally produced items (including Pip’s Hot Sauce and Cuffufle preserves), or to grab a sandwich, salad or soup to go. the8footgrocer.com
Original Patty Men – best burgers in Birmingham
Cutting their teeth on the street food scene before partnering with Siren Craft Brew to launch their own restaurant, Original Patty Men serve the best burgers in Birmingham. Big Vern’s Krispy Ring is a meat patty encased in a doughnut; it sounds weird but it works. originalpattymen.com
Looking for places to eat in Tasmania? Read about our foodie road trip in Tasmania, including places to stay and eat in Hobart, Tasmania’s riverside capital.
It might be the gateway to Antarctica, but Hobart is hotter than Hades. Not in meteorological terms, of course – Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost state, is closer to Shetland in temperature than Sicily, but its culinary scene is sizzling. Whispers of the island’s lotus-eater pace of life and bountiful natural larder – from oysters and abalone plucked straight from the sea to wagyu beef and Cape Grim rainwater so clean they bottle it – has caused a stampede of hotshot chefs moving over from the mainland.
There’s plenty of homegrown Tasmanian talent. This is an island of innovators and oddballs who love nothing more than to shake things up a little. Got some sheep? Lets make vodka from the sheep’s cheese whey. Whisky? Why not knock up a still in the barn and use a tumble dryer as a malting machine?
Campfire cook up with Sarah Glover
Instagram favourite Sarah Glover swapped life as a pastry chef in Sydney and New York to rediscover her culinary roots – and became a poster girl for outdoor cooking along the way – back in her home turf of Tasmania (her new cookbook, WILD, a collaboration with photographer Luisa Brimble, is part recipe collection, part adventure handbook).
sarahglover.com.au
Sarah Glover’s bonfire feast (also pictured above)
Where to eat and drink in Hobart, Tasmania
Faro at Mona (Museum of Old and New Art)
And then there’s Mona, the city’s Museum of Old and New Art. Tasmania’s big-guns-blazing attraction is the creation of one man’s whimsy. David Walsh’s phenomenal art collection is wonderfully bonkers, irreverent and also home to one of the hottest tables in town, Faro (there’s a winery, Moorilla, next door for post-culture-vulture tastings; moorilla.com.au).
Faro, the tapas bar and restaurant, is all brushed concrete, black tiles and huge picture windows looking out over the water. Sip a Night is Day, a black mocktail made with active charcoal, tonic water and homemade blackcurrant cordial, before a lunch of tender chargrilled octopus on a bed of deliciously smoky aubergine purée and punchy, pungent pickles.
mona.net.au
Goat curd, smoked greens, green almonds at Faro Tapas
Pigeon Whole Bakers
Pop in to the white marble-and-glass bakery, Pigeon Whole Bakers, for a sugary swirl of cardamom-laced carbs. A counter is laid with freshly assembled pastries, while bread loaves of all shapes and sizes (try the popular organic sourdough) spill out of wooden crates at the back.
pigeonwholebakers.com.au
Morning bun at Pigeon Whole Bakers
Franklin – for industrial chic dining
Another Sydney stowaway is Analiese Gregory, who now heads up the kitchen at Hobart hotspot Franklin. All polished concrete, cowhides and diaphanous drapes, it has an industrial vibe. We start with raw albacore tuna with tomatillo and soy-cured egg yolk, gossamer-light yet rich. Next we tuck into raw Bruny Island wallaby with pickled mulberry, mushroom and fresh horseradish. The combination is ridiculously moreish. For dessert there’s feather-light whipped brown butter and salted caramel, sandwiched between wafer-thin crispy potato rectangles. It looks brown and bland but tastes sweetly sensational.
Happy in her new home, Analiese admits: “I had real chef envy when I visited from Sydney. There’s such a great energy here.” And then there’s the produce – sweet sea urchins can be scooped from the seabed and be on the table by lunchtime.
franklinhobart.com.au
Salamanca Market
Graze your way around the Saturday Salamanca Market to sample artisan leatherwood honey, Tasmanian truffle oil and salt (tastruffles.com.au) – and sheep-whey vodka. Knock back a thimble sized measure of the 12-month oaked vodka and savour its beautiful butterscotch sweetness.
Institut Polaire – for wine and martinis
With more cool white marble and grey leather, this bar has chilly class and shakes up icy Sud Polaire Antarctic dry martinis. Pulling up a bar stool, however, we’re swayed by its micro-batch Domaine Simha wines: the Rani riesling has notes of wildflower honey, the 2015 chardonnay citrus, white peaches, apricots and a hint of vanilla.
institutpolaire.com.au
Salmon tartare at Institut Polaire
Willing Bros – for wine
There’s now a slew of cool wine bars in Hobart, including bare-brick watering hole Willing Bros. Here you can sit at the marble counter and choose a bottle from the rack. ‘Wine food’ includes charcuterie served with homemade piccalilli and sourdough, marinated olives or plates of Tasmanian and European cheeses.
@WillingBros
Ettie’s – for speakeasy vibes with food
Ettie’s, a basement piano bar and bistro, for late-night night candlelit lounging. The European bistro-inspired menu focuses on Tasmanian produce. Start with Pacific oysters and country terrine with sherry prunes, before the likes of roasted duck ravioli, red wine and radicchio risotto with gorgonzola, and octopus, white beans and ‘nduja vinaigrette. Or, pop in for a glass of wine in the bottle-stacked wine room on the ground floor.
etties.com.au
Fico – for a hip bistro
Tiny hipster eateries are springing up all over town. We can’t vouch for Fico as it was closed for refurbishment, but enough people rolled their eyes when we mentioned the pared-back net-bistro to make us believe the hype. The produce is all sourced from locals, with whom the owners are on friendly first-name terms – pigeons from Phil, turnips from Tony and calamari from Ross.
ficofico.net
Dier Makr – for a tasting menu
Dier Makr is downright alchemy. Kobi Ruzicka and Sarah Fitzsimmons wing it out front, performing culinary and mixological acrobatics in their hip hangout.
The six-course tasting menu showcases unusual flavour combos. Perch at the counter and tuck into anchovies and lemon rind, a mouthful of intense oily saltiness with a sharp citrus edge. The mussels and turnip is extravagantly good, the baby turnips grilled, the larger turnips pickled and thinly sliced, and the fermented turnip paste giving the dish a pungent heat. All complemented by a tantalising, cloudy orange wine.
diermakr.com
Gourmania food tour
Over the past few years, Hobart has evolved into a hotbed of culinary innovation and the energy is palpable. A Gourmania food tour is a good way to get your gastronomic bearings and have a taste of the city.
gourmaniafoodtours.com.au
Places to eat and drink in Tasmania on a foodie road trip
Hartshorn Distillery and Grandvewe Farm
Ryan Hartshorn of Hartshorn Distillery, aka the Vodka Shepherd, has taken the family farm off on a top-knot-friendly tangent. Not content with making cheese, he bought a still and started experimenting. The result is an award-winning vodka, its distinctive black bottles all hand-painted. You can also visit the farm, Grandvewe Cheeses, 25 miles south of Hobart, for a cheese-tasting or cheese-making session. They make eight different types including Brebichon, a sheep’s-milk version of reblochon (nutty and sweet) and Sapphire Blue, which is salty and creamy, like roquefort.
grandvewe.com.au
Hartshorn Distillery sheep whey vodka
Tasmania Whisky Trail
There’s more to Tasmanian wine these days than a cold-climate pinot. Along with cider (the island is known as the Apple Isle) and sheep-whey vodka, you can also down a dram or two on the Whisky Trail. The world woke up to Tasmanian whisky when Sullivans Cove French Oak won World’s Best Single Malt in 2014. On a sunny Sunday I head out on a whisky-tasting tour with Brett Steel of Drink Tasmania (drinktasmania.com.au), through rolling farmland to bucolic Nant (nant.com.au), pioneering Old Kempton (oldkemptondistillery.com.au), Belgrove, and grand Shene Estate.
taswhiskytrail.com
1
Shene Estate
Shene, a crumbling 19th-century estate, has been restored and given a new lease of life by David and Anne Kernke. In their smart timber distillery the couple make Irish-style triple-distilled whiskey and an award-winning gin, Poltergeist, infused with 12 native Tasmanian botanicals.
shene.com.au
Roadside stall at Shene Estate
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Belgrove Estate
Belgrove is as rustic as Shene is polished. Whisky-making maverick, Peter Bignell, is, Brett tells me, a creative genius. A sheep and arable farmer with a surplus of rye, he built his own copper still and started distilling in the old stables. An old tumble dryer in the yard is the malting machine. Black Rye, his take on Kahlúa, made with grappa, rye and coffee, is his biggest seller (for espresso martinis). Noma’s Rene Redzepi is a fan; when he created a pop-up in Sydney in 2016, he put Belgrove spirits on the menu. Surrounded by fields of barley, rye and wheat, it’s the ultimate paddockto-bottle set-up. “Or dirt to drink,” the whisky wizard says with a wry smile.
belgrovedistillery.com.au
The Agrarian Kitchen cookery school
Tasmania’s first paddock-to-plate cookery school, meanwhile, is half an hour outside Hobart in the Derwent Valley. Rodney Dunn, one-time Sydney-based editor of Gourmet Traveller magazine, watched back-to-back box sets of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage before deciding to create an Tasmanian version. With his wife, Séverine, he founded The Agrarian Kitchen in 2008, a cookery school in a 19th-century schoolhouse on a farm in Lachlan . In 2017, he opened a light, bright eatery in nearby New Norfolk, celebrating local, seasonal and sustainable produce.
We pitch up at the cookery school and wander around the garden with Séverine. The herb garden is brimming with lemon balm, Mexican tarragon, rosemary, thyme, chamomile and mint; the orchard’s branches are heavy with fruit; 100 types of tomatoes are growing in the polytunnels; and chickens and Wessex Saddleback pigs roam the fields.
theagrariankitchen.com
Tasmanian Seafood Seduction tour
We cut out the middleman on a Tasmanian Seafood Seduction tour. The small boat chugs out of the harbour along the Derwent River to the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, separating Tasmania from Bruny Island. Freshly shucked oysters come thick and fast, followed by oysters poached in champagne on deck. Lee, our guide, scrambles into his wetsuit and dives off the boat. Clambering up the ladder, his bag bursting with spiny sea urchins and abalone, lunch is a smorgasbord of sweet, saltwater-laced seafood: sustainable, hyper-local, seafloor-to-fork dining. It’s devilishly good.
pennicottjourneys.com.au
Hobart Tasmania hotels
MACq 01
Take the glamorous new design hotel MACq 01 on Hobart’s harbour, which has architectural pizzazz and an imaginative concept: each of the 114 rooms is named after an extraordinary character in Tasmania’s colourful history (from Jørgen Jørgensen, king of Iceland turned Tasmanian convict, to Ma Dwyer, legendary landlady and madam of the local brothel) and guests can join complimentary door-to-door storytelling tours.
macq01.com.au
Macq 01 Hotel and Hobart harbour
Henry Jones Art Hotel
Wharf warehouse in style, this vision of slatted wood is in the same stable as the Henry Jones Art Hotel, also on the waterfront but set in an old jam-making factory.
thehenryjones.com
How to get to Tasmania
Return flights from London Heathrow to Melbourne via Abu Dhabi start at £696 (etihad.com). Flights from Melbourne to Hobart start from $118 one way (virginaustralia.com). For more info see discovertasmania.com.au. Follow Lucy on Instagram and Twitter @lucygillmore.
Looking for Hampshire hotels? Read our Heckfield Place hotel review, a luxury spa hotel in Hampshire.
What is Heckfield Place’s USP?
The UK’s longest-awaited hotel is finally open. Six years on from its originally touted opening date, Heckfield Place in Hampshire launched in late summer 2018 and the consensus is that it was worth the wait. Expect 46 elegant bedrooms and two restaurants directed by chef Skye Gyngell (her restaurant Spring, in Somerset House, is also backed by Heckfield’s owner, Gerald Chan).
Chan wants the place to feel like home rather than a hotel; intimate touches include allowing his private collection of paintings and photography to be hung across the house.
He is also committed to sustainability, so there is not just an onsite biodynamic kitchen garden but also a whole farm to supply the hotel’s two restaurants, Marle and Hearth. In addition, the 400 acres of parkland that surround the hotel are being restored to their 19th century-style glory days.
The grand private dining room
And the vibe?
Intimate, opulent, charming and one of a kind. For example, the flowers and veg are grown biodynamically, according to phases of the moon, and leaves from the grounds’ ancient trees – parts of an arboretum planted by 19th century horticulturalist William Wildsmith – are left where they lie to create mulch instead of being leaf-blowered away. Collaborations with craftspeople are encouraged and tea is supplied by Henrietta Lovell’s Rare Tea Company. Logs for Hearth, where cooking is only over fire, have been carefully chosen by log-savant Mark Parr, of the London Log Co. Jane Scotter of Fern Verrow, the biodynamic farm in Herefordshire that works in partnership with Gyngell, has been consulting.
The aim is to redefine modern luxury, and woo a chic international crowd, London’s food pilgrims and locals.
A relaxing, stylishly understated, drawing room
Which room should I book at Heckfield Place?
Under interior designer Ben Thompson’s influence, the hotel’s 46 bedrooms are decorated in a palate of soft earthy colours, with exposed plaster and distressed walnut floors interjected with chandeliers, worn Persian carpets and rush mats. Diminutive but cosy rooms along the corridor area are the most affordable but the main house is where it’s at for unadulterated elegance, with six signature rooms (our favourite is The Heath Room, deliciously sumptuous with a sitting room of French hand-painted bird silk panels). Start saving now for a night in the Long Room; this enormous suite, with its own private kitchen, costs £10,000 per night.
One of Heckfield Place’s stylish bedrooms
What’s good to drink?
The dark blue Moon bar, with its open fire and mirror ball, is overseen by Jonas Stern, whose CV includes Mayfair’s Isabel and Jason Atherton’s Pollen Street Social. Stern has trained up the staff and created nine Moon signature cocktails.
Wine buffs can swoon over the small but punchy wine cellar where head of wine, Louise Gordon, has had carte blanche over her selection. A 1944 Chateau Latour, a prized Sassicaia and a booty of limited-edition organic and biodynamic bottles are among the 320 bins.
The hotel’s opulent Moon bar
And to eat?
Hearth, Heckfield Place’s wood-fired restaurant, hasn’t launched when we visit, so we head to Marle for dinner, open to guests and the public. Gyngell, the culinary director, will be juggling two days in Hampshire and five in town at Spring. Bumping into her at Marle’s entrance, she explains that Heckfield will have a warmer, smokier menu, with more slow cooking than Spring. “We’re in the countryside so the menus are more robust, but still with a lightness of touch.”
Another difference is that, at Heckfield, there’s a 400-acre estate to draw from, and to inspire; the restaurant has a terrific terrace, looking out over sweeping lawns with a glinting fountain and lake stretching beyond. Inside, it’s a dreamy space with shelves of pickles and terracotta pots elbowing wicker chairs and bright flowers. Windows are a focus, too; we’ve never been in a restaurant streaming with so much natural light before.
To kick off proceedings, it’s beetroot, carrots and burrata with datterini tomatoes and black olive dressing. These veg have moved two minutes from field to kitchen and you can tell; a reminder that summer isn’t quite finished, they’re radiant with sunny sweetness.
Gyngell is known for letting her ingredients sing and avoiding fuss and our carpaccio of River Test trout – “the Test is just over there,” points the waitress to a far-off valley – is testament to this ethos. There’s freshness and vibrancy, thanks to pickled tomatillos and smoked creme fraiche. All is washed down with an organic Blank Bottle Jimny Verdelho, Western Cape and Gusbourne Estate’s English Chardonnay, perfectly hitting a bacchanalian spot.
Pickled tomatillos and smoked creme fraiche
Following fast is turbot with grilled cucumber and bearnaise sauce – lustrous, creamy, and perfectly fleshy. The poached short rib – slow-cooked for 12 hours – with onion rings is equally accomplished.
To finish off, we obliterate a fennel pollen panna cotta and almond tart with plum ice cream, a gleeful marriage of sharp and sweet.
What’s the breakfast like?
Marle is a temple to the joys of breaking fast. Baskets of sourdough, rye toast and pastries are in abundance. Other heroes are the home-made butter, apple buckwheat bread and Heckfield homemade fig leaf yoghurt with granola. I opt for sticky buckwheat crepes with plum jam and whipped butter, though fans of cooked breakfasts should try the home-cured bellow bacon and eggs on sourdough, or bubble and squeak with fried egg and kasundi (a Bengali-Indian relish). Commendably the breakfast menus here change frequently.
The Sun House at Heckfield Place, a private dining space set within a greenhouse
Any other food experiences I shouldn’t miss?
Definitely sign up for a farm tour. You can snaffle tips on how to grow veg without using pesticides, stroll the paths by the orchards and greenhouses, meet the bees, snuffling saddleback pigs, laying chickens and feather-footed bantams. To get more hands-on, sign up for a class at The Assembly (think autumn workshops on apple-storing and talks with Gyngell and Fern Verrow’s Jane Scotter).
Is Heckfield Place family-friendly?
Families are welcome to stay in the corridor rooms, but not the main house. As for specific playrooms or children’s menus, the hotel has plans to develop these but hasn’t done so as yet. There are, however, occasional Mud & Guts kids adventure workshops in the schedule.
Would we bring our small people to Heckfield? Probably not, as it’s so geared towards adults at present. If you do bring children with you, make a beeline for Wellington Country Park, the neighbouring estate. It’s a kids’ utopia with dinosaurs, toy trains and zip wires (and riding for older children).
The Heath Room, one of the hotel’s signature bedrooms
What can I do while I’m there?
A cardio injection can be sated at the gym, but the extensive grounds mean plenty of jogging routes and bike rides – or go further afield across the myriad footpaths and bridle paths that wind into the Hampshire countryside, as well as fly fishing on the Whitewater river. The upper and lower walled garden of wisteria, lavender and English roses make a heady short walk.
For wellness-whippets, there is Little Bothy spa, offering personal training, yoga, ballet and pilates, as well as five treatment rooms to dally in. Best of all is the hotel’s 67-seater private cinema – for talks and films – and a cellar bar.
One of the treatment rooms at the hotel’s Little Bothy spa
olive says…
Winter suits Heckfield. There are seven elegant fireplaces in the main house (even some of the bathrooms have log fires). Go for a long walk then find a spot by one of those fireplaces in the drawing room for afternoon tea (check out our guide to the best afternoon tea recipes here) centred around an insanely beautiful cake each day (in our case an exquisitely presented red velvet cake….).
In an untrammelled corner of Scotland (check out our guide to the best restaurants in Scotland) a visionary restaurant is serving up such radical takes on traditional Caledonian cooking as whipped custard with raw ginger and whisky, lamb cooked over coals with cured courgettes and ewe’s yoghurt and oysters plucked from the loch 30 minutes before hitting the table.
When chef Pamela Brunton and her partner Rob Latimer opened Inver, an experimental restaurant on the banks of a remote loch in the Scottish highlands, they expected some resistance from locals used to the Scottish staples served by the previous owner. “Former customers would come in demanding fish and chips,” says Rob, who works as front-of-house. But instead of getting downhearted by the requests, the couple took inspiration, and in a cheeky culinary twist that was soon to become their trademark, they duly added fish and chips to the menu – only served it completely raw.
Pam Brunton and Rob Latimer
Cured halibut with pickled potatoes did not go down well with the old guard, who resigned themselves to travelling further up the coast for their fish and chips, but as word got out of a progressive new chef turning traditional Scottish dining on its head, reinventing age-old recipes and rejuvenating ancient cooking methods, Inver started attracting attention. Three years since opening, it is lauded as one of the UK’s best restaurants and has garnered legions of followers on its Instagram feed, which documents, among other things, its epicurean experiments (fermented gannet, anyone? Cockerel’s testicles?).
It’s only when I begin the 90-minute drive to Inver from Glasgow (check out our guide to the best places to eat in Glasgow here) that I understand the risk Pam and Rob took by opening a destination restaurant in this lesser-visited corner of Scotland. The drive takes you through the dramatic honeypots of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, north west, to the comparatively demure Cowal Peninsula, a region so untrammelled that the tourist board plays on its obscurity, branding it ‘Argyll’s Secret Coast’.
The pretty, slate-roofed, white-washed crofter’s cottage gives nothing away about the game-changing cuisine being produced within. Passers-by stop here expecting standard pub grub – and get politely redirected to The Oyster Catcher down the road. The view is sublime: an endlessly moving, pewter-coloured sea-loch, two castles – one 14th century, one 18th – fluffy fringes of wild flowers and grasses, wading birds and a tiny island with a miniature lighthouse. It’s so far removed from humdrum reality that it takes you down a notch or two even before you’ve sat down.
Tristan van Lynden working the oyster beds at Otter Ferry
Inside, there is a fresh, pared-down vibe – all white walls, scrub floors and vintage memorabilia, with that view framed through picture windows and blue shutters. Rob, a former animator, and Pam, who worked at trend-setting Noma in Copenhagen (discover our Copenhagen weekend guide here), Tom Aitkens in London and In De Wulf in Ghent, have been so busy at Inver that they still live in a caravan up the road, and use the restaurant as their second home, filling it with their best-loved possessions and creations of crafty friends. On the walls are framed Seventies’ baking books, antiquarian illustrations of sea-life, a set of deer antlers and a stuffed fish head. Shelves groan under Pam’s huge collection of recipe books and Rob’s blues, soul and hip-hop records (which get played on a turntable balanced on an apple crate). It’s all reassuringly analogue.
A homely lounge has sheepskin-covered window seats and a feather-filled sofa grouped around a cosy wood-burning stove, plus a sleek bar stocked with natural wines (discover everything you need to know about natural wines), Belgian beers, spirits, freshly-squeezed juices, house-made cordials and craft ales made to Inver’s own recipe by Fyne Ales, a small farm brewery in Cairndow (fyneales.com). An audio book of Stoner by John Williams plays in the toilets.
Pam, who stands at a diminutive 4’11’ tall and whose loud, firecracker laugh explodes regularly from the kitchen, takes inspiration from traditional, half-forgotten Scottish recipes, then adds her own, youthful, twist, drawing on international influences and contemporary cooking methods. She calls her style “modern Scottish, because it’s deliberately broad” – the result is a magnificent melding of the traditional and the trendy. Her repertoire includes whipkull, a traditional Shetland whipped custard, which she spikes with raw ginger juice and whisky, then puts through a cream siphon and serves as a dessert with cured rhubarb and raw rhubarb sorbet; and partan bree, a traditional crab soup, which she serves in the crab shell with sushi-style rice, fried so it’s crisp. Traditional Stornaway black pudding and scallops is turned into a pig’s blood brioche bun with a raw scallop in the middle, and then, of course, there’s the raw fish and chips. Perhaps most radical is a pig’s head sliced with pickled greengages and a stuffed halibut head which, Rob says, “is the ugliest thing we serve, but tastes epic.”
Everything is made from scratch and processed using artisanal, time-honoured crafts: curing, grilling, fermenting, ageing, brining, smoking and pickling. “We have a Scottish ethos of peasant, subsistence cooking where nothing is wasted”, says Pam. “The nose-to-tail philosophy extends to plants, too,” adds Rob. Seeds, roots, flowers, stems – everything gets used.
Dishes are truly rooted in their environment, with ingredients gathered by Pam and her staff from the loch shore, forests and hedgerows surrounding Inver: samphire, elderflower, sea campion, mustard plant, wild garlic, young vetch, herbs, wild strawberries. “Coming to work is like walking through a fresh produce market every day, only it’s free,” says Pam.
My scallops, hand-dived by Inver’s former pot-washer, arrive raw and plump in a white asparagus and seaweed tart. There are oysters, plucked from the loch at Otter Ferry a mere 30 minutes ago, that come with spiky horseradish and lemon, and fat langoustine, again straight out of the loch, served with rapeseed mayonnaise and just-baked sourdough bread. Halibut is born in Otter Ferry, then reared sustainably on nearby Gigha. It usually gets shipped to the best restaurants in London, but here it is served for a fraction of the price, accompanied by Loch Fyne mussels, foraged coastal greens and smoky mussel butter. Blush-pink lamb, reared on the Isle of Bute, is cooked over coals and served with cured courgettes, house-aged ewe’s yoghurt and a grilled garlic lamb sausage.
Meaty molluscs, served straight up at Loch Fyne Oysters
Plating is immaculate: the plaice is prettily topped with new-season peas, foraged gooseberries and crispy dabberlocks, and doused with a salty dulse buttery sauce, while a cured trout and grilled pea soup comes elegantly fanned in a tactile, handmade bowl. Most dishes are crowned with just-plucked, vibrantly coloured blooms, herbs and salad leaves grown in a light-filled Victorian greenhouse on the Ardkinglas Estate and by Kate Glasgow in her charming market garden in Strachur. Kate’s Salad – a colourful carnival-in-a-dish that’s become a menu staple – is named after her. Is there anything the restaurant can’t source locally? “Scotland doesn’t do citrus, chocolate or coffee yet,” says Pam. My dessert, a grilled Scottish strawberry mousse and elderflower pannacota with a sugar butter pastry dredged in burnt strawberry powder, is stand-out delicious.
It all feels wonderfully liberated, uplifting and healthy, perfect hashtag fodder for the diners who greet each dish by excitedly wiggling on their seats before embarking on a round of frenzied photo-taking. Even the bill elicits delight – it comes pinned to a vintage postcard regaling nostalgic stories of family holidays.
The clincher is that you no longer have to drive afterwards. In March, Pam and Rob opened four contemporary bothy-style huts next to the restaurant, each sharing the same divine view of the loch through dual-aspect, floor-to-ceiling windows. Topped with a curved tin roof and clad in Scottish larch, inside they’re kitted out with super-king beds, upholstered headboards, mid-century-style furniture, copper anglepoise lamps, birch-ply walls and smart monochrome bathrooms with fabulously powerful showers. There’s a record player, Penguin classics, tea and coffee, homemade hazelnut cookies and rhubarb vodka as pink as the evening’s setting sun, when I watch a heron wait patiently for his own nose-to-tail meal.
Guests staying in Inver’s bothies are supplied with little bottles of house-made rhubarb vodka
Breakfasts, delivered to the door in a wicker basket, are sublime: a choice of bircher muesli and granola, rhubarb compote and camomile yoghurt in mini Kilner jars, just-baked pastries, squidgy sourdough bread, salty hand-churned cultured butter, a golden-yellow boiled egg with mayonnaise and sea salt, pork rillettes, Jersey-milk cheddar cheese and freshly squeezed apple or orange juice.
It’s possible to lose an entire day at Inver in a state of near-hypnosis, watching the tide ebb and flow, inhaling the fresh briny air and listening to bird calls drift across the loch. I walk my dog, play on a rope swing under the ruins of Old Castle Lachlan and visit the medieval ruins of tiny Kilmorie Chapel, where Maclachlan clan chiefs (who still own the land) are buried, along with their gamekeepers.
Super-fresh langoustine at Botanica restaurant, in Tighnabruaich
I force myself away, however, to explore three other restaurants nearby. The Oyster Catcher, in Otter Ferry, is a loch-side pub with new owners who serve some of the most sophisticated and delicious pub food I’ve ever tasted: house-cured gravlax with house-made treacle rye bread and beetroot relish, and Cointreau shellfish bouillabaisse (theoystercatcher.co.uk). Along the coast, in Tighnabruaich, Botanica – also new – has a similar piscatorial persuasion, delivering bowls of podgy mussels and langoustines in a simple, rustic setting (botanicafood.co.uk). And the original branch of Loch Fyne Oysters at Cairndow doesn’t disappoint either, serving huge plates of meaty molluscs laid prone on crushed ice (lochfyne.com). Four restaurants, each packing considerable culinary clout – Argyll’s secret coast may not be secret for much longer. I feel a rebrand coming.
House-cured gravlax at The Oyster Catcher
Double rooms in one of Inver’s bothy huts start from £160, including breakfast (inverrestaurant.co.uk). If they’re full the Creggans Inn, in Strachur, has double rooms from £130, also including breakfast (creggans-inn.co.uk). More info: wildaboutargyll.co.uk
Looking for Nottingham restaurants? Read our expert foodie guide to the best places to eat in Nottingham, including restaurants in Nottingham city centre.
Nottingham’s independent food scene has blossomed over the past few years, with artisan coffee roasteries, tapas bars and sourdough bakeries opening. From high-end restaurants (including Nottingham’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, Sat Bains) to homely cafes, this creative city has it all. Check out our top places to eat and drink in Nottingham…
Best restaurants in Nottingham
Alchemilla
Hidden in the middle of Nottingham’s Derby Road is Alchemilla. An ambiguous door, covered in foliage, leads you under street level into a light and airy space with an open kitchen. The modern space has rustic charm – think exposed bricks, stone floors and lush living walls. Dark wooden mid-century-style tables and chairs are spaced comfortably apart from each other under brick arches while large ceiling windows provide warm natural light.
The menu at Alchemilla changes almost daily, depending on the produce the kitchen can source. We recommend going for the seven-course tasting menu. We tried silky salmon topped with slithers of fresh, vinegary cucumber and salty oysters. Chef Alex Bond’s signature dish is a must – al dente roast cauliflower served with a sweet almond brittle was light and had a lovely balance of sweet and savoury flavours.
We loved ‘Hen of the woods, bread ‘n’ gravy, lardo’. This was a bowl of sweet, sticky bread soaked in a rich gravy and served with earthy pan-fried mushrooms, and silky ribbons of lardo which melted with the heat.
On our visit the coffee dessert stood out. Quenelles of thick, creamy coffee mousse were joined by sweet-sharp raspberries and dots of pungent black garlic purée – it sounds odd but the bitter flavours complemented the sweet fruit making this dessert a must try.
If the name of this Nottingham restaurant doesn’t intrigue you, the lack of an online presence will. Stumble across Sexy Mamma Loves Spaghetti down a cobbled side street in Hockley and you’ll be met with a cosy Italian restaurant (think paper table cloths, flamboyant staff and an ever-changing menu).
The counter is filled with Frangelico bottles and groundnut cakes (cooked by Mamma herself) while an Italian radio station plays loudly in the background. The daily changing menu is hand-written on a blackboard (if you can’t read it, pick up a pair of glasses hanging on the wall ready for close-up menu inspection). Expect simple yet hearty dishes, the beef ragu is a must – rich, juicy and tender. Finish with a serving of tiramisu – dense and creamy with a strong hit of coffee.
If you want small tapas sharing plates with a fine-dining vibe, visit Iberico World Tapas in Nottingham’s Lace Market. Tucked underground next to the Galleries of Justice, the mosaic tiled restaurant feels intimate and airy at the same time.
Start with punchy padron peppers coated generously in sea salt alongside creamy crisp ham croquettes. Share small plates of spicy miso salmon, stems of al dente chargrilled asparagus with nutty manchego and earthy truffle honey as well as salty chunks of chorizo with smoked aubergine and yogurt.
Save room for crisp, light-as-air churros with a rich hot chocolate sauce for dessert before finishing off with a tipple of of Pedro Ximenez.
Over the past couple of years, Baresca has become the go-to tapas bar in Nottingham, whether you fancy Catalan bread and eggs for breakfast or sharing bowls of mushroom risoni with friends over dinner. The décor feels fresh yet rustic, with patterned mosaic tiles on the floor and low-hanging bulbs highlighting chefs at work in the open kitchen.
We recommend going for the menu of the day (flatbreads, a dip, two tapas and a side for £10.95). The crisp, stone-baked flatbreads are served with a sweet carrot and cumin dip. The mushroom risoni is a must-order – rich, creamy and earthy. It’s very filling so consider ordering one to share between two. Get a side of salty padrón peppers to nibble on the side before finishing with a plate of churros served with a rich, thick chocolate sauce.
On a Friday and Saturday evenings, the cellar bar opens with DJs and Mowtown bands playing while you sip on goblets of gin garnished with orange and rosemary.
For the best pizza in Nottingham, head to Hockley’s Stoney Street and settle in for a feast of 14-inch pizzas and mac and cheese. Stripped back wooden tables, mismatching cushions and windowsills scattered with pot plants, photo frames and the odd watering can or two add to the laid-back vibe.
The pizzas (all served on sheets of retro red and white checked paper) are sloppy with a crisp crust, so be prepared to get messy. Go for the Cosmopolitan topped with serrano ham, peaches and fresh basil for a summery twist, or keep it classic with the Brooklyn Sausage Party that comes with slices of Cobble Lane artisan pepperoni. If you’ve got room to spare, swap your salad for a side of indulgent mac and cheese mixed with fresh ham hock and smoked mozzarella.
There’s a ten-strong vegan menu, too, which puts a spin on all the meaty pizzas, so pop in for a slice of The Frenchman or Cheat Sweats.
Something of a Nottingham institution, Kayal has been serving some of the best Indian food in Nottingham since 2005. Book ahead for a table in the evening and settle down for a Keralan feast of chilli paneer, masala dosas and seafood curries.
The Kayal fish curry is a must. Tender chunks of flaky king fish swim in a sweet, slightly spiced coconut sauce which is best mopped up with pieces of rich, flaky paratha (cooked over the griddle).
For a little taster of each dish, go for the Kayal ‘Sadya’ where bowls of curries, side dishes, bread and rice are bought to the table on a large platter.
For some of the best baked goods in Nottingham, head to Tough Mary’s Bakehouse. You won’t miss it, with its sunshine yellow paintwork standing out against the otherwise grey Derby Road. Inside the sunny colour scheme continues – there are a couple of tables you can perch on while waiting for your order, or just stand and admire the well-stocked counter and watch loaves of sourdough rising behind it.
Sourdough is the speciality here, after owner Kate O’Shea took a three-day course at the School of Artisan Food, but croissants, doughnuts, babka and cinnamon buns are also worth trying. The light, fluffy doughnuts are filled with everything from chocolate and cherry to peaches and cream, but only two can be fried at a time, so be prepared to queue at busy times.
If you don’t want to wait, head to Outpost coffee or Diallingin to grab a babka (Kate supplies lots of local Nottingham businesses throughout the week.) And the name? A combination of Kate’s middle name and the Etta James song, which was also the inspiration behind the paint colour.
Based in Nottingham’s creative Primary Studios space, Small Food Bakery focuses on small batch production of sourdough loaves and pastries. Pop by on a Friday or Saturday to pick up freshly baked croissants, rye sourdough crisp breads and an ever-changing selection of cakes and cinnamon buns.
The bakery also works in conjunction with Nottingham Food Assembly. Between 5pm and 8pm on a Thursday, the bakery (next door to the collection point) puts on a supper for eating in or taking away. Each week the menu focuses on local, seasonal produce including rhubarb meringue pie and pancakes filled with Yorkshire Dama fresh ricotta.
Part gallery, part studio space, part cinema, the Nottingham Contemporary acts as a hub for local creatives. The downstairs café and bar area is now home to Ottar chocolates, a bakery and chocolatier that has its roots at the School of Artisan Food. Bi-folding doors flood the open plan room with natural light, while a living wall created by Nottingham’s Green Haus provides lush greenery to the minimalist space (all the plants are also available to buy).
Settle into one of the art deco-style armchairs, or perch on a wooden bench and dig into cakes, all made fresh that day using homemade chocolate and spreads. Our recommendation goes to the light almond and apricot friand or rich chocolate tart flecked with sea salt and hazelnut pieces, all encased in buttery pastry (which can easily be shared between two).
If you’ve time, stay for lunch. Five or six Ottolenghi-style dishes (colourful salads, veggie-centric sharing platters) are on offer including roast cauliflower with coconut yogurt.
Before you leave, browse the counter that’s topped with jars of peanut butter and salted caramel and rosemary spread, and bars of Ottar and Pump Street chocolate.
For the best cup of coffee in Nottingham, get to Outpost early in the morning to grab a seat on the long wooden bench and chat to the baristas before the queues start growing (even then, Greg and the gang will chat to everyone who walks through the door). Plants fill the shelves while cacti and water glasses pepper the tables, and there’s a rack of independent magazines to help yourself to. If it’s full inside, grab a blanket and snuggle up on the bench outside.
The team at Outpost want to help everyone enjoy their coffee as much as possible so will happily give advice on everything from the brew ratio to the best method (check out our expert coffee guide here). They’ve even started giving bottles of water out for customers to take away, so they can compare the way the coffee tastes using tap vs filtered.
Sustainable supply chains is another focus; all the coffee is bought direct from Brazil, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Colombia. Baristas go out to these countries to meet the farmers, visit washing stations and try the coffee directly. All the coffees are roasted by hand just down the road from the shop before being sent across the country to many other UK restaurants and cafes.
Delilah’s started off in 2005 as a small independent Nottingham deli stocking fine cheeses, charcuterie and olives sourced locally and from further afield. Twelve years on, it’s now in a much grander building but maintains the same ethos.
Downstairs is a large deli area where fridges are filled with cheeses, whole counters are dedicated to charcuterie and freshly baked bread is on offer every day. You can also stock up on honeys, jams, chocolates and tricky-to-find ingredients such as edible rose petals. Don’t miss the bakery section towards the back, where you can pick up a selection of made-in-house cakes to take home with you. The chocolate and stout version uses local Amber Ales stout and is Delilah’s take on the classic chocolate and Guinness cake.
Above this is an all-day cafe serving everything from avocado on toast with poached eggs and dukkah to antipasti platters topped with tapenade, grilled artichokes, hummus, mixed olives and sweet garlic.
For some of Nottingham’s best soul food head to Kiosk. Inspired by comfort cooking from around the world, the menu is fresh and exciting, with a Middle Eastern focus.
Choose between a traditional brunch, served with homemade baked beans and sourdough toast, or go for the Kiosk kedgeree, topped with egg, garlic yogurt and chilli jam.
The main menu is simple, with a choice of six colourful dishes, among them a knockout feta-topped manakish flatbread served with zatar oil and salad, and beef koftas served with a tahini dressing.
Tucked down one of Nottingham’s cobbled alleys, the Junkyard comes alive at 10am and stays that way until the early hours of the following morning. In a space decorated with simple wooden tables and stools, there are 15 beers on tap and over 20 bottles to pick from the fridge; choose between Gamma Ray (an American pale ale) or a Crananchan Killer (a raspberry, honey and oat fruit beer).
The vibe is lively (the café-bar is as popular with couples as it is among groups of friends and families). If you want to get a seat in the evening get there early, or prepare to jostle for standing room around the bar.
Don’t get so distracted by the beer that you miss the food menus, printed on brown paper. Burgers here are of a superior nature (beef patties with streaky bacon, house ketchup and proper cheese slices) and indulgent sides like black pudding scotch eggs and mac ‘n’ cheese balls are great to nibble on with a pint.
Based in Sherwood Forest just outside Nottingham, the School of Artisan Food is a vibrant hub for food and drink, offering everything from one-day make your own mozzarella workshops to advanced patisserie and Viennoiserie classes lasting a week. There are courses for all abilities, whether you’re a cider-making novice, or fancy signing up for the year-long advanced diploma.
We loved the home dairy class where, guided by enthusiastic tutor Katy Fenwick, you get the chance to make yogurt, paneer, butter and Colwick cheese (a local speciality), in a working dairy. Throughout the day you’ll learn about types of milk, the role that cultures play, the differences between hard and set cheeses, and the chance to sample a few. This course is aimed at those with an interest in dairy and you’ll leave with the recipes and confidence to make them in your kitchen at home.
It’s also possible just to visit for a morning or afternoon. Wander around the historic Welbeck estate then pop into the farm shop. Welbeck’s Holstein cows are milked every day and you can buy the creamy, unpasteurised milk from the dairy’s vending machine. If you’re looking for something cheesy, stock up on Stichelton – a raw milk blue cheese made by hand each day and sold when it’s around four months old.
Don’t miss the Ottar chocolate counter at the back of the shop for rich caramel spreads, individual chocolates and giant marshmallow teacakes all made on site. The small batch producer takes weeks over its chocolate making process, from sorting and roasting the beans to grinding them, tempering them and, finally, wrapping the bars; flavours include coffee, cardamom and toasted almond. Earlier this year the team started the process of making their own honey by housing 250,000 worker bees on the estate (where they can feast on blackberry flowers and lime). Six months later you can now buy the fruits of the first harvest, which has a light and slightly fruity taste.
Looking for Dundee restaurants? Here are the best places to eat in Dundee.
The opening of the £80-million, ship-like V&A Dundee design museum has drawn worldwide attention to Scotland’s fourth largest city. Architect Kengo Kuma’s jaggedly slanting structure, inspired by Scottish cliffs, has brought an excitement and confidence to the city; its serene oak-lined interior offers glimpses of the glinting Tay river through glass slats. The V&A Dundee and the waterfront development around it are set to entice a new city-break crowd and restaurateurs are already feeling the thrill, with new places opening and old ones gearing up. Here are some of the best of them…
Best fine dining restaurants in Dundee
The Tayberry
In pretty Broughty Ferry, a former fishing village that’s now a suburb of Dundee, The Tayberry is set in an unassuming building behind a sandy beach at the mouth of the Tay. Chef Adam Newth set up here in 2015 and has a loyal following of both locals and food lovers from further afield.
Adam describes his cooking as ‘modern fine dining with a homely kind of feel to it’. You don’t get away with being pretentious in Tayside, and he’s aware of that, using excellent Scottish produce with a flourish of creativity. Current highlights are an amuse bouche of celeriac and fennel velouté with pickled mushrooms – a smooth, creamy piping-hot soup with a delicious mushroom tang and aniseed undertone. Another favourite on the autumn menu is a generous starter of 12-hour confit pork cheek with sweet onion risotto and red wine jus, with perfect sweet-soft pork. The restaurant’s namesake, the tayberry – like a black raspberry – pops up in puds as a signature tayberry sorbet. Food is well-priced (£28 for two courses, £36 for three, plus tasting menu options) and there’s a good wine list, too.
Chef Jamie Scott has made a great success of his first solo restaurant, which he opened in 2016 after winning 2014’s MasterChef Professionals. The Newport’s winning location, overlooking the river at Newport-on-Tay, is a seven-minute drive over the Tay Bridge from Dundee centre. The restaurant is almost always full and features mains like local pheasant with parsnip and truffle potato, or St Andrews lobster with sea herbs and wild garlic, plus fun appetisers like crab tacos.
The draws are sensible pricing and consistently good, reasonably uncomplicated food (though he quite likes a foam – must be the MasterChef effect). Jamie knows his audience. This is for people who want effort, but not food so fancy or expensive that it’s off-putting. There are three six-course taster menus – veggie, fishy, or omni – plus a popular Sunday lunch. There are also four large double rooms if you’d rather stay over.
This dedicated breakfast and brunch spot (open 9am-5pm) is an easy-going kind of place with wooden tables and large shop-front windows to watch the world pass by. The breakfast menu is a winner for those of us who are always disappointed to arrive somewhere for lunch to find they’ve stopped serving eggs benedict at 11.30. Big plates arrive packed with Full Scottish Breakfast classics alongside tasty sourdough toast, fresh juice and rich smooth coffees, for which you can choose your blend. Alternatively, go sweet with waffles or pancakes, or choose a big fat savoury hash-brown stack, with poached egg, spinach and mushrooms.
Hash Brown Stack at Pacarama. Credit Mathew Schwartz
The Parlour
This relaxed neighbourhood café serves hearty modern food for breakfast and lunch and does the occasional pop-up evening, too. A tasty-looking Libyan food event was on offer when we visited. Breakfast specials could be shakshuka baked Turkish eggs, and lunch might be a hard choice between an Arbroath smokie and spring greens frittata, an excellent panzanella or a bowlful of deli salads. There are also interesting homemade sandwiches and soups, and cakes out on display to tempt you.
This is one of several new city-centre places set up by restaurateur and ex-Dundee FC footballer Phil Donaldson, who realised the potential of the new waterfront development to attract people to Dundee from its inception (he’s also behind Draffens, a secret, speakeasy-style bar, and the Bird and Bear restaurant and bar).
Bubu is perfect for a quick, fresh lunch, welcoming a steady flow of happy take-out and eat-in customers. Lovely rich coffee, well-executed herby bowls of Moroccan couscous, Mediterranean-style sandwiches on breads such as rustic Spanish Barra Gallega, and a spiced and toasted-seed topped potato salad with a tangy dressing are lunch hits. For breakfast there’s hot egg and chorizo pots, or gluten-free porridge stuffed with fruit and nuts, among other choices.
Potato salad with a tangy dressing and toasted seeds at Bubu
More great restaurants in Dundee
Tatha Bar and Kitchen at V&A Dundee
First off, it’s pronounced Tayva, which is Gaelic for Tay. This is the main restaurant at the V&A Dundee design museum – the reason for all that new Dundee buzz – which architect Kengo Kuma hopes it will be “a living room for the city”. The restaurant is at the heart of the building on the mezzanine level, with an expansive view over the water. It’s also exposed to the huge atrium, not tucked away in a basement as with so many gallery cafes.
Food is a crowd-pleasing daytime mix of seasonal salads and sandwiches, scones and cakes, but it’s also open in the evenings (Thursdays to Sundays from 27 September), via a separate entrance once the gallery itself has closed for the day. Evening dishes go one notch less casual, with main courses such as chargrilled Puddledub farm buffalo steak, or Dundee gin and marmalade cured Perthshire smoked salmon. It’s also hoping to cultivate an after-work drinks scene by offering cocktails, wine, beer and light bites. There’s also a smaller coffee bar on the V&A’s ground floor.
This charming small modern-art gallery is also home to a popular tapas restaurant (open daily for lunch and dinner). Dundee has always had an artistic angle, being well served by galleries, and, with the new V&A, this aspect of it should flourish further. You can get straight to the heart of the cultural scene at Gallery 48, a lovely mix of forward-thinking art, workshops and great food. On the menu you’ll find tapas favourites such as white anchovies and Spanish tortilla, plus specialities like Ventresca tuna belly, olive tapenade and artichoke, or salted cod fritters with house aioli. All can be accompanied by a wide choice of Spanish wines, or an impressive selection of local gins.
Everyone loves a classy fish-and-chip joint, where you can enjoy a sit-down supper complete with a mug of tea, bottle of beer or even a cocktail. This one comes with excellent pedigree, as it’s run by Arbroath-based fish merchant G&A Spink (which carefully sources all catches from MSC-registered boats fishing in the North Sea, landed on the east coast). Specials are adapted to the catch, and menu dishes (other than delicious soft-fleshed haddock and chips with homemade tartar sauce) include scallops with haggis, carrot puree and garlic butter, and red Thai seafood curry with coconut rice. The restaurant is in an attractive, purpose-renovated 54-seat cellar-space, completed as a labour of love by the owners.
This big new bar, bakery, and restaurant, just back from the riverfront, is based around a large modern industrial-feel dining space that’s open from breakfast till dinner. It’s already pulling in an evening crowd with a cocktail selection that includes Dundee-marmalade inspired ‘Dundee Auld Fashioned’ (made from Glencadam Single Malt, orange bitters and sugar syrup). Big international flavours arrive on sharing plates; think sumac-spiced lamb rump with puy lentil vinaigrette and aubergine caviar, or brassicas and homemade Merguez sausage with duck gizzard cassoulet.
This 1920s speakeasy-style bar is supposed to be a secret, sort of. For those not in the know, the unmarked door is down an alley called Couttie’s Wynd (between 36 and 38 Nethergate) in the city centre, from where you’ll hear live jazz wafting up from the basement of the long-closed Draffens department store. It serves great cocktails in a stylised Twenties jazz bar, which together with the secret-club vibe make this a fun place to while away the night until the early hours.
The successful Scottish beer company offers a Brew School experience. Create your own beer using a new bit of brewing kit, The Grain Father; beer masters will coach you through the basics, offering tips on styles and flavour profiles, and teach you all the know-how you need. You also get to take home a five-litre mini keg of your own beer. The one-day session includes bacon rolls and coffee on arrival, plus a light lunch as you brew.
For all your Scottish, British and international cheese needs, head to this specialist cheese shop. All the European classics are available, from top-quality parmesan to tomme de savoie but if you’re looking for something more local, ask for the St Andrews Farmhouse Anster (a creamy, crumbly farmhouse cheese made just south, in Fife, using milk from a single herd of Holstein Friesian cows) or the Gruth Dhu (Black Crowdie), a soft cow’s milk cheese made up in Tain).
New central kid on the block, Hotel Indigo, is housed in a renovated former jute mill with a landmark bell tower and retains industrial touches such as original wooden floors and exposed brickwork. It has also added nods to local history from The Beano to the video game industry.
Thinking of a Comporta holiday? Want to know the best places to stay in Comporta? Read our guide to Comporta restaurants, bars and villas in Comporta including sublime Comporta
If you want to enjoy Comporta at its rustic, back-to-nature best go now. The fashion crowd may already have discovered this picture-perfect village and the beaches and towns that surround it (Christian Louboutin and Philippe Starck have houses there) but the striking modern holiday homes they have built are low-rise and discreet, hidden behind umbrella pines, cork oaks and immaculately staged coastal gardens. Likewise the few beach bars and fish restaurants that have sprung up on the area’s fine, flaxen sand are, for now, carefully managed and heavily restricted. With whispers of larger hotel companies moving in, however, this beautifully wild-edged enclave of barefoot luxury may not remain that way for long.
Sleek cabana villas sit among umbrella pines and cork trees at Sublime Comporta
Only 90 minutes’ drive south of Lisbon (read our guide to the best places to eat and drink in Lisbon here), the area has long been protected by its status as a natural reserve (at its northern end is the Sado estuary, home to bottlenose dolphins, flamingos and storks, whose giant nests can be spotted balancing on the top of the telegraph poles that run alongside the region’s roads). Add a handful of hippie-chic shops and galleries into the mix, local vineyards, upmarket horse riding and kayaking operators, a smattering of rustic rice and seafood restaurants – plus a couple of more elegant options for craft cocktails and finer Portuguese dining – and you have a recipe for the perfect summer weekend away.
Where to eat and drink in Comporta village
Comporta itself is a small, pretty village lined with cobbled streets, blue and white-painted rice barns, shuttered, low-rise buildings and stately, sweet-scented Indian neem trees. A stroll around the village won’t take longer than half an hour but there’s plenty to distract you along the way…
Mercearia Gomes – a grocery store with floor-to-ceiling shelves tightly packed with rice, wine, cheese, sardines, local fruit and veg, oils and soaps (@merceariagomescomporta)
Cavalarica – a beautifully elegant restaurant and cocktail joint set in an old stables right in the centre of town (cavalaricacomporta.com)
Order a fresh juice or a glass of local wine at Colmo bar in Comporta village
Cegonha
Join the locals at Cegonha (“stork” – a nod to the region’s most emblematic birds), a simple roadside restaurant specialising in grilled meat and fish cooked over coals, and served in huge portions. It has the feel of a social club, with staff and locals smoking, chatting and watching TV, but it’s welcoming and friendly. We tried the porc Alentejano – pork with clams – huge hunks of creamy, paprika- and bay-laced pork, scattered with sweet little clams (Rua do Comercio; 00 351 265 497 658).
Whatever you do, drive out of town at sunset to gaze over the Sado Estuary, stopping off at the little fishing village of Carrasqueira to admire its sun-drenched tangle of boardwalks and stilted fishermen’s shacks.
A flaky, caramel pastel de nada from Eucalyptus Pastelaria
Dona Bia
It’s easy to miss workaday roadside restaurant Dona Bia as you drive south out of town but make sure you don’t. There’s nothing showy about its comforting, homely recipes (grandmother-style traditional regional dishes are the name of the game) but the cooking – and the pricing – is excellent and its light, bright tables get understandably busy. Rumours are that this is where local chefs go to eat after work and we believe them.
If you want to try the region’s rich, earthy rice dishes, or staples like coriander clams, Alentejan pork or steak with homemade chips, this is where to find them at their rustic best. The restaurant is especially known for its fish, however, and often serves seabags (check out our best sea bass recipes here), turbot and razor clams. We plump for grilled sardines, their plump flesh and scorched skin hinting at a wood-fired oven. Served with waxy little boiled potatoes and a simple but perfectly dressed salad it proves the point that sometimes simple is best.
EN 261, Comporta; 00 351 265 497 557
Freshly grilled sardines at roadside restaurant Dona Bia
The best beach restaurants near Comporta
Sal Restaurante at Pego Beach
Home to one of Comporta’s best stretches of pale gold sand, Praia do Pego draws visitors for another reason, too; walk to the beach from the car park and the first thing you see is Sal Restaurante, a cute little beach bar at the top of the dunes, overlooking the sand.
It is now comfortably on the beaten tourist trail but don’t let that put you off. Inside is a cute mishmash of casual, fisherman-chic beach style (white-painted wooden tables, a ceiling strung with buoys, anchors and other flotsam), ideal for a casual lunch. Or, bag a table on its terrace in the early evening and while away that heat-drunk hour or so, when the sun starts to drop and people start to billow off the sand, with a glass of local white and something to stave off hunger pangs until later in the evening; try the octopus salad, the soft octopus spiked with tiny cubes of crunchy red onion, chopped parsley and peppery olive oil.
If you happen to be staying at Sublime Comporta let the team know; guests get preferential access to the best sun loungers and (with 24 hours notice) otherwise impossible table reservations.
Octopus salad and a glass of local white at Sal restaurant on Pego beach
O Dinis Restaurante dos Pescadores at Carvalhal Beach
On another beautiful, wide open stretch of beach, O Dinis Restaurante dos Pescadores is more rustic but less casual than Restaurante Sal (tables are simple wooden affairs but eating here feels like more of an occasion). It’s owned by a fisherman and specialises, as the name suggests, in fish; the grilled fish of the day is worth the visit alone.
If you’re not a fan of whole fish, order the clams (best clam recipes here) with garlic and coriander: they’re sweet and plump, laced with garlic and coriander and a salty, lemony broth to dip (good) bread in. One word of warning: accompanying salads and sides are more ordinary (our lettuce tasted ever-so-slightly of soap). But that can almost be forgiven when the fish is as good as it is.
The closest beach to Comporta village would be dreamy anywhere else but is slightly outshone in the region by gorgeous Pego and Carvalhal. If you’re staying in town and have no wheels it’s well worth hanging out on, however. At the end of the day head to the Comporta Café to swing in one of its hammocks, or sit back on one of its Adirondack chairs with a Negroni or a jug of sangria to share. It’s not as chichi or friendly as Sal, or as authentic as O Dinis, but it’s a popular spot on a busy beach and hits that beach bar spot.
This 17-acre estate – its rooms, suites and cabana villas peppered among umbrella pines, cork trees, frangipane flowers and olives – is a blueprint for low impact hotel design in the region, stylish and subtle rather than dominating the surrounding landscape. First opened in 2014 it is currently going through an expansion, imminently adding more rooms to its current stable of 34.
Under architect Jose Alberto Charrua most of the hotel’s rooms and suites are set within ultra modern villas (a gorgeously tactile, contemporary take on the region’s distinctive traditional thatched cabanas). Inside all is minimal and white, with the odd pop of polished concrete or warm wood (so minimal, in fact, that it took us a while to get the hang of the handle-less, push-clasp wardrobe doors).
Some are larger two or three-bedroom suites, with private dining areas, fireplaces and plunge pools. Others are one-bedroom (some cabanas can be split so you can just take one room) but still have show-stopping bathrooms, with sculptural white baths and generous stocks of Claus Porto toiletries.
We loved the simple welcome gifts – bowls of cashews and fruit, plus a bottle of chilled rosé from the neighbouring vineyard. If, like us, you are lost without a cup of tea in bed first thing, however, we recommend packing a travel kettle and some teabags; coffee machines are provided but not kettles and it will cost you dearly (€15) to order a cuppa on room service.
Though not directly on the beach (the closest is a five-minute drive away), the vibe is that of a grown-up, romantic, beach retreat. There’s also a dedicated spa, using Organic Pharmacy products for its range of soothing treatments, and a yoga pavilion. Perhaps surprisingly, given the serene atmosphere, families are welcome, too. A children’s pool – separate to the main rim-flow pool (pictured above) – is open all year round and there’s a kids’ club in the summer.
Really it’s all about gentle indulgence, however. The hotel’s lobby bar is one of the most successful we’ve seen, a glamorous, high ceiling’d space that invites you to wallow with a drink or a book. If you’re keen to delve deeper into the hotel’s drinks list, it offers a premium wine-tasting experience in its wine cellar; there’s a focus on wines from across Portugal but, in particular, on those from the Setubal DOC.
Sem Porta restaurant at Sublime Comporta
Food is another highlight of the hotel. Sem Porta (“without doors”) is the hotel’s airy main restaurant (see picture above), its mid-century furnishings (tan leather banquettes, cantilevered chairs…) and floor-to-ceiling windows divided from the lobby bar by breezy gauze curtains (Food Circle, a kind of rustic chef’s table dining experience set within the kitchen garden and cooking only over fire, also runs throughout the summer and on Friday and Saturday evenings in the shoulder season).
Under Tiago Santos (previously head chef at Bar Douro, read our restaurant review of Bar Douro here) in London and, before that, at various stellar Portuguese restaurants), both settings make much of seasonal and regional ingredients and influences, with exquisite rice dishes and ingredients sourced from local fishermen and wineries (look out for wines and olive oils from the neighbouring winery, Quinta do Brejinho da Costa on the menu and in the hotel’s shop). The hotel’s organic garden, in front of Sem Porta, also supplies the kitchen and there are plans to expand this further.
Breakfast ticks (almost) all the right boxes. Sem Porta’s long wooden serving tables are almost invisible, screened by platters of gorgeous fresh sheep’s cheeses, finely sliced fruit, cereals, tiny pastel de nata pastries and deliciously creamy homemade yogurt. We’re not generally fans of bacon and eggs kept warm but, here, the hot breakfast basics are kept warm in Le Creuset casseroles balanced over giant clay hot pots and we were impressed (omelettes are, thankfully, made to order). The only other surprise was that none of the servers had heard of – or were able to deliver – a flat white.
The main event, however, is lunch or dinner at Sem Porta. It’s a lovely space to eat in, its cavernous proportions designed to mimic the area’s ancient blue- and white-painted rice storage buildings. In this case the colours have been left muted and natural, with great use of wood, glass and foliage, and the large space gives each table plenty of privacy, without feeling clinical. Speckled crockery in a range of earthy colours, produced for the hotel by the local pottery, are another great example of the attention to detail here.
Our meal gets off to an impressive start with water bread, light goats milk butter and beautifully grassy olive oil, served with a glass of toasty sparkling Soalheiro wine, made with green Alvarinho grapes. After a tiny taster of oyster vichyssoise (this is one of Portugal’s largest oyster-producing regions) topped with a sliver of crispy fish skin (a relevation – it tastes just like a posh potato crisp), we move on to soft cuttlefish with crispy tapioca pearls (not rice, of course, but a clever play on the combination) and perfectly paired sharp-sweet passionfruit gel, a dot of much needed colour and zing in an otherwise understated dish. The highlight, however, was a dish of tender guinea fowl served over bordalesa-style rice (like a rich, nutty risotto this was made with blood, vinegar, red wine gravy and a hint of garden mint) and paired with a light but liquorice-y and leathery Douro red, a 2009 Piorro.
Tender guinea fowl with Bordalesa rice at Sem Porta
For dessert, we choose grilled pear matchsticks with pear toffee baba cake, topped by a gorgeously boozy cloud of Ferreirinha-laced (brandy) cream, a small scoop of pear sorbet and a shower of cornflower petals straight from the garden. It’s a heady, indulgent mix that leaves a surprisingly light footprint, rather like the hotel itself.
Originally opened as a hotel in 1834, the University Arms has undergone an £80m transformation by architect John Simpson and the interior designer every hotelier wants to work with, Martin Brudnizki, adding a glamorous new facelift to its elegant, historic bone structure.
And the general vibe?
The white stone building, with its striking Corinthian-style pillars and grand entrance, sits on Cambridge’s lush Parker’s Piece (an open green). Parquet flooring, Cambridge Blue walls and locally inspired artwork gives it a fresh but quintessentially Edwardian English vibe, and the dapperly dressed concierge swiftly appears to greet you good day.
Cosy up in the library, complete with dark, wooden-panelled walls, weathered rugs, velvet mustard armchairs, red leather sofas and antique chests of drawers. Take a seat in the scalloped blue window booth and sip on a gin and tonic, or nestle by the flickering log fire and flick through Orwell on Truth (the book collection is curated by Heyward Hill, one of the oldest book shops in the country) or the day’s papers.
Which room should I book at the University Arms?
There are 192 bedrooms, split into cosy, classic, superior and suite categories. Each one is thoughtfully equipped with city guides and access to free bicycle hire. For a real indulgence, book Franklin (named after DNA discoverer, Rosalind Franklin) where dark mahogany tables, burnt orange velvet chaiselongues and mid-century writing desks topped with brass lights create a vintage air.
A mirrored drinks trolley comes with bottles of port, sherry and single malt whisky while bedside tables are ready-stocked with scientific literature. On a sunny day, open the double doors onto your own private balcony and whittle away the hours watching cricket matches on the field opposite.
Light and airy bathrooms are just as opulent as the bedrooms, with free-standing baths, marble sinks, rain showers and underfloor heating.
What’s good to drink?
Head to the Art Deco-inspired bar, where marbled wallpaper is meant to reflect the inside of a book and well-dressed waiters in yellow bow ties mix own-version negronis.
The extensive wine list features predominantly New World reds, whites and rosés as well as English options from Norfolk vineyards. Try a glass of the smooth Parke’s Tavern Claret, or the 2015 Chianti Rufina with full-bodied, spicy plum tones.
If you’re looking for something sweeter, opt for one of the signature cocktails, each inspired by a person, place or event in Cambridge’s history. We loved the Mccalmonts Mansion, made with Cambridge Dry gin and fragrant lavender cordial.
For gin lovers, order a tasting flight of local gins from the Cambridge Distillery including Anty, Japanese, Cambridge Dry, Truffle and, in the near future, Parker’s Tavern’s own variety.
The hotel is home to Parker’s Tavern, a British brasserie with chef Tristan Welch at the helm. After three years working in Mustique (and, prior to that, at Le Gavroche and Glenapp Castle (read our review here), Tristan has returned to his home town, creating a menu that celebrates East Anglian produce. Expect homely classics, such as fish cakes and potted shrimp, alongside hearty pies and roast meats.
For a rich start to your meal, order the silkily smooth truffled duck egg on toast, with truffle-mushroom mayo and sherry vinegar, or try the creamy, slightly spiced coronation chicken served with sweet chunks of grilled apricot, nuggets of almonds and crisp butter lettuce.
Mains are hearty, from tender duck served with creamed potato and al dente bitter spinach to roast suckling pig with crisp crackling, sweet juices and smoky braised fennel.
For those with a very sweet tooth, the Duke of Cambridge Tart is a must. A reinvention of a historic pudding, the sticky treacly spiced marmalade filling on a buttery pastry base comes with a generous dollop of thick clotted cream.
Those with a savoury tooth are also satisfied, with a choice of three cheesy desserts. Our recommendation goes to Welch’s indulgent rarebit on toast (if you’ve got room, that is).
What’s the breakfast like?
A lavish affair. Tables are spread with homemade granola, Suffolk brie, platters of Chapel and Swan Smokery salmon, Wiltshire parma ham, Suffolk salami, loaves of sourdough and Danish pastries (filled with rhubarb, passion fruit or apricot) from Watford’s Flourish Bakery as well as honeycomb from the bees at Dittisham.
If you’re after something hot, the creamy porridge made with local organic oats and a drizzle of honey is as comforting as it gets, but the Parker’s Tavern breakfast -complete with home-cured bacon and crispy, pressed potato hash browns – will keep you fueled for the whole day.
Is the University Arms family-friendly?
There are no family rooms but extra beds (for children up to the age of 16) can be put into the larger bedrooms for an additional charge. Food-wise, Parker’s Tavern offers a children’s menu at both lunch and dinner, featuring classics of spaghetti bolognese, fish cakes and chips and cones of soft-serve ice cream for dessert.
What can I do in the local area?
As well as cycling around the city’s colleges and parks, pay a visit to the newly re-opened Kettle’s Yard – part art gallery, part home – and its carefully amassed collections of paintings, ceramics and furniture.
If you want to explore Cambridge’s foodie scene, join the queue at Fitzbillie’s for their renowned sticky Chelsea buns, head to Jack’s Gelato for a scoop of salted treacle in a chocolate cone, or relax over a lazy brunch of green shakshuka at the Cambridge Cookery School.
The concierge says…
On a sunny day, do like all visitors do and try your hand at punting down the river. In the colder months, cosy up in the library with afternoon tea.
olive says…
Join one of the daily hotel tours at 6pm to learn about the history of the hotel. You’ll gain all manner of local gossip, from what was eaten at the Queen’s coronation feast on Parker’s Piece to why there’s a copy of Wind in the Willows in each bedroom.
Looking for Cambridge restaurants? Check out the best places to eat in Cambridge, includes cafés, restaurants and bakeries. Here’s our local food and drink guide to Cambridge…
Cambridge Cookery School – best brunch in Cambridge
If you’re looking for a relaxed brunch spot take a 15-minute stroll from the city centre to Cambridge Cookery School. White tables and chairs, grey marble counters and low-hanging lights give it an airy, modern vibe, with families chatting over cappuccinos and slices of spiced apple cake.
The food is Scandi-inspired (as is the crockery, all from Finnish company Iittala), so expect Swedish platters of herring, beetroot, dill-cured cucumber and house rye bread. The ingredients themselves are sourced locally (or made in-house, as in the case of bread and pastries) from Audley End House kitchen garden, Croxton Park organic estate and Leech’s butchers. Fika is also a focus, with couples sitting on courtyard seats and digging into cinnamon buns and fresh-from-the-oven croissants. If you’ve room to spare, the rich, dense brownies are not to be missed.
Next door to the café, the cookery school runs classes throughout the week, so peep through the glass doors to watch pastry being rolled and croissants proving.
On a Friday evening, the team make the most of any leftover produce, cooking and delivering a meal for 30 guests from Jimmy’s homeless shelter.
This sleek gelato parlour serves a range of inventive flavours, all made by hand in small batches in the downstairs kitchen. Ingredients are carefully considered, be it coffee beans sourced from Essex-based The Coffee Officina or Pump Street chocolate used in the stracciatella flavour.
Come rain or shine there’s usually a queue down the street, but it’s worth joining. The menu changes daily but if they’re in stock, make the most of your cone with some hazelnut brittle, sweet-salty treacle or refreshing alphonso mango sorbet. You can also expect white peach, Greek yogurt and elderflower sorbet throughout the year.
In the summer months, you’ll find the cool Cambridge crowd gulping down scoops of rhubarb and rose sorbetti from the parlour’s tricycle, which travels around the city, but it’s worth a visit in the winter too for a scoop of the mince pie flavour. If you’re really peckish (or can’t visit on a regular basis), buy a 1L tub of your favourite flavour to store in your freezer.
Hot Numbers Coffee Roasters – best coffee in Cambridge
With two cafes in the city, Hot Numbers Coffee Roasters (named after the record store that once traded on the adjacent street) is a must for caffeine lovers. The menu is split into two sections – black coffees or espressos with milk. Choose between a filter, a pour-over or a nitro cold brew in the summer months.
All the coffee is single origin and roasted in nearby Stapleford. Choose between beans from Costa Rica, Ethiopia or El Salvador and they’ll rustle up your drink of choice (or, if you want to brew your own at home, buy some beans to take away).
We recommend the Gwydir Street branch, an airy space with large warehouse windows, communal wooden benches lit by dangling filament bulbs and a peppering of pot plants. In the morning students sit tapping away on laptops, scribbling in notebooks and catching up over brunch (avocado on fluffy cornbread, punchy chilli with burnt lime and sweet shredded carrot…) while in the evenings you can sit and sip to a background of live jazz.
For some of the best plant-based food in Cambridge, detour down a residential street to Stem and Glory. The bright space, dotted with white tables and plants, is as fresh as the food on offer. For something hearty order the Keralan curry with roast cauliflower, its rich tomato and coconut sauce served with sweet raw carrot and coriander ‘rice’.
Small sharing plates are spot on, from a warm salad of golden beets and charred baby gem with a sweet orange and mint dressing, to smoky aubergine with fragrant quinoa tabbouleh.
Desserts are not to be missed either; order a slice of the raw blueberry and banana cheesecake, packed with nuts and dates, to takeaway. Or, dig into a slice of blood orange cake, generously soaked in maple syrup and topped with toasted pumpkin seeds and creamy soy yogurt.
Book ahead for lunch on a Sunday when the restaurant buzzes with families tucking into the kitchen’s signature hazelnut and mushroom nut roast, served with maple-roast parsnips and spiced red cabbage.
Fitzbillies is a Cambridge-institution, its two branches loved by students and locals alike. The original café, on Trumpington Street, has been around since 1920, and dark wooden-panelled walls and window displays of tiered cakes add to its historic feel.
If you fancy somewhere with a fresher vibe, head to buzzing Bridge Street and grab a seat on the high stools in its window, while the whirr of a coffee machine and the chatter of families rumbles gently in the background.
Be prepared to queue on a weekend, but it’s worth it for its signature Chelsea buns, gently spiced and bursting with currants and sticky sugar syrup. If you can, stay for a brunch of sourdough toast with poached eggs, or a grilled cheese sandwich. If not, order a sausage roll or a sticky bun to take down to the river with you.
Parker’s Tavern – best for British classics in Cambridge
The hot new dinner spot in Cambridge, Parker’s Tavern is a British brasserie that’s part of the University Arms hotel. Chef Tristan Welch is at the helm and, after three years working in Mustique (and, prior to that, at Le Gavroche and Glenapp Castle), Welch has returned to his home town, creating a menu that celebrates East Anglian produce. Expect homely classics, such as fish cakes and potted shrimp, alongside pies and roast meats.
Start with silkily smooth truffled duck egg on toast, laced with truffle-mushroom mayo and sherry vinegar, or the lightly spiced coronation chicken, served with sweet chunks of grilled apricot, nuggets of almonds and crisp butter lettuce.
Mains are hearty, from tender duck served with creamed potato and bitter spinach to roast suckling pig with crisp crackling, sweet juices and smoky braised fennel.
For those with a sweet tooth, the Duke of Cambridge Tart is a must. A reinvention of a historic pudding, the sticky treacly spiced marmalade filling, on a buttery pastry base, comes with a generous dollop of thick clotted cream.
If you’re looking for Michelin-starred dining in Cambridge, book a table at Midsummer House. The two-starred restaurant has recently celebrated its 20th birthday and it’s a classy spot, with light, conservatory tables laid with crisp white cloths and vases of dainty flowers.
Choose between the à la carte menu or an eight-course tasting menu (a lighter lunch menu is also available midweek). Dishes focus on British produce, be it braised Cornish turbot with clams and gnocchi or Cumbrian lamb served with heritage tomatoes.
The killer dish? Scallop, truffle and apple has been on the menu since the restaurant opened and it’s easy to see why. Made with Bramley and Blenheim Orange apples grow in the restaurant’s kitchen garden it’s fresher than a college quad in Fresher’s Week.
Plastic trays, communal and counter seating, and a queue out the door to order from the till don’t necessarily conjure up images of a must-visit restaurant but Cambridge‘s latest, Steak & Honour, is greater than the sum of its parts.
A short menu above the equally bijou open kitchen on the ground floor of Steak & Honour displays this three-storey restaurant’s specialty for all to see: burgers. It was designed by chef-owners Leo Riethoff and David Underwood, who met while working at Michelin-starred Alimentum in the city before joining forces in Steak & Honour mark I, a vintage Citroën van. Another van, and several years and burgers later, and this time the duo have laid roots on Wheeler Street in the city centre.
The ‘classic’ proves that a well-made burger is hard to beat. A soft and not-too-sweet brioche bun from local Dovecote Bakery hugs a simple patty of ground beef (nothing else) from Riverside Beef, whose cows graze on pastures and water meadows of Cambridgeshire and the surrounding counties. It’s served pink, is the kind of juicy that will risk dribbles down the chin with every bite, and is exceptionally well-seasoned.
Don’t skip the sides, either – they are yet another reminder that there’s a supremely talented pair of chefs behind the grill. Three-cheese mac & cheese is good enough to fight over.
Originally opened as a hotel in 1834, the University Arms has undergone an £80m transformation by architect John Simpson and the interior designer every hotelier wants to work with, Martin Brudnizki, adding a glamorous new facelift to its elegant, historic bone structure.
The white stone building, with its striking Corinthian-style pillars and grand entrance, sits on Cambridge’s lush Parker’s Piece (an open green). Parquet flooring, Cambridge Blue walls and locally inspired artwork gives it a fresh but quintessentially Edwardian English vibe, and the dapperly dressed concierge swiftly appears to greet you good day.
There are 192 bedrooms, split into cosy, classic, superior and suite categories. Each one is thoughtfully equipped with city guides and access to free bicycle hire.
