Norfolk, British, Traditional Restaurant Guide

With its “wonderful food, great art (Lucian Freud, Tracey Emin), brilliant ambience and lovely setting in a deer park”, this very “English-eccentric gastropub” is “simply the best place for a memorable experience”. Launched 15 years ago by art dealer Ivor Braka and run by ex-Hix duo Stuart & Simone Tattersall, it excels for “meat cooked to perfection over a roaring fire in a slightly surreal setting”; “just perfect on a cold winter’s day”.

“An unpretentious, well-run pub: long may it never change!” – “informal, laid-back but efficient staff”, “good gastropub food” and a “cosy ambience” make a meal here “a thoroughly relaxing and enjoyable experience”, with “the option for outside eating overlooking the salt marshes in better weather”.

This conversion of an 18th-century watermill is owned by sisters Siobhan and Caitriona (whose brother, Oliver Peyton, is the figurehead of the family’s London catering business). Reports are not super-numerous but all positive, praising its “lovely food” and – in his July 2025 review – The Times’s Giles Coren came out as a big fan, having enjoyed a setting so idyllic that “you wouldn’t have to serve such good food if you didn’t want to. You could just charge people to stand here”, but whose food more than lived up to the setting, and included a juicy pork rib eye and roasted peaches that “sounds a bit suburban, a bit 1980s, but it works beautifully”.

“Hidden away in Cromer… what a find!” – Dan Goff & Ruth Butler opened this new venture in a converted butcher’s shop in late 2024 and initial feedback, though too thin for a definitive rating, is promising on its short menu (e.g. bavette steak, grilled mackerel, gnocchi). An early reporter notes: “the food is really fantastic from a beautifully constructed compact and balanced menu, with great ingredients and wonderfully cooked – we have been back and it was even better the second time!”