Blandford Forum Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: This “brilliant thatched country pub” has “lots of game dishes” on its menu – appropriately enough for a traditional establishment in the historical hunting landscape of Cranborne Chase. “Vegetarians and vegans are well provided for” too, while there’s also a “well-stocked bar with local ales and a reasonably priced wine list”.

This “lovely family-run hotel” in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Vale of the little dairies’ is “personal and exquisite” – host Richard Prideaux-Brune inherited the family‘s Jacobean manor at the age of 21, opening it as a restaurant with rooms with his wife Alison 51 years ago, brother Brian in the kitchen and daughter Katharine these days part of the team. The “excellent” dinner menu is notably “affordable” at £45 per person for two courses and £55 per person for three, “complemented by wines at sensible prices”. Top Tip – don’t forget to pronounce the B in ‘Plumber’.

2022 Review: “A friendly and welcoming atmosphere” marks out this thatched fifteenth-century gastroboozer, where the “high-quality fresh local produce” (but also more adventurous sourcing, including from Paris’s famous Rungis market) leads to some “interesting variations on the traditional style”.

Michael Trawicki’s “popular thatched pub” serves particularly “good pub food in a nice sunny dining room” and there’s also a beautiful garden in summer. It’s not an especially ‘foodie’ operation but attracts consistent praise in our annual diners’ poll as one of the area’s better eateries.

“A gorgeous, sunny room attached to a medieval priory on the banks of the River Frome” is the “delightful setting” for “always interesting and very good” cooking from Loire Valley-bred Stephan Guinebault, head chef for the best part of two decades at this independently owned hotel which oozes “old-world charm”.

2023 Review: This gorgeous old tavern on a corner site near the harbour – newly spiffed-up last autumn and with the recent addition of a conservatory – specialises in “excellent-quality” local seafood, served in a warm atmosphere that is “like being in France”.

“Just heaven”. “You can’t get more idyllic than a meal here sat in the most beautiful walled kitchen garden” of Darren Brown’s Wiltshire destination (est. 2016) – “out of the way (but handy for the A303)” – “it is so relaxing, and such a treat and the surroundings are so beautiful with their mixture of flowers and vegetables and herbs”. “On the Cote d’Azur it would work fine most of the year. In Wiltshire it is often cold and wet at which time you eat indoors in Spartan conditions (at which times ambience 2/5 at best)”. When it comes to the cooking (much of it over an open fire), they “really make an attempt to be green with lots of own-grown stuff, retired dairy cows for meat etc. you can even pick a bunch of flowers to take home!”. But what is plain “magical” to some, is more nuanced to sceptics, who say: “problem is, the food’s not that good, with relatively little choice in practice and combinations that are seasonal but don’t always work”. Likewise service can be “enthusiastic but not always knowledgeable”. Still, mostly the vibes here are positive. Top Menu Tip – “They bring you a non-alcoholic fizzy wine to kick things off and it’s the best thing – not sweet but deliciously refreshing. Some good bread and a dip to kick things off, then the main event, you either pick meat or veggie; then all the sides, with veg straight from the garden all so fresh and beautifully accompanied with herbs and butters”.

“Big meals” made from prime British ingredients cooked in classical French style, “friendly staff” and a “lovely, sensibly priced wine list” is the winning recipe at ex-Four Seasons exec chef Jamie Jones’s restaurant with rooms – a spacious (much extended) former shepherd’s cottage in the heart of Hardy country (the village of Lower Bockhampton is called Mellstock in ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’). This may be about to be a case of ‘all change’, however – the business was put on the market in 2024 as a going concern.

“The view overlooking Poole Harbour makes this a romantic location” for an Italian meal – although it’s “very much a good-weather venue”. The hotel is at the heart of a long-running planning dispute, with vocal locals opposing a plan to convert it into an ‘aparthotel’ under a £300m redevelopment of Sandbanks.

Guy Ritchie’s new smokehouse restaurant at Compton Abbas Airfield took flight in May 2025 (too late for any survey feedback), blending Texas-style BBQ (e.g. oak-smoked pork belly, Smokehouse nachos, and a slow-braised jackfruit burger) with views of the 1960s airfield and the Dorset countryside (it’s a sibling to his Fitzrovia pub, Lore of the Land). All this, plus draught beers, ales, and ciders from local breweries, including ‘Altitude’ lager, created in-house.

“Super-quality pastries and amazing coffee” set the tone at this “very good bakery and café” founded by Tom Bew and siblings Dom & Dove Brown, who opened their fifth branch in Christchurch early last year. Top Tip – “the Croque Monsieur is huge and delicious”.

“A star find” – “every dish is amazing”, in particular some “very special sushi” from owner Kamil Skalczynski, a Polish-born sushi master who has been “a World Sushi Cup finalist and an advisor to the World Sushi Skills Institute”; he opened this “small restaurant with an interesting menu” four years ago.