Dorchester, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

Michael Trawicki’s “popular thatched pub” serves particularly “good pub food in a nice sunny dining room” and there’s also a beautiful garden in summer. It’s not an especially ‘foodie’ operation but attracts consistent praise in our annual diners’ poll as one of the area’s better eateries.

“The very best meal I have enjoyed in the last year!”… “Exceptional” – chef Mike Naidoo’s sustainable seafood restaurant on a mezzanine in the waterside Old Fish Market has proved a “brilliant addition to the Weymouth food scene” since it opened three years ago. The “exceptional” dayboat catch is translated into set menus, with the £45 four-course lunch itself a particularly good catch from the (slightly bewildering) array of menus, with different options served early evening, midweek dinner (six courses) and Saturday dinner (eight courses). One visitor in particular went a bundle on it this year, in the shape of The Times’s Giles Coren who, in his March 2024 review – “reeling from the quality” – thought it might just be “the best restaurant in the world”… “omigodomigodomigod”.

“A great and romantic hideaway” – the Red Carnation group’s “traditional country hotel never disappoints for comfort”. The dining room offers straightforward but well-realised cooking from a two-course or three-course à la carte menu: food that’s “well presented and interesting but not too fancy”.

“A gorgeous, sunny room attached to a medieval priory on the banks of the River Frome” is the “delightful setting” for “always interesting and very good” cooking from Loire Valley-bred Stephan Guinebault, head chef for the best part of two decades at this independently owned hotel which oozes “old-world charm”.

The “perfect location” overlooking Chesil Beach, “knowledgeable and friendly staff” and “delicious and changing menu” tick most of the boxes at this Art Deco-style seaside venue with plenty of outdoor seating – although a significant minority reckon it’s “disappointing compared to previous visits”.