Kelham Island, British, Modern - Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: No feedback as yet on this brave September 2020 opening – a tiny, 8-seat chef's table restaurant (all seats are at the counter) with an ever-changing and affordable tasting menu (7 courses for £30 on opening) from chef Luke Reynolds. Reports please!

“Up some stairs so a bit unassuming from the outside” – this fixture of Nether Green is a well-known Sheffield destination and once inside is “smartly-decorated with effective ambient lighting”. There was a changing of the guard in 2024, and it’s now wholly owned by co-founder and sommelier Alistair Myers with Dan Conlon as head chef. One local notes that “it’s recovered from the loss of one of the original partners and is back to its superb best” with a “very professional approach to food and service without being pretentious”. There’s a range of menus (of four, six and ten courses) – “the food is beautifully presented” and “of the highest order”.

“I have always thought that Joro was brilliant… but since the move they have gone up a level!” – “Sheffield’s favourite has moved from inner to outer city to an enormous converted mill building with accommodation, a dedicated bar and a dining room with very generous spacing around the stylish tables and open plan kitchen” that “finally does them justice”. Fans say that Luke & Stacey Sherwood’s bold venue is “quite simply a Michelin star restaurant with no stars yet!” whose “Tasting Menu Twö at £125 offers a plethora of wonderful flavours”. (There’s also a cheaper Tasting Menu Öne, for £55 per person, with limited timings and Tasting Menu Ö.5 for £75 per person available mid week and at lunchtimes). “If you want to experience the best food from an incredible team” all reports say that this place “can’t be recommended more”. Top Tip – “the soft drinks pairing is amongst the best in the country…” – “a rare thing – many such non-alcoholic matches are lazy but at Jorö… well they are masters who craft their dishes and soft drinks so that when taken together MAGIC happens”.

2022 Review: A collaboration between Sheffield cook Richard Smith, his restaurateur wife Victoria and the award-winning craft brewers Thornbridge; “creative fish dishes” feature alongside meats – all well-singed on the fancy Bertha indoor charcoal oven – and the “great location” (skirting the Peak District) makes it particularly “good for outdoor eating”.

2022 Review: This “lovely gastropub” on the Duke of Devonshire’s Chatsworth estate gets mostly positive feedback for its “good food and real ales”. There’s sometimes a perception, though, that “it falls short” of its potential: “the cooking was fair, but it could be so nice here”.

2023 Review: This “excellent seafood restaurant” was opened in 2021 by “top Sheffield fishmonger J H Mann” – an institution that opened a century earlier in Hillsborough. “Being run by a fishmonger means they have varieties way more exciting that the usual offerings, including lobster, oysters and scallops” – which means it’s “a wonderful place for fish lovers”. The retail part of the business is now based in Sharrow Vale, with a second shop in Bakewell.

2024 Review: Flo Hiller and Joe Shrewsbury’s “great, informal” small-plates restaurant, in what is a happening dining ‘hood, has wowed the likes of Marina O’Loughlin since opening in 2019; you “can see the influence of Moro”, the famously creative Clerkenwell icon, on its “exciting menu”, and bonus points for its soft drink pairings, “many homemade”. In 2023, they opened a bakery/café/essentials shop, 100m away on Sharrow Vale Road, with plans to create a laid- back extension to the main restaurant.

2023 Review: “Nice, if somewhat out-of-the-way, neighbourhood-style spot serving small plates and good wine”, outside Sheffield – a bar / kitchen and shop that started life with sell-out pop-up dinners. Its cuisine was given a strong plug by The FT in early 2022.

“In the middle of nowhere but definitely worth the journey” (even on a “very wet, very dark winter’s night”), Britain’s fifth oldest pub – formerly ‘Ye Olde Bull’s Head’, which was brought back to life by current owner Raab Dykstra-McCarthy, having fallen into disrepair in 2007. By all accounts, the 12th-century inn is a “special place for exquisite food” (“small and large plates eaten with a great view of the countryside”), and even if you go on “pie & quiz night, when pies dominate the mains”, all the cooking is “faultless”. Bonus points for the “well-spaced tables and calm atmosphere, so you can have a good conversation without having to shout”. They also have five bedrooms and a cottage if you wish to avoid a repeat of the “testing” journey by night.

Run by the present regime since 2016, this proper community pub has had a couple of renovations since, and currently offers two dedicated dining areas: the ground-floor ‘Green Room’, with its garden theme, and the more upmarket ‘The View’ upstairs. Chef Darren Milner turns out “great” seasonal countryside classics, from hearty breakfasts to Sunday roasts and proper pies – and while, if you opt for fancier fare, it can be “expensive”, it’s “worth it and very good for a special occasion”.

The “unbeatable” combination of “delicious food, good menu options and excellent service” “never disappoints” at this modern British outfit in the Peak District. Chef-patron Lee Smith grew up in nearby Mansfield and made his name cooking at Jersey restaurant Samphire before crowd-funding his debut here in 2020.