Rugeley Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: A “smart hotel” with its own lake set in the Staffs countryside, where the “cosy restaurant serves good value food using local produce”. Tuesday night is grill night – on other evenings steaks and pub classics feature on the menu alongside somewhat fancier fare.

“In the middle of nowhere geographically speaking, but attentive service and innovative cooking make this a number one restaurant venue” – chef-patron Liam Dillon has transformed this former pub since 2017 into a champion of sustainability, with its own micro-farm incorporating a water treatment plant with ponds to breed trout and carp. It impresses all of the Midlands-based reporters who make the trip – at dinner there’s a short tasting menu for £75 per person or a full version for £110 per person (while at lunch, prices start at two courses for £42 for a short à la carte menu).

Opposite a leafy churchyard in a small town south of Stoke-on-Trent, this unassuming “gem” is rated on ongoing upbeat feedback from a small, dedicated fan base, praising its “fantastically skillful food with a brilliant balance of flavours”. Sophie Hardman & Jake Lowndes are celebrating their tenth year of business in 2026 and offer imaginative cuisine from either à la carte or tasting menus, the latter is £90 per person.

2022 Review: Over a decade on, this fine dining spot “sitting at the back of the Rose and Crown plum in the middle of nowhere” is “a revelation” to some reporters, “trying too hard” for others. The “regularly changing tasting menu” (the only option, coming with or without wine flights) is “getting even better, if anything”.

2024 Review: “Can’t beat it” – there are “lots of Indian restaurants to choose from” in these parts “but make sure you book this one”: Bangladesh-born chef Sitab Khan’s veteran destination (est. 1982), where “unusual dishes are all prepared to a great standard” and “your tastebuds will not be disappointed”.

“Magnificent cooking” from Tom Shepherd justifies the bet made by his father four years ago when he commissioned the “smart” conversion of the first-floor space above his jewellery shop in the centre of town to accommodate a new 28-cover dining room with open kitchen to showcase his son’s cooking. Awards – including a position in the Harden’s Best UK Top 100 2025 – have followed for this “friendly, warm and unpretentious” venue, where you eat from a seven-course tasting menu of high ambition. Its ratings dipped a little in this year’s annual diners’ poll however, as a result of feedback which – though relentlessly positive – included more caveats than previously (“very good, but the very long waiting list made expectations hard to meet…”; “as popular as ever, but it all felt a little frenetic and prices seem to have risen steadily…”).