Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Langport
Hardens guides have spent 33 years compiling reviews of the best Langport restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 15 restaurants in Langport and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Langport restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Langport Restaurants
1. The Castle Bow Restaurant
British, Modern restaurant in Taunton
Castle Bow - TA1
2023 Review: With its Art Deco-style interior, this local landmark’s traditional dining room provides a heartily traditional environment. It has yet to reopen for lunch and dinner post-pandemic, but is currently dedicated to the service of afternoon tea, for which – on limited feedback – it comes recommended.
2. Brazz, Castle Hotel
British, Modern restaurant in Taunton
Castle Bow - TA1
2023 Review: “Well-cooked and well-presented food” is served in this 70-cover brasserie at the Castle Hotel, a well-known and picturesque-looking local institution (complete with crenellations) run by three generations of the Chapman family for 72 years, although the modern decor of Brazz itself means those searching for period style should look elsewhere. “Service is charming and very helpful” and the overall package is “good value too”. In April 2022, towards the end of our annual diners’ poll, Andrew Swann took over the stoves here. One of his early innovations has been the introduction of an eye-catching £15 lunch deal.
3. The Cross Keys Hotel
restaurant in Sherborne
88 Cheap Street - DT9
2023 Review: Well-located in the centre of the town on ‘The Parade’ – this old inn wins praise for “good pub food with some more adventurous items” and “community-minded owners who have become part of the town”. The latter are Mo Gherras and his family, who put their savings into the place in 2019, the pub having lain vacant for a number of years.
4. The Cotley Inn
restaurant in Chard
Wambrook - TA20
“Seemingly off the beaten track down increasingly narrow country lanes in the beautiful Blackdown Hills but with easy access from the A358 if you are en route to Devon and Cornwall” – this rural inn wins praise as a “great local” (“very dog friendly!”) “producing lovely food in a picturesque setting”. Meat is smoked onsite and “game seems to be a speciality (as we were leaving, the beaters and dogs were arriving back at the pub with several brace of pheasants!)”
5. Holm
British, Modern restaurant in South Petherton
28 St James Street - TA13
“A great addition to the food scene in Somerset” – this two-year-old operation from chef-patron Nicholas Balfe (previously of the team behind Peckham’s Levan, now flying solo) occupies a converted bank, with a dining room in the original vault, open kitchen and diners’ counter. Foodwise, the focus is on reasonably priced modern bistro fare not a million miles from its original stablemate’s ‘bistronomy’. Other features include an outside terrace (for coffee or snacks) and rooms for a stay. Top Tip – “good value lunch menu”.
6. Lord Poulett Arms
British, Modern restaurant in Hinton-St-George
2021 Review: This “lovely” thatched village pub opened in 1680 as an inn for passing travellers, and still makes a “delightful stopover” just off the A303 near Crewkerne. Ratings for its “high quality”, “classical” food have revived in the past 12 months under new owners backed by Nick Jones of Soho House (who also own the Beckford Arms at Tisbury and the Talbot Inn at Mells). Steve Hill and Michelle Payton, who ran it for 15 years, have retired to France.
7. Augustus
British, Modern restaurant in Taunton
3 The Courtyard, St James St - TA1
A “small but perfectly formed bistro-style” venue which was set up by Richard Guest and FOH Cedric Chirrosel in 2011, and has since firmly made its mark on the local dining scene with its impeccable local sourcing and “nice French-style cooking” (also inflected by British and Asian touches). Fans say that the “idiosyncratic” venture is “as good as it gets locally” (“when it is open we never go anywhere else”).
8. The Queen’s Arms
British, Modern restaurant in Corton Denham
This “newly refurbished family-owned pub with rooms” – originally a mid-Victorian cider house – in a “lovely village” near Sherborne, makes for a “perfect stop-over en route to Devon or Cornwall”, with “agreeable service” and “reliable food including interesting fish dishes”. Co-owner Doune Mackenzie-Francis has a foodie background as a former marketing manager for Leith’s School of Food & WIne.
9. Goodfellows
British, Modern restaurant in Wells
7b St Thomas Street - BA5
“This small family-run restaurant never fails to please” – Adam & Martine Fellows celebrate the 20th anniversary of their fish-focused, French-inspired bistro this year, having moved to a new townhouse address in 2022. Their dishes are always “beautifully cooked and presented” and there’s a “variety of menus to suit different budgets”. Top Menu Tip – “excellent scallops in a champagne sauce with samphire and asparagus”.
10. The Newell
British, Modern restaurant in Sherborne
Greenhill - DT9
A “small restaurant in Sherborne, owned by an Australian couple”, and where the “good” and “unusual” food pays testament to chef Paul Merrony’s Gallic training with the likes of Albert Roux at Le Gavroche; there’s an “interesting list of well-chosen wines at reasonable prices to match the excellent food”.
11. The Green
British, Modern restaurant in Sherborne
3 The Green - DT9
“Great modern European food using locally sourced ingredients at very reasonable prices” again wins praise for this local fixture. Chef-patron Sasha Matkevich grew up in south Russia but has lived in England for 30 years.
12. The Barrington Boar
British, Modern restaurant in Ilminster
Main Street - TA19
“We’re so lucky to have this on our doorstep”, agree locals who enjoy the “top-class pub grub” served in this smart 18th-century inn run by locally born chef Alasdair Clifford (ex-Chez Bruce & Glasshouse) and his wife Victoria Collins – who make “a brilliant team, well regarded by the village and their other customers”. Now in their sixth year here, the couple recently bought the farm next door to provide extra accommodation, a bakery, orchard and kitchen garden.
13. The Rising Sun
British, Modern restaurant in Knapp
Knapp Road - TA3
2023 Review: This 500-year-old building in a “beautiful part of Somerset” now houses an “excellent dining pub” that “serves up top-class modern British dishes using brilliant local ingredients”. Chef Olly Jackson and his manager wife Rebecca “used to run the nearby and sadly missed Langford Fivehead hotel”.
14. The Candlelight Inn
British, Modern restaurant in Chard
Bishopswood - TA20
As the name suggests, “a great, intimate atmosphere” is found at this seventeenth-century village inn, which is “a cut above the usual for style and service”. Charlotte Vincent was crowned ‘pub chef of the year’ in the 2023 Great British Pub Awards – she sends out “a varied range of dishes, nearly all locally sourced and precisely cooked”, such as a bar snack of roasted marrow bone and Porlock Bay oyster with garlic butter and sourdough bread.
15. The Plume of Feathers
restaurant in Sherborne
Half Moon Street - DT9
2023 Review: “It looks and sounds like a pub”, but this “lively and friendly” old inn opposite Sherborne Abbey “is actually an Italian restaurant providing small plates by the score”. The menu includes a “stupendous choice” (including pizzette and pasta) “using local and Italian ingredients” and it’s very easy to assemble an interesting and varied meal with “dishes to suit all tastes”. “The main difficulty is limiting yourself as there’s so much to tempt!". Top Tip – Rapido lunch for two at £14 per person, served weekdays.
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