Langport Restaurant Guide

Nicholas Balfe – who honed his art working at hip London venues like St John, Rochelle Canteen and Moro – decamped to this rural village in 2021, and has transformed a bank into a “charming” modernist dining room where you can opt to sit at the chef’s counter for added drama. The “terrific value lunch” (£35 for three courses) remains a highlight of the “interesting and inventive menu”, with added charms including the “convivial atmosphere” and beautiful rooms available if you wish to stay overnight. Reflecting the restaurant’s focus on seasonality, Balfe leads occasional foraging experiences in the fields and woodlands around the venue.

This “lovely little neighbourhood restaurant tucked away in a sort of arcade” is “head and shoulders above the competition in the culinary desert of Taunton” and has been “reliably excellent over many years”, charming its legion of devotees by means of an “always interesting menu (fantastic daily specials to boot)” and a “very professional and likeable team” led by chef Richard Guest and FOH Cedric Chirrosel, the founders back in 2011. Top Tip – “a mainly game-led seasonal menu before Christmas was particularly good, without being overly festive in an Xmassy way”.

2024 Review: This “newly refurbished family-owned pub with rooms” – originally a mid-Victorian cider house – in a “lovely village” near Sherborne, makes for a “perfect stop-over en route to Devon or Cornwall”, with “agreeable service” and “reliable food including interesting fish dishes”. Co-owner Doune Mackenzie-Francis has a foodie background as a former marketing manager for Leith’s School of Food & WIne.

“Always a treat to eat” at Adam & Martine Fellows’ “friendly, very enjoyable fish-oriented restaurant” – an established feature of the area for over 20 years which moved to this smartly decorated site in 2022, where they also run a cookery school. Fans “love being able to see what’s happening in the open plan kitchen”, say the food “melts in the mouth” and “a definite plus is that every course comes with its own vegetables… it’s a pet hate when they are extra!”

“A remarkable place, not even in the centre of a country town” – a converted pub-with-rooms where Australian husband-and-wife team Paul & Tracey Merrony run the show, “she front of house, him in the kitchen”. “A wide range of French-style classic dishes are chalked up on the board” and you’ll find “different variations on these dishes when you visit again”. The “top quality ingredients, deliciously cooked” offer “extraordinary value for money at £28.50 for three substantial courses. What’s not to like…” – indeed a couple of best meals of the year are reported here.

2024 Review: “Great modern European food using locally sourced ingredients at very reasonable prices” again wins praise for this local fixture. Chef-patron Sasha Matkevich grew up in south Russia but has lived in England for 30 years.

“Everything a country pub should be” on the edge of the Somerset Levels – locally born chef Alasdair Clifford (ex-Chez Bruce and Harwood Arms) serves “excellent and interesting variations on well-liked dishes” in the dining room, there’s a “friendly reception” from his wife Victoria Collins, and a “separate (dog-friendly) bar” that still feels appropriately pubby. They also run a bakery in an old cider barn on the farm next door, and offer three different accommodation options.

2023 Review: This 500-year-old building in a “beautiful part of Somerset” now houses an “excellent dining pub” that “serves up top-class modern British dishes using brilliant local ingredients”. Chef Olly Jackson and his manager wife Rebecca “used to run the nearby and sadly missed Langford Fivehead hotel”.

The 17th-century coaching inn exterior belies Ayesha Kalai’s decidedly different outfit (but then again it does exotically draw its name from the tarot deck, in a nod to its mystical Glastonbury setting). On the menu, “interesting Middle Eastern food” served in small-plates style (including “wonderful [laver]bread” falafel or hogget and apricot merguez). Playfulness is the order of the day at this outfit, overseen by ‘kitchen mumma’ (as she calls herself on the website) Ayesha and team.

2024 Review: As the name suggests, “a great, intimate atmosphere” is found at this seventeenth-century village inn, which is “a cut above the usual for style and service”. Charlotte Vincent was crowned ‘pub chef of the year’ in the 2023 Great British Pub Awards – she sends out “a varied range of dishes, nearly all locally sourced and precisely cooked”, such as a bar snack of roasted marrow bone and Porlock Bay oyster with garlic butter and sourdough bread.

From “recommended for brunch with quality ingredients” to “friendly staff and very good atmosphere, but the Somerset burger was really not good!” – This new venue backed by the team from the nearby The Newt country estate hotel inspired somewhat mixed food (too limited for a rating) reviews in our annual diners’ poll, but everyone liked the general scene. They’ve spent a packet on the place, gorgeously scrubbing up the brick-walled, 1912 ‘Milk Factory’ next to Castle Cary station to create a ‘community hub’. On a November 2024 visit, The Sunday Times’s Charlotte Ivers found it akin to “the countryside designed by someone who has never left Notting Hill”.

A menu of Italian small plates confounds expectations at this traditional Grade II listed 16th-century pub opposite the Abbey, where West Country ingredients are converted into a very wide choice of pizzette and pasta (all made in-house). You are advised to order two to three dishes each. Top Tip – Menu del Giorno lunch for two at £16 per person, served for tables up to 6, available Tuesday to Friday lunchtimes, 12pm to 2pm, and on Happy Wednesdays (4th Wednesday night of the month).