Park Gate Restaurant Guide

This “lovely family-run hotel” in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Vale of the little dairies’ is “personal and exquisite” – host Richard Prideaux-Brune inherited the family‘s Jacobean manor at the age of 21, opening it as a restaurant with rooms with his wife Alison 51 years ago, brother Brian in the kitchen and daughter Katharine these days part of the team. The “excellent” dinner menu is notably “affordable” at £45 per person for two courses and £55 per person for three, “complemented by wines at sensible prices”. Top Tip – don’t forget to pronounce the B in ‘Plumber’.

Michael Trawicki’s “popular thatched pub” serves particularly “good pub food in a nice sunny dining room” and there’s also a beautiful garden in summer. It’s not an especially ‘foodie’ operation but attracts consistent praise in our annual diners’ poll as one of the area’s better eateries.

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.

“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.

“Big meals” made from prime British ingredients cooked in classical French style, “friendly staff” and a “lovely, sensibly priced wine list” is the winning recipe at ex-Four Seasons exec chef Jamie Jones’s restaurant with rooms – a spacious (much extended) former shepherd’s cottage in the heart of Hardy country (the village of Lower Bockhampton is called Mellstock in ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’). This may be about to be a case of ‘all change’, however – the business was put on the market in 2024 as a going concern.

All diners award high ratings this year to Red Carnation Group’s classic country house hotel, which enjoys a fine countryside situation set in 400 acres. Its most ardent fans claim the contemporary cuisine in its rather old-fashioned looking dining room is “as good as at many Michelin star places” and it’s certainly very consistently well-rated this year in our annual diners’ poll.

“The Acorn Inn is a must-visit” – a “charming” and “atmospheric” spot immortalised in Hardy’s ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ as the ‘The Sow and Acorn’, and whose dining room turns out “exceptional food that celebrates the best of local Dorset produce”, balancing “hearty classics and creative dishes”. The “burgers are highly sought after”, but “guests particularly love the Exmoor venison and line-caught cod, alongside the indulgent desserts” – and there are “great local beers” to accompany the “beyond average pub fayre”. The venue is linked to the nearby Summer Lodge Hotel, both being part of the Red Carnation hotel group.

2022 Review: With no social media presence as yet, and a hard-to-find name (lots of search results for Carluccio's – not helped by the fact that this location used to be one, and even repurposes the sign), we are presuming that Luciano Pierre White is relying on word of mouth – and his famous name – to get punters into his first solo restaurant. He's worked with Pierre Koffmann and the Adria brothers according to press quotes, and his father credits him with a great work ethic. An early-doors visit from a reporter noted it to be ‘very promising’ and another thought ‘the food’s great and the service will only improve’.

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.

2023 Review: This “brilliant thatched country pub” has “lots of game dishes” on its menu – appropriately enough for a traditional establishment in the historical hunting landscape of Cranborne Chase. “Vegetarians and vegans are well provided for” too, while there’s also a “well-stocked bar with local ales and a reasonably priced wine list”.

“The stunning building” – a school built in 1854 that looks like a church – underpins the appeal of this bar-restaurant deep in the West Country (part of the swish rural group incorporating The Woodspeen). Reports lacked the inconsistency of last year’s feedback, with stronger all-round praise for its high quality, if rather ambitiously priced, fare.

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).

Guy Ritchie’s new smokehouse restaurant at Compton Abbas Airfield took flight in May 2025 (too late for any survey feedback), blending Texas-style BBQ (e.g. oak-smoked pork belly, Smokehouse nachos, and a slow-braised jackfruit burger) with views of the 1960s airfield and the Dorset countryside (it’s a sibling to his Fitzrovia pub, Lore of the Land). All this, plus draught beers, ales, and ciders from local breweries, including ‘Altitude’ lager, created in-house.

2022 Review: “An offshoot of (well-known local staple) Yalbury Cottage, run and managed by the same team”, also in tandem with an artisanal French pastry chef – and located in the unusual setting of an auction house. “Lunches are interesting and well presented”, while “the evening sessions are more adventurous and the Mexican ones especially good”.