Knaresborough Restaurant Guide

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”.

2021 Review: “A very traditional Yorkshire chippie” which doesn’t offer anything fancy but “just good fish ’n’ chips” (the former “huge and well-battered”, and “you can go for more exotic if you wish”); “a little tip – avoid early evening when the ‘pensioners’ special menu’ is served – it will be heaving!”

2023 Review: This “quirky café with wonderful cinnamon buns and waffles” offers a “real taste of Scandinavia in Harrogate”. It’s “very popular with yummy-mummies in the morning so can get a little loud, but you can buy all the baked goods from their shop just by the theatre”. Owner Paul Rawlinson’s Scandi restaurant Norse is still missed, five years after its closure.

This “excellent Italian restaurant” is “a real treat to visit”, with a menu of “well presented food” from Emilia Romagna. Its founding chef-patron Stefano Lancellotti, a well-known figure in Harrogate, died suddenly last summer, soon after celebrating the venue’s 25th anniversary; his son Nico subsequently joined the team with a view to carrying on the family tradition.

A Yorkshire “legend” – “the epitome of an old-fashioned afternoon tea room, and with a great pianist too”. “You might have a long wait in the queue to get in, but it’s worth it” for the “delicious pastries and well-filled sandwiches” served at this flagship of a family-owned business founded in 1919, now with five venues across North Yorkshire. “Places that are described as an ‘institution’ are often a stuffy, stilted let-down – Betty’s is none of the above”: “even the fish ’n’ chips are stylish”.

2021 Review: A “bustling” ambiance that “gives a lift to the spirits” is the chief plus-point of this brasserie offshoot of the ever-expanding London luminary. Even fans concede it’s “expensive for what it is”, and “could be said to be a little formulaic”, while a couple of other reporters noted meals that were positively bad.

“Fantastic surroundings” – the owners spent an eye-watering £1.5 million transforming the Royal Baths into this upscale restaurant – and a “really nice feel and vibe at all times” set this two-year-old apart from the competition; the contemporary and trad Cantonese food is also worthwhile. “We still prefer Orchid, but this place has great decor!”

This “amazingly busy” Montpellier Quarter veteran (est. 1971) is “just as good as it’s always been” – credit to Ray & June Carter, who’ve overseen it for a decade (and have also run the Sportsman’s Arms, Wath-in-Nidderdale, for three). The “very interesting and delicious menu” spotlights “fish cooked absolutely right” – “try the queenies (aka queen scallops) followed by fish pie”.