Chorleywood Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: “Prime manages to feel special and cosy all at once” – a family-friendly steak specialist where the main event is dry-aged on the bone and “not cheap but well worth it” for a “special occasion choice”. This branch recently added a new canopied gin garden with heating in winter, and you can also check out a trio of siblings in St Albans, Beaconsfield and Berkhamsted.

This “lovely old pub” in the Chilterns, handy for the Harry Potter antics at Warner Bros Studio nearby, built up quite a reputation for its Anglo-French cooking over nearly two decades under husband-and-wife team Sally & Alvin Michaels. The 18th-century venue is now managed by Alvin’s former protégé Matt Jackson (and part of the growing RedCat pub company) but, on limited feedback this year, its “exceptional pub dining” still makes it a local magnet.

Away from the main property, with a terrace facing onto the golf course, this casually luxurious venue is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and would suit a smartly dressed-down weekend family meal. With its brasserie menu incorporating a selection of burgers and chicken and steak grills, fans “prefer it to the generally more highly rated Glasshouse at the same venue” although even some who mark it highly say: “it’s good, but some of the prices are just far too high”.

This enticing multi-cuisine spread at a country estate hotel near Watford is a real bargain at £74 per person (£94 per person on Friday dinner and at weekends) – “if I win the lottery I’ll be here every week”. There’s an impressive array of ‘stations’ to mix-and-match, from sushi, robata grill and Asian, via seafood, roast meats, live pasta, stone-baked pizza and salad bar to cheese & charcuterie, vegan and dessert. All-in-all, it makes for an experience that is entertaining and fun for all the family, if not necessarily very foodie.

“Very good Thai food” remains the order of the day at this “cramped” fixture of the local scene, whose extensive menu (wok dishes, curries, fresh papaya salads) represents excellent value for money. From Tuesday to Saturday there’s a lunchtime noodle bar, and they also do a swift trade as a takeaway.

2024 Review: This “great local” has had an up-and-down time of it of late, with the Gerrards Cross branch under new management, and The Grocer at 91, which had pivoted to being a food shop in the pandemic, now closed. On the plus side, this “very busy” outpost is still going strong with its “reliable” (if pricey) sandwiches, salads and toasties, and they also recently opened a new Amersham venue, The Grocer at 2 (Whielden St), spanning a grocery store and café.

2024 Review: “Tasty bistro food” is enjoyed in the “lovely setting” of a seventeenth-century former school in Old Amersham, a “cosy” local spot opened by the Gilbey’s gin dynasty 35 years ago. Founder Michael Gilbey passed away in summer 2022, and his widow, Lin, has put the site up for sale. (She also runs its sister restaurant in Eton.)

“This wonderful neighbourhood restaurant with seriously good seasonal cooking” and “a relaxed, friendly environment” was launched back in 2011 by Terry Wogan’s daughter Katherine and her husband Henry – and is “still the very best in the area after all these years”, with “impeccable service from staff who are charming and helpful”. Top Tip – “Sunday lunch is sublime”.

“A great little pub with a lovely atmosphere”, leafily located beside a village green just outside Beaconsfield, serving food which “is certainly a cut above your average pub fare” from Tante Claire-trained Amanda Lillitou, who has run it with her husband Chris for 17 years.

“Great curry house with friendly, helpful staff” – one of a trio (with siblings in Cookham and Marlow) that have been the last word in this corner of the Home Counties for top-class “authentic Indian cuisine with a price tag” since the late 1990s (Heston Blumenthal is a fan). Top Tip – “the Sunday buffet is an attractive outing”.

2022 Review: Upscale Georgian gastroboozer, handy for J1 of the M40, whose “very pleasant surroundings” (in a ridiculously picture-postcard village), superior ambience and “nice garden” add considerably to its charms. The food, which is divided into small and big plates of comfort food-style British fare, isn’t wildly ambitious but is “consistently good”.

2024 Review: This “great independent cafe recently changed hands when the owner sold it on to the longstanding manager” and, having initially been open just during the day (“very good salads and quiches” plus other South African-slanted breakfasts and brunch dishes and “excellent coffee”), it’s now also back to offering more complex meals at weekend dinners. Insufficient reports for a rating at this time of change.

“A real delight” declares the strong local fan club of this “beautifully decorated out-of-town pub-cum-restaurant” in the heart of chichi Beaconsfield, which has been run since 2019 by Daniel Crump & Margriet Vandezande-Crump and has garnered no end of awards in that time. The food is very much not gastropub fare: you can eat à la carte (with mains about £40) or there’s a seven-course tasting menu for £110 per person and practically all reports say results are “superb”. One reporter this year, though, said that while “others seem entranced by this place, it seems to always be trying too hard and slightly misguided” (a view echoed by the Guardian’s Grace Dent in her August 2025 review who thought that “in a bid to be the best restaurant for miles around, they might just be missing the chance to be simply delicious”). For fans, though, “it just keeps getting better”.