Powys Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: In Spring 2022, Andrew Birch (erstwhile head chef of London’s Savoy Grill) and his wife Rachel relaunched this well-known coaching inn, part of a small scenic town in rural Powys. The main option is a seven-course tasting menu (with a vegetarian alternative), but there’s also a simpler lunch. No feedback as yet in our annual diners’ poll.

2024 Review: This well-known border-country inn is “still one of the best places to eat in the area”, with “well prepared and flavoursome food”. Long-time regulars miss Steve & Nicola Reynolds, who retired a couple of years ago, but the new management team of chef Tom Tudor and his partner Vittoria Turolla, FOH, have settled in well and the place is now “performing better again”.

2022 Review: Kerry Huber serves “wonderful ‘posh nosh’ meals” in her home, a beautiful old black-and-white house full of atmosphere – “highly recommended” and very good value at £35 for seven courses, served ‘supper-club’ style. Top Tip: guests rave about the signature twice-cooked soufflé.

2023 Review: This “fab former stately home” set in “beautiful grounds” in the Welsh countryside was restored by Laura Ashley co-founder Sir Bernard Ashley. Known for its “exceptional food”, it has lost two highly regarded head chefs in recent years, Nick Brodie and Sam Bowser, but still achieves strong ratings across the board.

2022 Review: This “busy” seventeenth-century inn is appreciated for its “simple, tasty, well-executed dishes” of “good honest food”.

It has a Michelin Green Star for its excellence in sustainability, but Charmaine & Mark McHugo’s ‘Dining & Bottle Shop’ in the centre of town, attracted only limited feedback in our annual diners’ poll this year regarding its focused menu with many items sourced from the kitchen garden. Such as we have, though, says results are “consistently excellent” and the overall style “very personable and welcoming”.

“A secluded gem where culinary delights await in the ancient dining room” – close to Ludlow but “not easy to find down a winding country lane through the estate” – Willem & Pippa Vlok’s restaurant-with-rooms offers a “consistently excellent” hyper-local menu from former MasterChef: The Professionals finalist Nick Bennett, staff that are “friendly, efficient and knowledgeable”, and “wooden-beamed bedrooms offer rest from the weary routines of everyday life”. Price-wise, it’s “a bargain for cooking of the quality, emphatically so by London standards”.

A “warm, friendly atmosphere and good-quality food” have made this comfortable gastropub-with-rooms on the edge of the Brecon Beacons a “favourite” countryside retreat for many diners over the past 25 years. New head chef Gwenann Davies presides over a seasonal menu with just half a dozen or so choices of starters and mains. It’s the flagship of Charles & Edmund Inkin’s Eatdrinksleep group, which also comprises the Gurnard’s Head and the Old Coastguard in Cornwall.