Dorset, British, Traditional Restaurant Guide

2025 Review: This “lovely family-run hotel” in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Vale of the little dairies’ is “personal and exquisite” – host Richard Prideaux-Brune inherited the family‘s Jacobean manor at the age of 21, opening it as a restaurant with rooms with his wife Alison 51 years ago, brother Brian in the kitchen and daughter Katharine these days part of the team. The “excellent” dinner menu is notably “affordable” at £45 per person for two courses and £55 per person for three, “complemented by wines at sensible prices”. Top Tip – don’t forget to pronounce the B in ‘Plumber’.

“Brilliant new restaurant” at the Nici hotel – a £25million Miami-style reboot of the old Savoy hotel at the top of West Cliff – with “superb cocktails and staff on point”. There is the odd report of teething troubles, despite the “great location”, but even ‘off’ reports say “the staff and ambience are lovely”.