Salisbury Restaurant Guide

“Wessex meets India” at this smart curry house with a longstanding fan club – “I’ve been once or twice a year for two decades and it’s always a treat: the food is unchanged, although the style is now more casual”. For many it is “a go-to meal when round the corner at the theatre, and it always rounds out a great evening”.

2022 Review: “Consistently good and authentic street food” with “lots of extras” ensure a “very different Indian experience” at Muhammed Rasheed’s five-year-old, close to the cathedral. There’s a shaded patio out the back and craft beer available.

“Recently refurbished to a very high standard”, with a “beautiful, airy restaurant and cosy bar”, this pub-with-rooms three miles from Stonehenge is part of the Great Durnford estate (owned by hedgie Ross Turner & his wife Gemma). Ex-Moor Hall chef Jordan Taylor prepares sustainable meals using “lovely local produce”, including foraged ingredients and game from the estate (although you won’t see the bird after which it is named on the menu: hunted to extinction in England by the 1830s, the great bustard has been successfully reintroduced here in the last few years).

This “lovely” red-brick gastroboozer in a New Forest village recently changed hands, and is now run by the same team as The Royal Oak at North Gorley. The menu offers British classics with a twist, and based on “really top-quality ingredients”, whether you go for the Sunday roasts or finer dining. There’s also a “garden with well-spaced tables for the summer and pleasant walks close by” – and, should you wish to overnight, you can stay in the dedicated ‘Desert Orchid’ room, which draws its name from the Grand National winner, whose former HQ, the Whitsbury Manor Stables, is just behind the building.