Midsomer Norton Restaurant Guide

This former private home eight miles from Bath features a “restaurant with a great vibe” and a “really diverse wine list” – making it “perfect for a night away”. The famous ‘25-mile menu’ is a doddle here: the property has its own 30-acre deer park, the largest kitchen garden in the group, an orchard, a smoke house, and even its own mushroom house with a viewing window.

“There’s lots more room in the new restaurant, but it’s lost the pub feel” according to first reports on siblings Josh & Holly Eggleton’s relaunched operation: reopening after a five-year refurbishment and now billing itself as a ‘produce-led restaurant, event venue, cookery school, and kitchen garden’. Beautiful views over the eponymous valley accompany a trip to the new, 60-cover, orangery-style space. Lunch is à la carte early in the week – later and in the evenings there’s a fixed menu (which at night is £60 per person). Top Menu Tip – “Marmite carrots side dish a revelation”.

2022 Review: Opened in June 2021, this tastefully revamped old pub is the work of the Eggleton family – the team behind The Pony & Trap (now known as The Pony Chew Magna). The offering, realised by chef Jordan Meagher, “centres around proper ‘pub classics’”.

2023 Review: The “food and wine are always interesting” and are “still as good as ever” at engaging Anglo-Scottish chef Gordon Jones’s former sandwich shop on the southern edge of town. There’s “a single tasting menu available” (the only choice is whether to have 7 or 9 courses) and it comes as a complete surprise, with each dish introduced as it arrives at your table (and no vegetarian or other options).

“My favourite spot for an Asian meal in Bath” – “Noya cooks homely Vietnamese food that’s not fancy or pretentious, but boy is it good, a fantastic meal at a great price” (“I always leave with a smile on my face”). The “diminutive” host learned to cook as a seven-year-old, feeding her three younger siblings in a Hong Kong refugee camp while her parents were out at work; she now showcases her “fabulous, very authentic dishes” at this “really cosy little restaurant in a small Georgian house”. “Do book as it is very popular, and deservedly so”.

2023 Review: A “quirky and interesting” local with a “good atmosphere” serving a “creative menu, with cooking of a consistent high standard”. It makes a “fantastic pub for Sunday lunch”, with “outstanding roasts”.

A world-renowned authority on all things caffeine and three-times UK barista champion, Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood serves “the best coffee in Bath by a mile” at this “cool space” that is “out of the way of tourists but always packed”. He opened it in 2009 after encountering ‘Third Wave’ coffee culture in Melbourne, and followed up with a second branch in Leather Lane, London, two years ago.

Independent wine shop off Queen’s Square whose dining room and heated wood-framed marquee offer a “casual” setting for a rather superior small-plates menu (crab soufflé, beef shin croquettes, pan-roasted pigeon breasts, cod with pork-braised cannellini beans and chorizo, veggie options, cheese boards and desserts) to pair with vintage Burgundies or other discoveries in the fine-wine selection.

2022 Review: Taking afternoon tea in this “wonderful Georgian setting with a trio playing during the meal” – and the Roman baths next door – is to wallow in English history, with literary visitors from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens as your guides. The nibbles – “beetroot-cured smoked salmon with homemade blini”, perhaps – are a secondary consideration, “but well worth having!”.

Celebrating three decades as part of the Brownsword Hotels stable in 2024, this lavish getaway in two adjoining Georgian houses has much to love about it, from the four-acre gardens to the UK’s only L’Occitane spa. Dining options are split between the dining room, open for afternoon tea or a £98 per person three-course dinner showcasing “skilful cooking of delightful food”; and the more casual ‘Pantry & Terrace’ which also offers breakfast, brunch and lunch.

Harwood Arms co-owner Mike Robinson’s “superior steakhouse” is the fancier of two dining options in the “formal setting of a well-restored Georgian house, now hotel” (from the “modern and quirky” Indigo chain). A visit begins with cocktails in the vault-based speakeasy, before heading upstairs for a seven-course dinner during which “the star is game” – and “oh, the venison! Sourced from the chef’s local estate”, it’s “melt in the mouth” and “just brilliant”. “Good value for money” too – just “go there and enjoy a magnificent meal in this lovely city”.