Follifoot Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: Attached to a luxurious spa hotel, this modern brasserie is open all day (with other options in the hotel being the more ambitious Horto, or afternoon tea in the Conservatory). One fan notes it as a good place for a relaxed business meal, but there is also the odd concern that its “good ambience can be let down by average results at excessive prices”.

2022 Review: This “lovely hotel” is so proud of its own produce that it named its main restaurant Horto, Latin for kitchen garden, and charged young head chef Callum Bowmer (who arrived for two weeks’ work experience in 2010 and never left) with the task of creating showcase menus from it. The resulting meals are “really enjoyable”.

“A local establishment offering consistent Italian dining” – this family-owned fixture has survived the passing of chef-patron Stefano Lancelloti, who died suddenly in 2023, shortly after celebrating the 25th anniversary of the restaurant he named after his hometown in Emilia Romagna. His son Nico is now part of the kitchen team looking after his legacy. Top Tip – “great for celebrations”.

“A Yorkshire institution” that’s “not to be missed!” – These famous tea rooms owe their existence to Swiss founder Frederick Belmont, who opened them in 1919 and his family now also operate at four other locations across North Yorkshire. “A great, old school and classic experience” – they are “everyone’s favourite” and afternoon tea is “a real occasion” that’s “well worth queuing for”. Top Menu Tips – “scrumptious fat rascals” (a kind of Yorkshire scone).

2023 Review: This “quirky café with wonderful cinnamon buns and waffles” offers a “real taste of Scandinavia in Harrogate”. It’s “very popular with yummy-mummies in the morning so can get a little loud, but you can buy all the baked goods from their shop just by the theatre”. Owner Paul Rawlinson’s Scandi restaurant Norse is still missed, five years after its closure.

This veteran fish and seafood specialist has been a fixture of the Montpelier Quarter for 55 years – and has, remarkably, maintained its standards and independence, most recently under the Carter family, the owners since 2013. “The food is always very good and often excellent” by all accounts.

The owners of this Cantonese spent an eye-watering £1.5m on its conversion and, while “the food is almost incidental to the splendour of the surroundings” (a “Victorian spa – full of wonderful tiling and soaring arches”), nevertheless “it’s not bad”, being “a notch above standard Chinese fare”, with the added joy that “they have a number of large round tables, so all the diners can enjoy the fun of working the lazy Susan”.

“A real Harrogate stalwart, with excellent Italian cooking” – this town-centre venture has won a decent local reputation over four decades – “kids are kept happy with pizzas and home-made ice-cream”, while the menu covers the classics from stuzzichini and antipasti to pasta and secondi piatti, and there’s a “mainly Italian” wine list that explores the regions.

“Consistently excellent pan-Asian food” draws an appreciative crowd to the Studley Hotel, where it celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Even the odd reporter who feels that “it’s not quite as good as it used to be” says “it’s still a superb restaurant”.

2024 Review: “Increased in size” – this “dog friendly” bar/café/kitchen is “still best in class locally despite the new look and expansion” and makes “the perfect location for working, socialising and relaxing”. Expect “Darkwoods coffee, great value breakfasts and brunches, and the friendliest service” plus a selection of beers (10 craft keg taps and 6 cask hand pulls on the bar), pizzas and poutine (Quebec comfort food mixing chips, gravy and cheese) but with a Yorkshire twist.

“A great addition to Harrogate” courtesy of Bradford-born Varun Kanna, who took over the space above Sukhothai in 2024, striking out on his own after a tutelage that included a stint at the famed Restaurant Sat Bains. The “food is unique with British produce, but having an Asian twist from Japan and India”, whether you go for the £32, three-course weekday set lunch or “very memorable” £85 per person tasting menu taking in the likes of crab curry and wagyu beef, and leaving diners – even “a couple who treat The Fat Duck as their local” – “full of praise”.

“Excellent food and service in a garden centre”, where you eat “surrounded by giant plants in a large, airy room” – the “most unusual” formula (“but all the better for that”) at top chef Frances Atkins’s crowd-pleaser of a café. Those who visited her former venture – the posh Yorke Arms – report that the food is “just as good as it always was” there, whether you use it as a “favourite ‘brekkie-with-the girls’ haunt”, as per one reporter’s wife, or you go for tea and cake, when the “baking is something else” (dinner is also offered on Fridays). Add in “wonderful, attentive service” (staff “remember you even if it’s weeks since your last visit”) and “the entire place is a joy!”. (Note – the formula-price is for the supper menu: you eat in the daytime much more cheaply).