Foss Cross, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: Superdry sartorial star Julian Dunkerton, behind the Lucky Onion Cotswold group, owns this “reliable and buzzing” country hotel, where “amazing local ingredients” are “beautifully cooked in a gorgeous setting”. The odd service blip but it's “overall a very memorable eating experience”.

2023 Review: “Excellent food” and a “lively atmosphere” can be found at this brasserie set in the Corn Hall covered market in the centre of town, that has developed over 15 years from a deli and was formerly known as Made by Bob… although the founder is James Parkinson.

“A beautiful old pub in an idyllic village setting”, given a glow-up a few years back by locally based pizza duo Baz & Fred, with a “lovely terrace for al-fresco dining when the weather is kind” – “we cycle there when camping in the Cotswolds”. “They serve the best pint of Deya ale to wash down delicious grub”. Alongside the “fabulous burgers” there’s a good range of posh pub grub, including roasted fresh figs with goat’s curd and Iberico ham.

“Delicious seasonal food with interesting ingredients” can be enjoyed on occasion in the “splendid, ‘not quite formal, not quite informal’, setting” of the Hibbert family’s Cotswolds manor – a restaurant-cum-spa retreat-cum-beauty business. “Everyone is trying very hard to please and it shows, with that ‘local’ feel to everything” – however reported incidents of “amateurish” or “chaotic” service and meals of variable quality undermine a higher rating.

“Comfort through and through” helps characterise this luxurious Cotswolds retreat – a “lovely building and grounds” with a “gorgeous” elegant interior. Chef Charles Smith provides “superlative presentation, taste & seasoning, with every element of each dish perfectly prepared”. from a nine-course menu in the evening for £130 per person. (There’s also the simpler Dining Room where you can enjoy high quality but more straightforward dishes).

2022 Review: Limited but upbeat feedback on this relatively recent (2019) addition to the well-known Cotswolds manor house, with Charles Smith delivering a nine-course tasting menu for £95. Fans do say it’s “wonderful”, but we have to leave a rating till we have a few more reports.

2024 Review: This archetypal Cotswolds manor house, just outside Bourton on the Water, occupies a seventeenth century property that’s nowadays part of Andrew Brownsword’s hotel group. The cuisine – under chef Nik Chappell – wins a consistent thumbs-up (“we do enjoy going here... results can be a bit hit and miss, but are mostly good! while service is very good and the dining room attractive”). As well as a fairly pricey à la carte (three courses for £80) there’s a relatively affordable all-day menu served in the bar and lounges (with dishes such as omelette Arnold Bennett, steak, posh sarnies, and so on).

“My wife and I use this as an excuse for a weekend in Cheltenham once a year!” say fans of this long-established and traditional temple of gastronomy, run by David & Helen Everitt-Matthias since 1987, for which they were amongst the few UK restaurateurs to hold two Michelin stars (which were awarded from 2000-2019, after which they were downgraded to a single star). Fans feel that “the standards here remain as high as ever with cooking that’s innovative (petit fours are always a highlight!)” and “exceptional”. But it was a mixed year in our annual diners’ poll, with some downbeat feedback from former fans (“I have had some fabulous meals at Le Champignon Sauvage, but this meal felt a little tired and I left unlikely to return. Sad because the restaurant has been an icon over the years with exciting, cutting-edge food”). Helen presides over the staff and most accounts say she has been “her usual charming self” but one or two diners felt service “made us feel like intruders”. The “low key and quiet dining room” has always received a mixed press – to critics rather dull, but to fans “comfortable” and “restful”.

‘British seafood, Cotswold produce’ is the promise of Gareth Fulford’s small independent near the High Street, where the evening focus is on an à la carte menu (two courses for £58 per person); and where there are also selections for a ‘light lunch’ or a tasting option of six to eight courses for £85 to £100 per person. All the cooking is acknowledged as “very inventive and tasty”.

2022 Review: In a prime town-centre location, this luxurious hotel (ultimately owned by Superdry founder Julian Dunkerton) is converted from a trio of Georgian townhouses. On limited feedback in this survey, the themes here are the same as in previous years: “attractive setting and good food… but all at a high price”.

2024 Review: “The rotunda is wonderful”, and “can make a visit stand out” at this branch of the ubiquitous chain, which otherwise conforms to type with “food and service that are professional, reliable and entirely anonymous” – “one could eat the same dish every day and find it unvarying, while being treated politely but distantly by the staff”.

“Always hugely excited to go to Lumiere and always leave amazed” – John & Helen Lowe’s “welcoming” venue in the city-centre, finally won recognition from Michelin in 2023 – “it was a long time coming” as they opened in 2009 – and fans say that “although there are more bells and whistles since the star, the food remains divine”, always “well-designed and both execution and presentation are excellent” (“we think it’s genius, rivalling meals we’ve had in two- and three- star establishments”). You can choose from four, six and ten courses for £85, £135 and £175 per person respectively: “they are superbly balanced, novel in their combinations, minimise waste and make best use of the owners’ produce. And whilst the presentation is excellent, the focus is on the cooking not the image”. “The small room is calm and pleasant, service is enthusiastic and informative… altogether a wonderful place for a meal”.

2022 Review: Rugby World Cup AND Celebrity MasterChef winner Phil Vickery has opened his own restaurant, with his wife Jules and chef Tom Rains, after a year of running a delivery service, No.3 at Home.

“Absolutely lovely” – “Tucked away down a lane”, this restored Georgian malthouse overlooking the Evenlode valley is “everything that you could want a Cotswold Pub now Restaurant with Rooms to be”: “a stunning place with real atmosphere” and high marks too to the accomplished cuisine, be it from the high quality à la carte menu, or the more ambitious seven-course tasting menu for £90 per person. It’s not a case of fancy combinations – you’re paying for high quality protein that’s been sensitively prepared.

“Some of the finest pub food around, well worth a detour” – this old village pub near Burford was relaunched nine years ago by Peter Creed and Tom Noest, who reopened it in 2017. Its menu divisions describe the offering well, with in each case a handful of ‘bites’, ‘starters’, ‘pizza’, ‘classics’, ‘mains’, ‘steak’ and ‘sides’.

2024 Review: A “beautiful village pub (with rooms) in the Cotswolds” that’s often “packed to the rafters”; local boys Peter Creed and Tom Noest took it over in 2017 – with the latter turning out “all the modern pub classics delivered with panache, along with some more unusual offerings” (“venison scrumpets”, anyone?); add in “smiling service”, and a beer garden overlooking the open countryside, and it’s an “outstanding” proposition all-round.

“Everything is cooked to order” using “first-class local produce in wonderful flavour combinations” by chef-patron Gus Ashenford, who trained under the late Michel Roux senior and once cooked for then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Kremlin. He took over this former village tea shop with his wife Kate in 2003, and fans reckon it’s still “the best restaurant for miles around”.

This “very special pub in the gorgeous Slad Valley” combines “brilliant cooking” with “an olde worlde country feeling” – it was “Laurie Lee’s hangout and he’s buried in the churchyard opposite”. Owned and run for more than 25 years by the sculptor Daniel Chadwick, it offers a “delicious menu that ranges lightly across influences (Modern European? Modern British? Does it even matter?)” – “every single dish, from olives and charcuterie through to a large plate of perfectly cooked lamb with root vegetables is spot-on” (“we overheard a couple saying they’d driven down from Manchester, which was both insane and understandable!”). Top Menu Tip – “skate with cockles and wild garlic in cider sauce” (Laurie Lee’s Rosie would have loved it).

2023 Review: “High-quality pub food” and a “lovely setting by the river” earn high ratings across the board for this traditional Cotswolds inn. “On a brilliant sunny bank holiday Saturday, The Swan was rammed but the amazing staff never missed a beat – the chef & kitchen churned out really delicious food, and nobody was less than delighted with their choices”. Top Tip – “the sticky toffee reaches new heights of orgasmic satisfaction”.

2024 Review: “The Fox has had a major makeover since the old days when it had the ambience of a venerable Cotswold pub” – as you’d expect since the July 2022 takeover by Lady Bamford and her Daylesford empire. Some old timers feel “the money lavished on its gentrification has not resulted in improvement”, although they concede the result is “very comfortable” and deliver a thumbs-up to its selection of posh pub grub (pizza, steak, burgers and Cornish fish for the most part). In early 2023, Giles Coren declared himself a fan too, even if there was nowhere close to park that wasn’t already taken by “gleaming Land Rovers and Porsches, piled three deep in the narrow lanes and stacked on pavements”.