Ripley Restaurant Guide

2021 Review: This “old mill overlooking the river and weir” – part of the Darley Abbey Mills World Heritage site on the Derwent – has an “interesting menu and consistently high-quality cooking”. “Lunch here is always a pleasure, thanks to its setting, space and service as much as its food”.

“Down the road from Toyota” (whose employees explain its unlikely presence) “a café-sized and café-style Japanese restaurant serving exquisite food”; despite the “strange mix of very high standards (the sashimi, sushi and tempura dishes) and almost homemade kitsch (the menus, the furniture)”, it’s “a delightful experience” by absolutely all accounts.

“Worth a visit” for its “high-quality food from the Indian subcontinent” – Naveed Khaliq’s 21-year-old flagship occupies a grand former picture palace whose plush decor and lavishly uniformed staff bring a sense of occasion to the meal. There are spinoffs in Nottingham and Burton.

2023 Review: With its untreated oak tables, black granite surfaces and antler candelabras, chef-patron Nick Gillespie’s unusual and “very quiet” venue makes an appropriate showcase for his distinctive modern British cooking, which provided some reporters’ best meal of the year. “Staff cannot do enough for you.”

2024 Review: “About as good as fish ’n’ chips gets” – some 20 varieties of catch come ‘baked, battered or naked’ at John Molnar’s award-winning restaurant and takeaway, now with five outposts across Nottingham and Birmingham; nor is the venue, launched in 2011, just a mere chippie either: alongside sashimi-grade tuna, the menu offers the vegetarian ‘Momma Bains’ menu of samosas and curries, conceived by local Michelin hero Sat Bains plus his ma (hence its name).

“Repeatedly superb, inventive cookery” (“not only the sole vegetarian restaurant I frequent, but one of the best restaurants I know”) has made the name of this sophisticated venue, whose owner Roya Bishop honed her skills at sadly shuttered Leeds veggie icon Hansa’s, as well as alongside Sat Bains. The classy food takes its cues from across the world, Lebanese and Japanese dishes sitting alongside “truly knockout Sri Lankan” choices too.

The kitchen at this Peak District pub – with six bedrooms – is overseen by Cornish-born Nathan Senior, and it shows through in the emphasis on fresh fish sourced from the West Country. “They like to promote the hotel aspect, but in fact this is a very good fish-oriented restaurant, with the freshest of supplies from Devon and Cornwall and the menu reflecting what is best on the day, all served by a friendly, enthusiastic team”.

2021 Review: An “extensive” and “interesting tapas menu” (plus a “very good-value lunch”) is the formula behind this relaxed but reliably busy spot.

“Pleasant old pub, with a modern dining room at the rear, in the Derbyshire countryside near Ashbourne”. “Very competent” cooking emerges from the kitchen of chef Gareth Ward, “including top-class fish (from the same source as sister establishment The Cow at Dalbury) – not often do you find both turbot and halibut on offer alongside good-quality local beef and lamb”.

Exceptional ratings were the norm this year in feedback on Alex Bond’s well-established foodie destination: “a beautiful, cavernous, low-lit” space occupying the Victorian brick-vaulted space that was once the coach house on the Park Estate. It’s “not cheap” of course, but provides a “brilliant night out” for which you can choose between a three-course à la carte menu at £75 per person or a seven-course tasting menu at £130 per person: “unusual flavours” but “fabulous food, and with the right level of interaction from staff”.

2022 Review: A “long-standing favourite”, this “brisk and friendly” red-brick late-Victorian boozer serves a “splendid range of beers” and a solid food menu[e]. One great fan and regular, though, feels “the dining room feels utilitarian and a little underwhelming compared to the bar”.

2021 Review: “When all you want is an old-school burger”, these US-based arrivals of recent years really “hit the spot” – you can “build your own”, with “tons of accessories”; plus “seriously addictive fries”, “thick milkshakes”, and “more soda flavours than is reasonable”. “The eat-in experience is as depressing as McDonald’s”, though, in fact perhaps more so – “some branches have a strangely gloomy ambience” – but fans feel that “if you don’t mind 1980s-rock, a trip can still be surprisingly fun”.