Gloucestershire Restaurant Guide

Rugby World Cup AND Celebrity MasterChef winner Phil Vickery has opened his own restaurant, with his wife Jules and chef Tom Rains, after a year of running a delivery service, No.3 at Home.

“On our foodie tour of the area’s culinary heavy hitters (four in four nights) Lumière was by far the best in every way! – the food itself, the artistry and invention of the cooking, the front of house…!” Jon & Helen Howe’s small (just 24 covers) venture “benefits from a feeling of intimacy and calm” and scored the top ratings in town last year. Jon Howe’s food is “out of this world” with “some very good flavour combinations, some very clever and precise cooking” – all “without pretentious twiddles”. Dishes are delivered by the “serene and endlessly helpful Helen in charge of a small team” and “you are made to feel your dining experience is uppermost in their minds rather than your visit being an opportunity for them to ‘showcase’”. “We liked it so much that we went back to Cheltenham just to eat there again!”

“Clever, well-imagined” and “delicately spiced food, unlike any normal Indian restaurant” distinguishes this “superb” venue, named after the Skanskrit for ‘Mother Earth’. Opened in 2012, it has now moved house into a “much more elegant setting” opposite Pittville Park. Top Tip: “a relative bargain for lunch”.

After six years in business this popular Indian closed its doors in August 2018… only to relaunch with a new Indian BBQ and South Indian plates concept (plus thali deal) just weeks later. On early reports, it’s “another great addition to the surfeit of excellent locals”, delivering “sublime food and exotic tastes”.

“The coolest restaurant in the Cotswolds” right now – this gorgeous, new barn-conversion “designed for the London trendy set”. It’s part of Caryn & Jerry Hibbert’s ‘village within a village’ adjoining the “stunning village of Southrop”, recently described in The Times as “a Disney-perfect vision of the English countryside”: a collection of restored barns and other buildings that now form a complex of hotel, spa, pub, restaurant and events centre. Even those who say it’s “blindingly expensive” say Charlie Hibbert’s eclectic modern British fare is perfectly “acceptable” and fans say it’s “properly modern, excellent and unusual”.

“Shame on the inspector who was responsible for removing one of this outstanding restaurant’s stars” – fans are still scratching their heads about Michelin’s October 2018 decision to demote David & Helen Everitt-Matthias’s famous venue to a single gong. To be fair, the “somewhat suburban” décor has always grated with some diners here, as have odd incidents of “stuffy service”. And our own survey has seen a rise in minority reports of “well-cooked but unexceptional” cuisine (with a slight hit to its ratings as a result). And yet, for the most part, feedback on this “calm” and “low key” dining room just outside the city centre – where David is, famously, always at the stoves, with Helen front of house – remains a rhapsody of praise: “a one-off passion project from husband and wife team demonstrated in every superb and gimmick-free dish” – “a masterclass in ‘fine’ dining with very precise preparation, presentation and exciting flavours” that’s “expertly and efficiently run both front of house and in the kitchens”. (“It is the yardstick against which we measure everything else: we visit four or five times a year despite it being a six-hour round trip – it's worth the price, and why they lost a star is a total mystery!”)

This gentrified, ivy-covered Cotswolds inn, handily placed for Stow-on-the-Wold and Daylesford Organic, is “excellent in every way”: decent real ales, comfortable setting and British cuisine which, while “not cheap”, is “very, very good”.