A big summer holiday is a double-edged sword: the glimmer of hope on the horizon, but also the bringer of stress (the last-minute hand-overs, the knowledge that an out-of-office won’t put off the boss). Regular weekends away are easy resets. But where to go? Below are 12 of our favourite restaurants with rooms, which will reward any traveller, weary or otherwise.
Ugly Butterfly
Some restaurants are about the food they serve, others are about the setting they’re in. It’s hard to know which impresses more at Ugly Butterfly, the first Cornish outpost from newly-MBE’d chef Adam Handling. Butterfly sits watching over Carbis Bay, as romantic a length of sand as they come, and Handling’s dishes on the £135 menu are astonishingly good: you might expect lobster caught that morning, or lamb from nearby fields. Seals and dolphins play in the water below the dining room; keep an eye on them from the beach-front lodges (whose guests have included Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden). A cheaper bar menu is also offered.
Rebecca Dickson
Among the blue and peach houses in the seaside village of Aldeburgh — quaint but not that quaint, given it’s full of retired spies — is the Suffolk. It comes from George Pell, a name known to Londoners for his work at L’Escargot. Are there such things as daydream catchers? It seems so; leaving Soho, another life beckoned for Pell, who came here, bought an old coaching inn, did it up and now serves great platters of oysters, garlic-sloshed lobsters, twice-baked soufflés and monkfish chops. Pell picks up his seafood locally, knocking on the doors of fishermen’s huts and finding his favourites. The martinis are first-rate; have a couple, gently totter upstairs to the comfortable rooms (from about £135), and wake to the sound of sea rolling on the shingle. Read our full review.
Pythouse Kitchen
Among Wiltshire’s winding lanes is found a three-acre Georgian walled garden, Pythouse. Usually there is a fire crackling. On this might be cooked pigs cheeks or mackerel, vegetable skewers, venison haunches (at £37.50 for four courses, the place is a bargain). Seasonality is taken extremely seriously here, as is sustainability: owners Piers and Sophia Milburn have three stars from the Food Made Good Standard, which is a hard thing to achieve. That aside, guests come here for the tranquillity, for the sunlit afternoons and the candlelit evenings, for dogs snoozing under the tables, for families enjoying themselves. City dwellers might briefly fancy themselves outdoorsy here, especially if glamping.
The Fou’Seasons Manor
The Four Seasons Manor PR
That Raymond Blanc, whose Le Manoir turns 40 this year, has held two Michelin stars since 1985 is an impressive feat in itself; it becomes an astonishing one when remembering that he is entirely self-taught. Le Manoir, now owned by the Belmond group, feels of another time, another country. The sense of occasion is obvious and warming. Luke Selby, formerly of Soho’s Evelyn’s Table, now heads the kitchen: he is an uncommon talent and the fine, delicate French food is exceptional, with many ingredients grown on the grounds. It can be reached in an hour from Marylebone, and the rooms are beautiful. It all costs a small fortune, but they’re delightfully heavy-handed pouring out the glasses of wine, so after a while the financial blow begins to soften. Read our full review.
Church Road, Great Milton, Oxford, OX44 7PD, belmond.com
The Seaside Boarding House
Seaside Boarding House
Hard to imagine a more picturesque setting than overlooking the sea, shingle and sand of Lyme Bay. The owners here are Mary-Lou Sturridge andTony Mackintosh — both of the Groucho in-its-heyday fame (the pair co-founded it) — and their commitment to a joyful time endures. They keep the recipe simple: local fish and meat, classic dishes (prawn cocktail, steak tartare, Dover sole), a heavily-French but fairly-priced wine list. It is not cheap but nor is it expensive (mains are mostly in the £30s, but start at £22). It is all just… right. The chef guest series, where big London names head down to cook (Jeremy Lee of Quo Vadis, Anna Tobias of Café Deco, Abby Lee of Mambow and so on) only adds to its enormous appeal. Rooms seem reasonable at £235.
Smoke Hampton Manor
Midlanders probably wanted to keep Hampton Manor to themselves. Alas, the secret’s out. Once owned by former prime minister Sir Robert Peel, the Warwickshire estate is now home to a Michelin-starred restaurant in Grace & Savour, and a more casual, food-over-fire space in Smoke, which offers an £85 menu alongside interesting, mostly natural wines (if the South African wine El Bandito is available, order it). Guests can stay in the manor house (rooms around £230) — which is grandly old and elegant — or in one of the outbuildings dotted around the grounds. Free wine tastings and an artisan bakery are bonuses. Read our full review.
The Harcourt Arms
The Harcourt Arms is the last surviving pub in Stanton Harcourt, a typical Oxfordshire village less than two hours’ drive from London. Run by brothers Will and Olly Oakley, the comforting set-up has a sense of local boozer but with room for more upmarket food, cocktails and finer wines. What is most impressive, though, is their commitment to value for money: starters hardly top a tenner; an excellent steak frites is just £24. Rooms, from £150 a night, include a mighty breakfast made with produce from farmers nearby.
Grantley Hall
Though their timbre is different, Yorkshire’s Grantley Hall might rival Le Manoir for the sense of occasion (though it is cheaper; rooms start at about £600 a night). It is an old stately home of a place, inside all ornate wood-panelling and finely detailed cornicing, outside idyllic streams and a Japanese garden. They are not short on eating-and-drinking spots, but the one to go for is Shaun Rankin’s. His kitchen garden makes its way onto the £160 menu, with vegetables gently championed, but elsewhere is a mix of high-lo: beef tea with bread, butter and dripping (heavenly), for instance, and then Dover sole with scallop, oscietra caviar, Champagne and sorrel. One to dress up for.
Mark Bolton Photography
At five-star Coworth Park — from the Dorchester group, to give an idea of both the standard and the price — is the cleverly-named Woven: chef Adam Smith has laced all sorts of influences together, but also stories too. This is fine-dining in a fine-dining setting, but staff keep it light, and food is plated with finesse. Smith, who made his name at the Ritz, does things like Cornish crab with a Thai green dressing and lemon verbena. Now and then, he adds unusual little twists, though nothing that would scare the horses. Just as well, given Coworth Park is known for its polo fields.
Press handout
The two mysteries of Mark Birchall’s Moor Hall: one, it’s in Lancashire, yet somehow just two-and-a-half hours from Euston, and two, it has a reputation for seriousness, but is in fact rather a laugh. Don’t get it wrong, the food here is as precise as can be, and the place has been named the National Restaurant of the Year twice. But they read each table, lean into whatever mood you find yourself in. The 16th century bar is a looker, while the dining room is more modern, perhaps a little Nordic in style. What comes out is the blockbuster stuff — turbot, lobster, duck — at £125 for lunch and £235 for supper. Ouch. But Moor Hall is for those who seek theatre. These are meals to be remembered elsewhere, at another time, in other expensive dining rooms. Read our full review.
Moor Hall, Prescot Road, Aughton, Ormskirk, L39 6RT, moorhall.com
Yuki Sugiura
Updown is an endless summer: it is a retreat, respite, somewhere offering human restoration among its rambling gardens. Oliver Brown and Ruth Leigh run the place: in a conservatory, under vines, they serve Mediterranean-inflected dishes — things like lamb with sweet cipollini onions and artichoke and mint, or hake and mussels cooked in the Italian “acqua pazza” and plated with courgettes and tomatoes. Food is reasonably priced, especially the summer set menu (three courses for £40), while the wonky old farmhouse, where the rooms are, teems with good taste: decent art, stylish fittings. A joy.
Catch at the Old Fish Market
Catch
Admittedly, this one doesn’t have rooms, but it offers such extraordinary value that it is worth the hassle of sorting out a nearby B&B. The menus (lunch £45, supper £75) are dedicated to daily-caught seafood: chef Mike Naidoo can tell you, down to the name, who caught the stuff and when. He then decides not to mess about too much with it. The result is in many instances flabbergastingly good. Barbecued lobster to dream about, crab dumplings to hazily mumble about, too lost to the memories of them to really find descriptors (can you tell?).