Great Malvern Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: After the success of The Butchers Arms in Eldersfield, James & Elizabeth Winter have opened a new restaurant in this eighteenth-century, Grade II listed building in the heart of Ledbury, featuring two dining rooms seating just 12 between them. By early reports it's an “absolute gem” – “tiny”, “quirky” and offering “quite adventurous” choices from a “small but changing menu” based around local produce.

2021 Review: Limited but all-round positive feedback on this relative newcomer – a country inn with rooms, relaunched in mid 2018, and serving a brasserie-style menu majoring in steak (also with lighter options at lunch).

2021 Review: “The quality of the chef is well known and the major attraction” at this timbered country house hotel, helmed by MasterChef: The Professionals winner Mark Stinchcombe; yet while his “excellent” farm-to-fork cuisine generally pleases, service strikes some reporters as “average”: “a tremendous amount of attention has been paid to the design of the cooking school adjacent but seemingly less to what makes a good fine-dining restaurant”.

2021 Review: It’s still early days for Grain Store chef, Mark Block, who took over this celebrated county inn in January 2018. While there’s the odd complaint – of food that’s “competent but has no zing” – the general sense is that, despite the former regime being “quite a tough act to follow, it’s doing nicely under the new ownership”: no longer chasing Michelin stars, but “very much a rural pub with good food”.

2022 Review: Rescued by local regulars from the threat of demolition six years ago, this 200-year-old former drovers’ pub (‘bait’ as in ‘bite’ or ‘snack’) is now an upmarket pub-with-rooms on the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border, serving food of a “consistently high standard”. “The lamb dishes are particularly delicious” (Kate Lane, one of the co-owners, farms sheep). Building on their success here, Kate and her lawyer husband Andrew Cornthwaite now have a growing collection of reinvigorated village pubs.

“Brilliant flavours in a sublime setting” have helped win renown for this “lovely” converted barn on owner Peta Darnley’s 1,200 acre family estate, where head chef Chris Simpson helped it carry off Visit England’s ‘Taste of England’ award as best restaurant in 2023. On the downside, its ratings took a slight knock this year, with a few diners being “a bit underwhelmed given the hype”: they query, “has it all gone to their heads?” and discern “a slight preciousness” in the overall approach. Most accounts, though, continue to applaud its “exceptional” overall standards.

Opening in May 2024 on the Netherwood Estate, replacing Pensons, which closed at Christmas 2023 after five years. It should make a perfect setting for Native, a zero-waste and foraging specialist that has earned accolades for its creative cuisine at venues in London and Essex.