Pettistree, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

Brendan Padfield’s “fantastic restaurant/pub” has topped Estrella Damm’s Top 50 UK Gastropubs list three times in four years (2022, ’24, ’25), and most reporters agree that “it’s No.1 for a reason”: “I’m lucky enough to have been half a dozen times, and it’s outstanding”; “the best gastropub we’ve experienced, and it really is still a pub!”. The Guardian’s Grace Dent concurred with this view in her January 2025 review, heaping praise on imaginative chef Dave Wall’s ‘go-hard or go-home’ food, perfect for the adventurous diner. But a possibly surprising number of naysayers insist it’s “not quite as good as it thinks it is” – or worse, that it “always manages to disappoint” (“the judges of various awards clearly see something in this fairly ordinary gastropub which I don’t. Having eaten here many times I have been neither disappointed nor impressed”).