Paxford Restaurant Guide

Owned by the nearby Donnington Brewery – a “popular, comfortable, attractive and welcoming” roadside inn with five bedrooms and a rangy garden in a “very picturesque” setting. The classic British cooking features a generous dose of grilled meats and game. While, for the odd reporter, it’s “OK but not exceptional”, for fans it “achieves all it sets out to do”.

“Traditional pub/small country hotel with nice touches”, nine miles south of Stratford, where the northern Cotswolds intersects with Shakespeare – you’ll find “very good local real ales plus superior pub grub, friendly staff and good-value set lunches”. It’s owned by journalist Andrew Knight, who ran both the Telegraph and Times newspaper groups.

“Really deserves to be up there with the best” – a “very attractive” restaurant-with-five-flashy-rooms set in Georgian premises, and luring diners to this quaint market town betwixt Stratford-upon-Avon and Chipping Norton. There’s considerable flair to the British cooking (they offer à la carte or a tasting menu), which nods to honest produce like trout and quail.

Honeyed stone on the outside and Scandi-chic on the interior characterise the scene at this Cotswold retreat – a 17th-century manor house within 60 acres which opened in September 2025 – too late for any feedback in our annual diners’ poll. TS Eliot sojourned here in days gone by – if he visited now he could toy with some of the straightforward but competitively priced options on the focused menu, which includes the likes of Kedgeree Arancini, Wood-fired Octopus, and Briar Hill Farm Lamb.

In a striking 17th-century, timber-framed building on the high street, this “light and airy” family-run venture “feels like being on holiday” thanks to its “brilliant Italian food”; wood-fired pizzas and homemade pastas grace the “varied” menu, which is also “good value” (there’s a two-course set for £18.95, and three courses rack in at a bargainous £22.95).