Ellesmere Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: “Marc Willkinson is a genius” and “never fails to impress” at his “compact” venue – an unexpected find “off the beaten track” out on The Wirral, in a conservation village bordering Birkenhead. It has, on several occasions, topped our diners’ poll as the UK’s No. 1 destination. With just a dozen covers, it’s very much one man’s labour of love with its “imaginative visuals and playlist”, not to mention his really “unusual” and distinctive cuisine, delivered as a six-course tasting menu. Save space for the end of the meal: chef really knows his way around pudding and chocolates. Early in 2022, there was news that the restaurant was to close, but this is not the case. Marc is hunting for new premises, though, and if he finds them change will be afoot.

2023 Review: Chef-patron Mark Sebastian & Michelle Fisher’s “newly decorated restaurant-with-rooms only gets better” – after more than three decades – “and is always full”, a tribute to the “high standard of its French-influenced food”. Set in three seventeenth-century cottages knocked together, it’s a “quiet place to satisfy the foodie in you”.

2023 Review: New York, London, Doha… Whitchurch – that’s been the progression for Stuart Collins and wife Frances, who started this slightly unlikely venue five years ago, bringing a level of culinary ambition that was previously unknown to this corner of the Shropshire/Cheshire borders. Helped by a star turn from Stuart on Great British Menu a couple of years ago, it continues to attract some “outstanding all round” reviews for its 9-course tasting menu (at £85 per person).

Sixteenth-century inn ‘the Pant’ (as owners Brunning & Price fondly call it) occupies a substantial, “very comfortable” Victorian property a short drive outside Wrexham; and its conversion has created “a great pub: warm and bustling in the winter, loads of outside space in the summer” and offering a “reliably good beer selection” too. Given its high standards, the odd reporter this year did quibble with the food, but overall this “very busy” destination remains a “favourite year after year”.

It would be “difficult to find a more perfect setting” for a pub than this former watermill “nestling on the side of the River Dee, with decking overhanging the water and stunning views in all directions” – “in the evening there are candlelit tables with views looking out from the mill building, some situated directly above the original water wheel”. “Part of the Brunning & Price chain, it offers well prepared and varied food on a daily changing menu” and “a large selection of wines to suit all pockets”.

This appealing indie café/restaurant, in a quiet side street, has a modish industrial-style interior, while the open kitchen turns out seasonal eats spanning small plates, steaks and lots of snackable ‘things on toast’.

“The trat’ every neighbourhood needs” – “amazing value and consistently good food” (pizza, pasta, seafood, meat) make this relaxed “cheap ’n’ cheerful” Italian on the high street “a firm favourite that is booked out two months ahead at weekends”; further plaudits for the “great atmosphere”, too.

Mel & Martin Board, who reinvented the Haughmond Inn at Upton Magna, have worked wonders since taking on this village pub-with-rooms, opposite a Norman church, two years back. The “beautifully refurbished” (to the tune of £2 million) venue’s food “has also gone up a considerable notch”, offering “inventive” and “excellent value” locally sourced British grub with greens from the 200-year-old walled garden of Hodnet Hall. While it “still caters for a local clientele”, perhaps not for long, after critic William Sitwell’s glowing review (headline “civilisation has hope”).

“Bistro meets pub to create a really enjoyable experience” at Gary Usher’s year-old gastropub, which opened in early 2023. It’s off to a smooth start (“we ate on the fourth day of opening, and expected some minor teething troubles, but there were none!”) and seems to succeed in his original aim, which was ‘to serve great drinks, delicious unpretentious food by a team that love what they do’ (even despite a minor furore in the national press over the pricing of a £20 burger).

Local lad Ben Hall worked at the acclaimed Gidleigh Park, among others, before teaming up with partner Carla Cook to launch this ambitious five-year-old; in November 2022, they upped sticks from their former premises in Roushill to a larger, ex-warehouse setting on Claremont Bank in the city centre. The “really excellent food” (tasting menu only on Fri/Sat nights) remains intact at what is, for fans, “the best restaurant in Shrewsbury”.

2023 Review: “An excellent addition to the town” – this year-old bistro occupies a “quirky and enchanting” sixteenth-century merchant’s house (the old Drapers Guild Hall) that “is worth a visit in its own right” and was “once a setting for the TV film adaption of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol”. “The food is very good indeed, based on local ingredients and the menu changes regularly.” “Wine is from the long-established local wine merchants Tanners.”