Bearwood Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: This well-known border-country inn is “still one of the best places to eat in the area”, with “well prepared and flavoursome food”. Long-time regulars miss Steve & Nicola Reynolds, who retired a couple of years ago, but the new management team of chef Tom Tudor and his partner Vittoria Turolla, FOH, have settled in well and the place is now “performing better again”.

“A secluded gem where culinary delights await in the ancient dining room” – close to Ludlow but “not easy to find down a winding country lane through the estate” – Willem & Pippa Vlok’s restaurant-with-rooms offers a “consistently excellent” hyper-local menu from former MasterChef: The Professionals finalist Nick Bennett, staff that are “friendly, efficient and knowledgeable”, and “wooden-beamed bedrooms offer rest from the weary routines of everyday life”. Price-wise, it’s “a bargain for cooking of the quality, emphatically so by London standards”.

2022 Review: This “busy” seventeenth-century inn is appreciated for its “simple, tasty, well-executed dishes” of “good honest food”.

It has a Michelin Green Star for its excellence in sustainability, but Charmaine & Mark McHugo’s ‘Dining & Bottle Shop’ in the centre of town, attracted only limited feedback in our annual diners’ poll this year regarding its focused menu with many items sourced from the kitchen garden. Such as we have, though, says results are “consistently excellent” and the overall style “very personable and welcoming”.

2022 Review: A steak-led “relative newcomer” – named for the former use of these premises – where the main event graces a “short, meat-focused menu” that “clearly concentrates on what they are skilled at” (though there’s also praise for the “second-to-none” coffee and cakes). “Fantastic staff” and a “great ambience” round out its charms…“if you take clients they never fail to be impressed”.

2023 Review: The first bricks-and-mortar venture from Hereford’s 10 year-old ‘A Rule of Tum’ hospitality group, this local hit serves “top burgers in a great atmosphere”, with a focus on locally produced beef and other produce. A branch in Worcester has followed.

2024 Review: “A lovely setting – tucked away in a quiet-but-central location” beside the remains of Hereford’s castle moat adds to the joys of the Watkins family’s Grade II-listed Georgian hotel. Reports are limited, but all approve the cooking from Hungarian-born chef Gabor Katona (with much produce from the owners’ farm at Ballingham Hall, nearby).

2024 Review: “Interesting and well-prepared local food” – “now with a Middle Eastern influence” – is on the menu at this idyllic spot from the four Crouch brothers, aka the CSONS. “The pleasure of dining here is derived not just from the good food but also the location at Dirham Weir, beside the River Teme, with wildlife to watch and even the chance of spotting an otter”.

This “wonderful little restaurant” from Olivier & Lynette Bossut in the middle of Ludlow offers a “very Gallic atmosphere”, with “perfectly judged blue-and-white decor”, and “food that’s utterly delicious in the most rustic of ways” – including possibly “the best French onion soup you’ll find anywhere this side of La Manche”. Their spin-off café next door, Marmelade, closed down in autumn 2024.

Chef-patron Wayne Smith “continues to fly the flag for fine dining in Ludlow even if the town’s once-unassailable place as a food lover’s site of pilgrimage has now entered into history”, following the departure of high profile chefs such as Claude Bosi and Will Holland, both of whom operated Hibiscus and La Becasse respectively from these very premises: “a period building with panelled walls and a courtyard close to the town centre”. Smith’s focus is on “traditional but fine dishes using excellent local ingredients” including, appropriately, Mortimer Forest venison (“the Herefordshire beef never fails to delight”, too).

2024 Review: “What a pub dining experience should be like” – this “lovely old drovers’ pub at the foot of Black Hill” may be remote (the Welsh border isn’t far off) but “if you can find it, you will not be disappointed”; after long lying idle, it was reinvented by John Stead of Longtown’s Wild By Nature group, and its ingredient-led gastropub menu is winning highly positive reports. Watch out for rooms coming soon.

A 20-minute walk from the hallowed foodie ground of Ludlow, this handsomely renovated Georgian spa hotel is home to a casual bistro and this more formal haunt – a “lovely place to dine” that’s set “in a large light conservatory” with “beautiful views” of the surrounding countryside (“including the short row of small ‘Forelle’ pear trees after which the restaurant is named”). “The food is usually very tasty” (be it the à la carte or tasting menu) and, despite the odd ‘off’ report this year, a “relaxed, pleasing evening is the rule”. “The hotel has recently changed hands” (to a private Midlands-based buyer, who acquired it in March 2024) “though Phil Kerry, the head chef, remains in post so it is to be hoped that Forelles retains its special character despite the change”.

“Classy” French cuisine presented in an “attractively converted” Victorian school building in the city centre by a pair of “fabulous” and highly experienced chefs, Bruce Havard & Cédric L’Herbier – add “perfect service” to the package, and you get a “very welcome addition to the barren provision of Hereford”.