Thame, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: “The team is small but work incredibly hard to create beautifully presented dishes that always hit the spot” at this “lovely pub” between the Chilterns and the Cotswolds, where Matt Gill’s cuisine provides “excellent food” from an à la carte menu that, while “rustic”, bears no relation to pub grub.

2022 Review: This rural pub (complete with beams and roaring fire, and also accommodation) in a lovely Buckinghamshire village still achieves solid ratings, and – notwithstanding gripes from the occasional reporter about its takeover by Oakman Inns in late 2019 – most feedback rates the food as “very good”.

2022 Review: You can eat like a Rothschild at this gastropub on the Waddeston estate, dining on meat from the estate’s farms and vegetables from Baron Rothschild’s walled garden at Eythrope. The pub serves “really excellent food” and is set in “pleasant countryside”, with profits going to support the historic Waddesdon Manor, now owned by the National Trust while the Baron retains the estate. There is also afternoon ‘teapas’ – a selection of savoury small plates and more traditional scones and cakes.

2023 Review: “Foraged food prepared over a fire: unbeatable?” – Nick Mash’s higgledy-piggledy village inn is “an absolute treasure of a place”, with “really interesting, special cooking” on a purpose-built wood-fired grill that helps achieve outstanding results. It’s “well worth the trip” to the Chilterns, “(and the beautiful rooms mean it’s worth the stay, too)”. We’ve rated it in the hope that it can maintain the high standards set by former chef Jon Parry, who departed in mid-2022 after five years at the helm.

2022 Review: Despite its weird and wonderful decor, this lavishly decked out hotel not far from Oxford – a fixture of the area for over a quarter of a century – attracts relatively little feedback nowadays. It’s all still positive though, especially when it comes to the Thai dining room (there’s also a more traditional, British one). Service is “very engaged” and the classic twelve-dish sharing menu “well presented and flavoured food that reflects the cuisine”, without being “touristy”.

2023 Review: Chef-patron Olivier Bouet, who had presented “excellent rustic French cuisine” at this Chilterns village gastropub for five years, recently moved on, and the new owners reopened in July 2022, announcing their plans for an ‘eclectic modern British menu with South African influence and popular grill favourites. Every item on the menu will be made on the premises’. It’s a big change of style, hence for the time being we’ve left it unrated.

“Definitely a good choice if you’re in the area” – i.e. just five miles from the dreaming spires of Oxford – this “very comfortable country pub” boasts one of the best gardens in these parts and is particularly appealing come summer. Some feel the menu is “limited” and “relatively expensive”, albeit “generally good with some unusual dishes”, much local sourcing, and a fair selection of veggie-friendly options.

Mike & Imogen North’s thatched inn set deep in the Oxfordshire countryside is the epitome of a “very good gastropub”, praised for its “superb food, attentive and discreet staff and lovely surroundings”. They do serve ‘Pub Classics’ as well as Sunday Lunch, but where it really comes into its own is in the multi-course meals that have established it as a regular feature in the Harden’s Top 100 Best UK Restaurants listing.

This “big old pub with a jolly, slightly bohemian atmosphere” is a well-known “gastro-pub (with the emphasis on gastro)”. It achieves solid and still-plentiful support in our annual diners’ poll, despite a feeling that “the food falls well short of the standards at its London siblings, Anchor & Hope and Canton Arms”. Top Menu Tip – “the suet crust steak-and-ale pie to share is a lovely, lovely thing”.

“Lively and convenient venue”, “well-placed in the centre of Oxford” and serving brasserie fare in the “attractive surroundings” of the Old Bank Hotel. Ratings here are often dragged down by the odd report of “variable” results – the “good-value set lunch menu” goes down best with reporters and helps make it a popular choice for business lunchers as well as loving parents with their bookish offspring.

“Rightly an Oxford institution”, this self-service café with a “student vibe” is a “go-to place for a good-value wholesome brunch in a buzzing atmosphere”; sit inside on trestle tables or “outside in the sun, surrounded by the architecture that makes Oxford famous”, as you enjoy “fab cake” and “tempting” mains, with a “great choice from vegan to Asian curries and lovely cakes”. Fans are “glad to see it has survived” thus far – indeed some 15,500 of them signed up to save the venue, which remains at the heart of an eviction dispute between café owner Will Pouget, and the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, where it sits, and whose landlord wants to create a larger social enterprise in the space; having already been adjourned in April 2025 due to the complexity of determining if the land is consecrated (the pivotal point), the case was listed to recommence at the High Court shortly before we went to press.

This “calm and pleasantly traditional” bistro in a sidestreet close to the city centre “never seems to disappoint”, with its combination of “charming, professional service, great wine and really excellent food” – “set lunch is remarkably good value at £21.50 for 3 courses” (main courses are mostly £20-30 each). Top Menu Tip – “try the Lobster Bisque”.

A meal at this “great location on the roof of the Ashmolean” makes the perfect culmination of a mooch around the museum (or a visit in its own right) – but it can seem a little “mediocre unless you’re outside on the terrace”.

A substantial 17th-century parsonage in the city centre, now a plush boutique hotel with a “charming atmosphere and well-chosen art on the walls”. Its Grill is “an excellent all-rounder with a good choice of well-executed dishes”. Afternoon tea is also on the agenda, and “one set tea is quite enough to share between two with an extra pot of tea added”.

Humbly billed on its website as ‘Oxford’s Most Beautiful Restaurant’, this former Victorian florists’ – just outside the city-centre as you head north – has a gorgeous greenhouse-style interior and has been packed out for four decades now. Feedback on its Mediterranean cuisine, however, is perennially patchy and indifferent and this year is no exception.

2023 Review: This “picturesque riverside venue” on Oxford’s Osney Island (which opened in 1871 as The Waterman) is notable for its “laid-back but beautifully presented vegetarian food, full of flavours from a varied and interesting menu”. “I’m not a vegetarian myself but most definitely hope to be back”. Top Tip – “the whipped goats’ cheese”.