Chillenden, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

This “lovely gastropub in a pretty Kent village” wins praise for its “good menu selection, including unusual dishes like homity pie” alongside the more standard burgers, steak and fish ’n’ chips. It is part of Saga heir Josh De Haan’s Pickled Egg pub group.

Oli Brown (ex-of Rowley Leigh’s Le Café Anglais) and FOH Ruth (Leigh’s daughter) are behind this “brilliant place, both food and hotel”, set in a “gorgeous location”: a seventeenth-century farmhouse on seven acres, where guests eat in an open conservatory. The “truly delightful menu” is short and hyper-seasonal, with everything cooked over wood in the open kitchen and, while service can be “a bit on the slow side”, the “ambience means that it goes relatively unnoticed”. In 2022, Grace Dent called it “one of those places that shows how life could be” – high praise indeed! NB – open Thu-Sat dinner and Fri-Sat lunch, with a bargain £40 per person summer set menu on Thu night.