Durham Restaurant Guide

From the owners of Coarse – and named for their five year old daughter – this casual sibling opened in mid 2024 near the new bus station on a site that was formerly a coffee shop called Bean Social. Feedback is still too limited for a rating, but all of it is enthusiastic – if you want an on-trend small plates meal (or brunch) in this still under-served city, this is a good bet.

A “great tasting menu which changes every six weeks” delivered by staff who are “welcoming and helpful” all “at a great price” is helping dispel the image of this ancient varsity town as a culinary wasteground. Billed, when it opened, in 2022 as ‘Durham’s first tasting menu restaurant’, chef Ruari MacKay – with collaborators Gemma Robinson and Craig Lappin-Smith – raised £100,000 from crowd-funding to launch this simply decorated newcomer, in a courtyard just over the river from the ancient city centre. The aim was to ‘make tasting menus more affordable, accessible and fun’ which they do here at dinner with a six-course selection for £49 per person (three courses at lunch are £27 per person).

“It’s easy to see why this restaurant has been tipped as a ‘Hot Arrival’” say local fans of Jake & Laura Siddle’s ambitious two-year-old, which occupies a muted Scandi-style room in a cobbled part of the ancient city-centre by the river, “with open kitchen area” at the end. “The ambience is relaxed and the team are both welcoming and informative”. There is a lighter four-course meal available for £50 per person, but our feedback relates to the 10-course tasting menu, which fans say is “better, than some at top Michelin starred establishments, because the emphasis is on quality ingredients and flavour combinations rather than culinary theatrics”.

“Very relaxed fine-dining” is hailed by early fans of this “friendly” small space, which opened on Durham’s Elvet Bridge at the end of 2024. Its formula revolves around a six-course tasting menu for £45 per person, which is “a lot of fun and a lot of care has gone into it”. But it’s not to be taken too seriously – the name of the restaurant means ‘Fuck if I know’ and a recent menu selection included ‘No Pane, No Gain’, ‘The Veal Deal’ and ‘Tirami-Who?’.

“Excellent Indian food” inspired by the regional cuisines of the subcontinent and with “wonderful signature dishes” is presented in the dining room of Farnley Tower, a guesthouse hotel in a characterful Victorian mansion near the city centre.

Promising feedback on this “delightful, small, and intimate” Chinese joint down a cobbled side street near the town centre: an established business that was reformatted in 2023 with Shanghai speakeasy styling: “it feels very plush and with above-average Cantonese-fusion food”.