Brearton, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

“A Yorkshire institution” that’s “not to be missed!” – These famous tea rooms owe their existence to Swiss founder Frederick Belmont, who opened them in 1919 and his family now also operate at four other locations across North Yorkshire. “A great, old school and classic experience” – they are “everyone’s favourite” and afternoon tea is “a real occasion” that’s “well worth queuing for”. Top Menu Tips – “scrumptious fat rascals” (a kind of Yorkshire scone).

2024 Review: Attached to a luxurious spa hotel, this modern brasserie is open all day (with other options in the hotel being the more ambitious Horto, or afternoon tea in the Conservatory). One fan notes it as a good place for a relaxed business meal, but there is also the odd concern that its “good ambience can be let down by average results at excessive prices”.

2022 Review: This “lovely hotel” is so proud of its own produce that it named its main restaurant Horto, Latin for kitchen garden, and charged young head chef Callum Bowmer (who arrived for two weeks’ work experience in 2010 and never left) with the task of creating showcase menus from it. The resulting meals are “really enjoyable”.

“Excellent food and service in a garden centre”, where you eat “surrounded by giant plants in a large, airy room” – the “most unusual” formula (“but all the better for that”) at top chef Frances Atkins’s crowd-pleaser of a café. Those who visited her former venture – the posh Yorke Arms – report that the food is “just as good as it always was” there, whether you use it as a “favourite ‘brekkie-with-the girls’ haunt”, as per one reporter’s wife, or you go for tea and cake, when the “baking is something else” (dinner is also offered on Fridays). Add in “wonderful, attentive service” (staff “remember you even if it’s weeks since your last visit”) and “the entire place is a joy!”. (Note – the formula-price is for the supper menu: you eat in the daytime much more cheaply).

“A great addition to Harrogate” courtesy of Bradford-born Varun Kanna, who took over the space above Sukhothai in 2024, striking out on his own after a tutelage that included a stint at the famed Restaurant Sat Bains. The “food is unique with British produce, but having an Asian twist from Japan and India”, whether you go for the £32, three-course weekday set lunch or “very memorable” £85 per person tasting menu taking in the likes of crab curry and wagyu beef, and leaving diners – even “a couple who treat The Fat Duck as their local” – “full of praise”.