Ellesmere Restaurant Guide

You only get Marc Wilkinson’s address on booking at this relocated venue – just outside Oswestry. Having made his name at a quirky 14-seater near Birkenhead, he’s swapped it for a chef’s table actually inside his new home in rural Shropshire, where he’s been set up for a year now. Fans applaud his “usual flair and innovation… his skill and knowledge that shines through in every morsel… and the standard and quality of the dishes he creates that never fail to tantalise the tastebuds”. You eat from a £130 per person tasting menu served to the whole table at once with reservations months ahead released on the first of each month. He also offers a “stunning overnight stay” for £150 per person. All reports say he’s “really excelled himself at this new venue”… “and I love the treat of being in Chef’s own front room… it’s private dining on a new level… a really special experience” that is “just getting better and better as it evolves!”

2023 Review: Chef-patron Mark Sebastian & Michelle Fisher’s “newly decorated restaurant-with-rooms only gets better” – after more than three decades – “and is always full”, a tribute to the “high standard of its French-influenced food”. Set in three seventeenth-century cottages knocked together, it’s a “quiet place to satisfy the foodie in you”.

Stuart & Frances Collins opened in this cute market town in 2017, and have won it local renown as a “favourite” for a high-quality meal thanks to its “creative and excellent tasting menu and good quality wines” – ten courses for £100 per person.

Just outside of Wrexham, a lovely link in the Brunning & Price empire, who took over this large and picturesque neglected pile (then decked out as a sports pub) in 1994 and transformed it into a “very comfortable” venue, as per their style. The undemanding but enjoyable food, which ranges from burgers to fish ‘n’ chips and chicken ramen, is “solid”, staff are “friendly” and there’s “a great big garden for the kids to muck around in during the summer”; it can, however, “get very busy” – a testament to its charms.

“Stunning views over the River Dee rapids in the heart of Llangollen” ensure that “it’s always a treat to visit” this 700-year-old former water mill – a “wonderful old building with a terrace”, these days a gastropub from the Brunning and Price stable serving “very dependable food”: “I’ve never known anyone not to love it!”

“Slightly different comfort-food dishes” grace the menu at this “attractive gastropub” – with a “relaxed atmosphere” in an old school building. Steak ’n’ kidney pie is the pick of the main dishes, while the “excellent desserts” include an appropriately ‘Old School Ram Roly-Poly Pudding’. There are more than 300 gins behind the bar, along with a “good range of real ales”.

2024 Review: This appealing indie café/restaurant, in a quiet side street, has a modish industrial-style interior, while the open kitchen turns out seasonal eats spanning small plates, steaks and lots of snackable ‘things on toast’.

This well-established upmarket Indian recently took over the site of the old Lepone’s Italian Restaurant, having relocated from its former premises in the Lion Quays Hotel and Spa Resort. Now in its improved setting (a converted chapel with dramatic décor), it “serves consistently good food”, sometimes with an Indo-Chinese twist. There are also spin-offs in Staffordshire and Chingford.

“A local’s delight” with a “great atmosphere” – this long-running trattoria offers “amazingly reasonably priced” Italian cooking, “prepared so consistently” by Roman-born chef Claudio Murru and served by his wife Jo, “who really cares that you enjoy your meal” (“we’ve been five times this year with different friends, and it met with universal approval”).

This “lovely old coaching inn” in a village of picturesque Tudor houses is a “real addition to a part of Shropshire not awash with good places to eat” and achieves an impressive level of feedback for somewhere out in the boonies. Owned by Sir Algernon Heber-Percy, who lives close by in Hodnet Hall (the kitchen garden supplies the vegetables to the inn); his son Tom was responsible for the inn’s “gorgeous makeover” a few years back. “The food covers fine dining to light lunches and afternoon tea” and all reports say it “functions well as a foodie pub while still catering as a bar for locals… one of the best around”.

Owner Gary Usher’s flair with crowd-funding and socials helped inspire lots of attention for his ‘first Elite Bistro pub’ when it opened in March 2023 in the leafy Cheshire countryside. Reports this year were somewhat limited and a little up-and-down (“we’ve been a few times, on the latest there were some hitches but the matter was sorted out quickly”). Overall, though, its “very flavourful” cuisine remains well-rated and “the place itself is divided into areas each with their own atmosphere, but all very pleasant”.

“Imaginative dishes with a modern twist” are on the menu at this “well-drilled” operation from chef couple Ben Hall & Carla Ernst, who met while cooking at the esteemed Gidleigh Park in Devon. Their tasting menu is “very good without being over-bearing”, while an à la carte option is also available at most times and lighter meals are served in the bar. The restaurant takes its name from the Beatles song famously covered by Oasis.

Tudor-era Drapers Hall – dating from 1483 and still owned by its founders, the Shrewsbury Drapers Company (these days a charity) – makes a “beautiful location” for chef Adrian Badland’s “outstanding meals”, which are served in a candlelit dining room with heavy drapes and original dark wood-panelled walls (the six bedrooms are equally atmospheric). There’s a five-course tasting menu at £49.50 per person as well as a standard menu of, say fans, “unfailing” quality.