Chillenden Restaurant Guide

“Definitely worth the drive… always delicious and great to stay over afterwards” – The Bridgen family’s pub with rooms sits in a “lovely village” halfway between Canterbury and Sandwich and wins very consistent praise as “a favorite Kent bolt hole”. There’s a variety of eating options, from à la carte – which incorporates pub classics but where the focus is on more interesting fare – to an eight-course tasting menu for £75 per person – all “innovative dishes, well-prepared and served by the efficient service”. Top Tip – “Their £200 DB&B for two midweek special is exceptional value – as are their Monthly Celebration Dinners”.

This “lovely gastropub in a pretty Kent village” with “well-kept beer and very good food” – including “unusual dishes such as a celeriac and truffle tart” – is part of Saga heir Josh De Haan’s Pickled Egg group. Top Tip – “enjoyed a drink in front of the log fire while looking at the menu”.

Ruth Leigh and her husband, chef Oli Brown worked together at Ruth’s famous father Rowley Leigh’s Café Anglais in Bayswater and their 17th-century farmstead-turned-hotel and restaurant enjoys a “lovely rural setting” where they are acclaimed as "brilliant hosts” – you dine amid vines in the conservatory at the bottom of the garden. By most accounts, the fire-grilled fare is “excellent” too, the prelude to a meal being a “nice cocktail to start in the main house”. There was, however, the odd report of wobbly service this year but they received a big boost in July 2025, when The Telegraph’s William Sitwell found gastronomic bliss at what he dubbed a “magical” countryside restaurant-with-rooms, created by a couple who he said, “believe me, will go down in history as one of the great marital duos of British restaurants”.