Sedgefield Restaurant Guide

“Always buzzing”, this “family-run” fixture is very consistently praised in reports for its “great pizza menu” while also offering British and international classics. (After two decades, the owner-operators put it up for sale in summer 2024.)

2023 Review: “Great pizza menu served by lovely people” remains the verdict on this award-winning pizza-stop, whose numerous accolades and certifications promise a Neapolitan experience through and through: your selection is cooked at 400 degrees and will be ready in 90 seconds!

“Outstanding” former coaching inn with a “great atmosphere” and versatile appeal – whether for a “cosy romantic evening around the log fire; at a beautiful table for two upstairs in the window”; for a “family get-together”; or for “a business meeting in one of the private dining rooms”. Built in the 1400s, it was relaunched by the owners in 2008, with a “tastefully decorated dining room”, a “fantastic walled garden”, and “food of an exceptionally high standard”, all with “great set-price menus available”.

2023 Review: “It’s still as good as ever at Eugene and Barbara McCoy’s country pub” say fans of this destination, ten minutes from Middlesbrough. “It’s one of the few places that still hold a traditional Beaujolais Day in November and has a waiting list of people wanting to come!”

Promising feedback on this “delightful, small, and intimate” Chinese joint down a cobbled side street near the town centre: an established business that was reformatted in 2023 with Shanghai speakeasy styling: “it feels very plush and with above-average Cantonese-fusion food”.

“Very relaxed fine-dining” is hailed by early fans of this “friendly” small space, which opened on Durham’s Elvet Bridge at the end of 2024. Its formula revolves around a six-course tasting menu for £45 per person, which is “a lot of fun and a lot of care has gone into it”. But it’s not to be taken too seriously – the name of the restaurant means ‘Fuck if I know’ and a recent menu selection included ‘No Pane, No Gain’, ‘The Veal Deal’ and ‘Tirami-Who?’.

“It’s easy to see why this restaurant has been tipped as a ‘Hot Arrival’” say local fans of Jake & Laura Siddle’s ambitious two-year-old, which occupies a muted Scandi-style room in a cobbled part of the ancient city-centre by the river, “with open kitchen area” at the end. “The ambience is relaxed and the team are both welcoming and informative”. There is a lighter four-course meal available for £50 per person, but our feedback relates to the 10-course tasting menu, which fans say is “better, than some at top Michelin starred establishments, because the emphasis is on quality ingredients and flavour combinations rather than culinary theatrics”.

A “great tasting menu which changes every six weeks” delivered by staff who are “welcoming and helpful” all “at a great price” is helping dispel the image of this ancient varsity town as a culinary wasteground. Billed, when it opened, in 2022 as ‘Durham’s first tasting menu restaurant’, chef Ruari MacKay – with collaborators Gemma Robinson and Craig Lappin-Smith – raised £100,000 from crowd-funding to launch this simply decorated newcomer, in a courtyard just over the river from the ancient city centre. The aim was to ‘make tasting menus more affordable, accessible and fun’ which they do here at dinner with a six-course selection for £49 per person (three courses at lunch are £27 per person).

“Excellent Indian food” inspired by the regional cuisines of the subcontinent and with “wonderful signature dishes” is presented in the dining room of Farnley Tower, a guesthouse hotel in a characterful Victorian mansion near the city centre.

From the owners of Coarse – and named for their five year old daughter – this casual sibling opened in mid 2024 near the new bus station on a site that was formerly a coffee shop called Bean Social. Feedback is still too limited for a rating, but all of it is enthusiastic – if you want an on-trend small plates meal (or brunch) in this still under-served city, this is a good bet.

James Close shut the Raby Hunt to become culinary director of this five-star property. Completion of a new 584 square metre pavilion with 36 covers is anticipated in the second half of 2026, but while you are waiting, you can sample his cuisine at various pop-ups around the resort, as well as at Café Terra. Reports on the temporary operation say it can seem “expensive in what is a temporary stop-gap location” with food that’s “very good, but not to Raby Hunt levels and difficult to justify at these prices and in this setting (but I expect the new purpose-built restaurant will be fantastic and reach the culinary hit lists)”.