Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Bath
Hardens guides have spent 30 years compiling reviews of the best Bath restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 74 restaurants in Bath and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Bath restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Bath Restaurants
1. The Bath Priory
British, Modern restaurant in Bath
Weston Rd - BA1
“Wonderful food is amply delivered” at this posh country house hotel, riding high after the arrival of Michael Nizzero in January 2017, and where “a tour of the (“fab”) grounds by the head gardener following a meal makes for a perfect celebration and reason to return”; casual sister restaurant The Pantry is also worth a look.
2. The Olive Tree, Queensberry Hotel
British, Modern restaurant in Bath
Russell St - BA1
Chris Cleghorn’s “very classy and well-composed” cuisine maintains this well-known basement dining room as the town’s most accoladed foodie hotspot (it’s the only restaurant in town with a Michelin star) and he offers a variety of menus (with vegan and vegetarian options) focused in the evenings on tasting menu formats, although – unusually – they allow you to pick out individual dishes from them if you don’t want ‘the full monty’ and to pay per plate. The dining room itself is well-appointed and pleasant, but the constraints of this basement space are griped about even in the most favourable of reports (“tables close together…”, “room is a bit spartan for food of this quality…”).
3. Scallop Shell
Fish & seafood restaurant in Bath
22 Monmouth Place - BA1
“Beautiful fresh fish cooked to perfection every time” hits the seafood sweet spot at this modern update of the traditional fish-and-chip restaurant, set across two floors in the town centre. The visual pun of a fresh fish display in an old Victorian bath dominates the dining room.
4. Menu Gordon Jones
British, Modern restaurant in Bath
2 Wellsway - BA2
“Gordon Jones is expert in the flavours he can coax out of sometimes-modest ingredients” and his ‘surprise’, no-choice tasting menu of “well-coordinated and beautifully presented” dishes makes his “small but sweet” venue (in a somewhat “ordinary location”, just outside the town centre) into “a foodie’s temple of joy!”. “Quirky but worth a detour”.
5. Acorn Vegetarian Kitchen
Vegetarian restaurant in Bath
2 North Parade Passage - BA1
“Now fully vegan, but you wouldn’t know – everything is so brilliantly created”: this upmarket venture, super-cutely located in the city-centre, remains one of the UK’s top non-meat destinations and is “worth a special trip” for its “exquisite” and “innovative” cooking (not least the “sublime” five-course tasting menu).
6. The Mint Room
Indian restaurant in Bath
Longmead Gospel Hall, Lower Bristol Rd - BA2
2019 Review: In a slightly utilitarian setting next to a Sainsbury’s petrol station and en route to Brizzle, this swish Indian serves some “beautiful food”.
7. Allium Brasserie, Abbey Hotel
restaurant in Bath
1 North Pde - BA1
2017 Review: Limited and polarised feedback on this four-year-old dining room, in a former Best Western Hotel, with Chris Staines (ex-of the Mandarin Oriental, Knightsbridge) at the stoves. Fans say that it’s “a real pleasure dining here” (it was the winner of ‘Top Restaurant’ at the Bath Good Food Awards 2016) but sceptics would be “very loathe to go again”.
8. Sotto Sotto
Italian restaurant in Bath
10 North Pde - BA2
2018 Review: Those who descend into the depths of this brick-vaulted, candlelit cellar for the first time are apt to report a “happy surprise” – locals would already attest to its excellent ambience and crowd-pleasing Italian classics.
9. Colonna & Smalls
Sandwiches, cakes, etc restaurant in Bath
6 Chapel Row - BA1
“Caffeine for connoisseurs served by enthusiastic baristas” – this Queen’s Square coffee shop from three-times UK barista champion Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood is a must for the aficionado. “Best coffee in Bath and so cool!”
10. Dan Moon at The Gainsborough
British, Modern restaurant in Bath
Beau Street - BA1
“Dan Moon’s cooking is consistently top-class as is the unstuffy service at this city-centre luxury hotel, converted in 2015 from a former hospital”. Reporters all raved about the “very contemporary dining room” last year, be it for business or its “amazingly good value” midweek lunch deal – and its spa (the only one in Bath with access to the local thermal waters) is among the UK’s finest.
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