I'm not going to lie, a Sunday roast is one of my favourite things in the world and it annoys me when people start meddling with it. But, and it's a big but, this was until we experienced 'Wellington Sunday' at the Lygon Arms in Broadway.

I'm usually a roast beef kind of person when I'm out and a pork or chicken person when at home. I would be a beef person at home if I were more organised to go to the butchers and always struggle to find a nice joint at the supermarkets so chicken and pork it is. Although we were there for the Wellington, the Waghorne’s (a local butcher, not a type of cow) 30 day aged sirloin, beef dripping roast potatoes was still very tempting.

The dining room at The Lygon is beautiful not matter where you sit and at 2.30pm it was still relatively busy with people trickling in. I started forming a "most beautiful dining rooms in the Cotswolds" list in my head but could only think of another three as good. 

Not knowing the size of the Beef Wellington we decided to share a twice baked cheese soufflé. I'm not sure there is a better starter when it's done well, and this one was pretty good.

With just a gravy jug as company, the showpiece arrived as red as the 1st Duke of Wellington's uniform and just how we imagine Arthur Wellesley would have wanted it two centuries ago. The beef dripping roast potatoes were very good too. In a world where everyone compares a restaurant or pub roast spud to ones they have at home, these were definitely better than mine and I could have easily had another one, or two... or three. 

After another wine and anther gin it was time to leave. I'm not used to this lunchtime feeding but could definitely get used to it if it's as good as this. 

I might just book again next Sunday. 

www.lygonarmshotel.co.uk
​
​Food: 9
Service: 9
Location: 10
Price: Twice baked cheese soufflé, garden salad, £11. Scottish beef Wellington, £27

The Dormy House Hotel will be launching two new restaurant concepts opening in February. 

The Garden Room will become The Back Garden, a celebration of the finest ingredients from the Cotswolds including high-welfare rare-breed meats, veg grown in our own gardens and responsibly cultivated grains, all sourced and served in tune with the rhythms of nature.

​On top of that they are building a brand new restaurant, MO. that will offer a unique, interactive 7-course tasting-menu experience to just 12 guests at a time. They will showcase creative cooking, unexpected ingredients, forward-thinking culinary techniques, and just a hint of food theatre, again with sustainability and seasonality at centre-stage. At MO you’ll never eat the same menu twice.

For more information and to book, click HERE.

This week saw us launch out Top 50 Pubs in the Cotswolds guide. 

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to great pubs and this list was incredibly hard to complile. We hope you enjoy visiting many of these throughout the year! 

www.thecotswoldsgentleman.co.uk/top-50-pubs-in-the-cotswolds.html

We all love a deal and this offer is one not to be missed!

Use the code Cots20JAN until 31st January when you visit Holee Cow at their new home on Winchcombe Street in Cheltenham throughout January.

This offer is exclusively for The Cotswolds Gentleman readers. 

​Happy New Year and spread the word! 

Is this the perfect cocktail for Christmas morning? We think so!

The clever folk at The Cotswolds Distillery have created A Very Merry Berry which is full of flavours from the hedgerow, which dance on the bubbles of the Champagne. 

INGREDIENTS
25ml Cotswolds Distillery Hedgerow Gin
15ml fresh cranberry juice
Champagne

HOW TO CREATE
Pour measures of Hedgerow Gin and cranberry juice into a Champagne flute and top up with Champagne, gently stir and serve.

EMBELLISH
Fresh blackberries

www.cotswoldsdistillery.com/pages/winter-cocktails

If you haven't already heard, No.38 The Park is the new home of Prithvi - Cheltenham's No.1 restaurant.

No 38. The Park has always offered a boutique experience that combines the services of a hotel with a luxurious home from home feel, and now guests will be able to enjoy the fine dining and South Asian flavours that have made Prithvi hugely popular on the Cheltenham restaurant scene. 

Prithvi at No.38 will be open for dinner 7 days a week as well as for lunch on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The restaurant will seat 56 in the main dining room as well 8 in a private dining space. 

prithvirestaurant.com

Woodkraft, the latest venture from 2015 MasterChef champion Simon Wood, opened today on Regent Street in Cheltenham today. 

Offering the best seasonal and local produce, Woodkraft will be serving brunch, lunch and Sunday sharing roasts in a relaxed and informal setting. 

Their basement and first floor dining areas can be available for private hire and for exclusive use for larger groups. For exclusive hire and private events, their normal opening times do not apply.

Check them out - woodkraftcheltenham.com

Six pubs in the Cotswolds have been named in the Top 100 cosiest in Britain ​in a list compiled by the Daily Mail food and drink critics, Tom Parker Bowles and Olly Smith. 

Here are the pubs and what the pair had to say about them.

The Bell Inn, Selsey

A classic 16th-century Cotswold boozer with local ales and nearly 100 different kinds of gin. The food ranges from pub classics right through to a decent Sunday roast. If you’re staying, the breakfast is pretty splendid too.

www.thebellinnselsley.com

The Red Lion, Cricklade

A 16th-century pub with a flower-strewn façade that brews its own beer. You can’t get much more local than that. And they’re good beers too, served up in the sort of pub made to linger in all afternoon. Snack on homemade Scotch eggs and pasties, or get stuck into Wiltshire ham and free-range fried eggs.

www.theredlioncricklade.co.uk

The Woolpack, Slad

This pub has one of the prettiest views in Britain, looking over the luscious Gloucestershire valley made famous by Laurie Lee in Cider With Rosie. This was his boozer too, and it’s a classic. There’s a piano that springs into action most nights, as well as a small bar, a fire and really excellent food. 

thewoolpackslad.com

The Ebrington Arms, Ebrington

With its own Yubby beer, snug luxuriant rooms to stay in and dishes that deliver endless satisfaction, it’s hard to leave this country gem once you step through the door. Beams, firelight, food that celebrates local glory and brilliantly brewed beer – this is among the very best of British pubs.

www.theebringtonarms.co.uk

Old Green Tree, Bath

Get to this tiny beer paradise early to grab a seat by the fire – it’s small but perfectly formed. Expect wood panelling and a beer selection to thrill. Try the roast beef sandwich and enjoy conversing with whoever you sit nearest. Blissfully free of distractions, this place is magic in miniature.

thegoodpubguide.co.uk

The Royal Oak, Whatcote

Very much a local pub, albeit a rather smart one. But chef owner Richard Craven is one hell of a chef. Expect game in season, from roe deer tartare to pheasant with snails. Home-made bread comes with dripping butter, and there’s excellent fish too.

www.theroyaloakwhatcote.co.uk

For the full list, visit www.dailymail.co.uk

One of Cheltenham's finest Indian restaurants is relocating. 

Prithvi, ranked #1 restaurant in Cheltenham, is moving to No.38 The Park from December 4th 2018 from their current Bath Road residence.

Their new address is 38 Evesham Rd, GL52 2AH. 

L'anatra Italian Kitchen in Bourton on the Water has launched Tapas Tuesdays. 

Enjoy 2 courses and 1 drink for £15,  4 courses and 2 drinks for £25 or choose from the menu. 

The feasting night takes place all day (12pm - 9pm) every Tuesday. 

www.chesterhousehotel.com/italian-kitchen

Today saw the soft launch of The Ox Barn at Thyme,  a 56-seater destination restaurant under the direction of Head Chef, Charlie Hibbert. 

Rooted in a passion for the local land, food and entertaining, the carefully curated menus are farm-based
and plant-inspired. His team and the gardeners at Thyme will work together to select and grow the fruits,
vegetables and herbs used to create his Modern British Countryside fare. Signature dishes include: Leeks
with Fried Wiltshire Truffled Egg, Roast Southrop Lamb with Braised Beans and Salsa Verde and Hazelnut
Cake with Poached Pears and Cream – all sourced within just metres of the kitchens. As well as a traditional
à la carte menu, the evenings will also play host to a set menu with optional wine-pairing.

The nineteenth century former oxen house is the newest addition to the family of meticulously restored
farm buildings. A state-of-the-art piece of agricultural architecture at its conception, Caryn Hibbert
worked meticulously to preserve the soaring archways and original Cotswold stone rubble walls, to now
house a modern, dining destination - including a contemporary bar and seven and a half metre Charvet
open kitchen - to allow for an authentic, heritage-rich dining experience, enabled by today’s best culinary
technologies.

The Ox Barn will open on Wednesday evenings for dinner from 6pm – 10.30pm and open all day Thursday
to Saturday serving lunch from 12pm – 3pm and dinner from 6pm – 10.30pm. Brunch will also be served
from 8am – 4pm on Sundays.

The soft launch runs from 16th November - 9th December​

www.thyme.co.uk/dining/ox-barn

The Cotswolds Distillery has launched its latest product, a 60.9% "Founder's Choice" cask strength single malt whisky comes from distillery founder Dan's favourite casks: their shaved, toasted and recharred American Oak red wine barriques.

These uniquely active casks were developed by the diestilleris' good friend, the late Dr Jim Swan, to give a rich and intense maturation to our fruity new make spirit. The casks draw the absolute best from the wood and provide the perfect conditions for maturing whisky, giving a balance and depth of flavour that would normally be associated with much older whiskies.

Tasting notes: Rich and full-flavoured: dark chocolate, cherries & dried figs, oak spice.

www.cotswoldsdistillery.com

Christmas has come early to Cheltenham with two new arrivals. 

The Botanist, a "secret garden" of food, drink, live music, botanical cocktails, craft beers and ales, Champagne and wine and food inspired by the deli, rotisserie and BBQ, will be opening in The Brewery on December 3rd.

thebotanist.uk.com/locations/cheltenham

Meanwhile, Masterchef champion Simon Wood is launching a brand new Artisan Eatery on Regent Street. A year on from launching his first fine dining restaurant WOOD Manchester, Woodkraft will be a more casual with a menu that will include brunch and breakfast dishes, Sunday roasts to share​.

woodkraftcheltenham.com

Cheltenham was once flooded with burger restaurants. They were literally popping up on every corner. However, within a year, most of them have disappeared. Real Burger has gone. Moody's lasted about two months, sadly it was far too big and in the wrong place and has returned to being The Bierkeller. The Tavern changed their menu for the umpteenth time and moved away from a full American diner menu to a more grown up offering which is really good. Five Guys arrived and will do alright as it's in The Brewery, but it's massively overrated which leaves us just two places, The Bottle of Sauce and Holee Cow. 

The latter opened in 2017 and like most new places, I usually give them a few weeks to settle in before trying them. I never intended to leave it a year. It's in quite a good spot right next to Superdry and near the highly controversial Boots Corner and the incredibly new tacky artificial grass outside Starbucks. What's that about?

The interior is stripped back industrial with exposed brick and wood walls. There's a mix of tables, chairs stools and a long sofa down one f the walls. Hanging bulbs light the place nicely but very much like the menu, it isn't over complicated. 

On the back of your paper place mat you will find  six burgers, eight sides with a couple of monthly specials on a board on the wall. You can double up on each burger if you're that way inclined. The Holee Cow is the house burger, then you have Smokey Bacon & Cheese which is self explanatory, P.I.T.M (Piggy in the Middle) with smoked pulled pork, The Lamburghini, yep you've got it, a lamb kofte patty, The Spicy Clucker, a buttermilk marinated & dredged chicken breast with buffalo hot sauce and their vegetarian option The Bean Bag. All (as singles) are £9 or under and all the ones with a beef patty contains locally sourced West Gloucestershire beef. 

We both chose the Smokey Bacon and cheese (one single and one double) with a side of both Truffle Cheese fries and Loaded Pulled Pork and Jalapeño sweet potato fries. Bacon Cheese Fries, Macaroni Cheese Bites and Chicken Wings are also available. 

The brioche buns were lightly toasted, cheese was dripping out over the pattys and the bacon was properly crispy and as smokey as described. The fries were both superb with generous amounts of toppings. I can't remember lunch ever tasting so good. 

It's like survival of the fittest for burger restaurants in Cheltenham and these guys are in fine physical shape. Find me a better burger in town... I'll wait. 

www.holeecowburgers.co.uk

Today marks the start of Seafood Week and where better to spend at the brilliant Hook at The Fish Hotel. 

To mark the event, they have created the Ultimate Seafood Platter to share as well as eight awesome daily specials. 

​Check out how they're celebrating below or visit www.thefishhotel.co.uk/eat/hook-by-martin-burge. If you are yet to visit Hook then we highly recommend booking!

Kuba Winkowski, head chef at the Feathered Nest in Nether Westcote, has been crowned the Craft Guild’s National Chef of the Year at The Restaurant Show at Olympia in London.

Following in the footsteps of some of the industry's biggest names such as Gordon Ramsay, Winkowski wowed the judges with his Lobster starter, Yorkshire grouse main and  sticky toffee with lemon, clotted cream dessert. 

​The award, judged by many of the UK's top chefs including Tom Kerridge and Clare Smyth, was based on theirindividual performance on the day, as they create their three-course menu in two hours in front of a live audience. 

www.thefeatherednestinn.co.uk

The final 25 restaurants in The Times' Critics Top 100 have been announced this morning and three more from the Cotswolds have made the list. 

The list sees critics Marina O’Loughlin and Giles Coren choosing their favourites from all over the UK. 

The Bell at Sapperton
Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Cracking pub in a proper quiet little Gloucestershire village. Been going on and off for years. Used to love picnics on a rug in the front garden, but they have tables now (posh!). Most recently thrilled by a burrata and heritage-tomato salad, flat-iron chimichurri chicken, top-flight kids’ burgers and pints of Pliny the Elderflower. Get it? Pliny the . . . oh, go away. 
bellsapperton.co.uk
GC

You might have seen in this weekend's edition of The Times where critics Giles Coren and Marina O’Loughlin chose their top 100 eating spots in the UK. 

Four of Giles' choices are right here in the Cotswolds and we have listed them below with the extract from The Times.
​

​The Hare, Milton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire
Lovely pub where the star is the daily changing fish board, from which I’ve had excellent gravlax of Scottish salmon with roasted beetroot and horseradish crème fraîche, brilliantly crisp and clean monkfish cheeks breaded and deep-fried with a marvellous tartare sauce, and a stunningly good fillet of black bream, huge, crisped on the skin side, perfectly sweet and moist, on top of a big tangle of crab linguine. It could easily have fed two and at £16.50 puts London portions to shame.
themiltonhare.co.uk
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The Bell Inn, Langford, Oxfordshire
Best little food pub in the world? Probably. They put a pizza oven in mostly for the pizza, but blackened, crackling flatbread running with melty marrowfat and scattered with parsley fair blew me away — and when I rolled it up around some slices of the exquisite aged roasted sirloin and drizzled over it some dark, sticky gravy, I was in actual heaven. Walk it off in the graveyard next door — there’s an 8th-century rood relief on which the Christ appears to have enjoyed his lunch so much, his head has fallen off 
thebelllangford.com
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Russell’s Fish and Chips, Broadway, Worcestershire
Call it twee, gentrified, whatever words you feel the need to use when denigrating a rural market town that has decided not to be depressing and horrid, but I like Broadway. And this excellent modern chip shop is one of the best things in it. There are restrained quantities of jolly nautical tat, blackboards revealing daily specials and a separate board that announced, “The potatoes we are chipping are marfona” — not a variety I know, but I am quite certain that anywhere offering to name your chip potato variety will probably feed you very nicely. And it did. This is absolutely top-quality fish and chips, with haddock and cod offered, as well as plaice either breaded or grilled, whole tail scampi, fish cakes or fish finger sandwich with fantastic chips (dry, firm, nutty), a paper pot of good tartare, smashed peas and a lemon wedge. A big old-school prawn cocktail for £4.95 was also beautifully done.
russellsfishandchips.co.uk
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With summer now leaving us for another year, some of you are probably already craving a bit of après-ski. Well guess what?, you can now enjoy a little bit of Courchevel in the Cotswolds!

From 12th November to 21st December, The Dormy House in Broadway have created 'Piste at The Potting Shed", a new pop-up Alpine dining cabin. 

Within its wooden walls, groups of up to 30 can feast on three courses of authentic Swiss flavours – including a classic cheese fondue and roast pork loin with rösti and a hot G&T on arrival, as well as their own dedicated bar and a music system. 

Check out www.dormyhouse.co.uk/occasions/piste-at-the-potting-shed for more information and to book!

​‘On the final day of 2017, I had not just the best mouthful of the year, but the best mouthful of my life’ claimed Giles Coren of a pub that had only been back open for five weeks after a couple of years in the wilderness. It was high praise indeed and something that appears on flyers on each table, but was also a lot of pressure for the new bosses Tom Noest and Peter Creed who's covers grew from twenty a night to over sixty with visitors looking for their 'mouthful of a lifetime'. 

The pub is small and snug with painted walls, exposed beams and stone, mismatched art and furniture and flagstones throughout. We headed to the bar for a pre-dinner drink and discovered Wood Brothers Gin for the first time, created by brothers Ed and Charlie on a farm just down the road. We sat at a barrel that doubles as a table and enjoyed some Padron Peppers and Rock Salt before moving into the dining room. 

The menu mixes modern and classic with simple and seasonal and includes an abundance of dishes large and small. The beautifully blistered garlic, parsley and bone marrow flat bread is delivered straight from the pizza oven, that you catch a glimpse of every time the kitchen door opens, is a must and is perfect for sharing. This was followed by Salt Cod Fritters and Buttermilk Fried Chicken to officially start although we had definitely started two courses ago. Both were served with aioli, the latter with a choice of garlic or chilli. We opted for chilli which generated a kick of heat in every bite.

The mains soon followed (Lamb Neck Fillet and Rainbow Chard and the Cheese Burger and fries) along with the extensive wine list that was heavily French and European with the addition of a few from the New World, a red, two whites and a sparkling from the Poulton Hill Estate that's just 20 minutes away and one from Lebanon. While she opted for a large glass of red which arrived in a carafe, I went for Bobby's Beer that was on tap behind the bar. 

I had had my eye on the Lamb Neck Fillet while looking at the sample menu a few days in advance of our visit. It didn't disappoint, in fact, it was possibly the best dish I have eaten this year. The pink tender meat with an incredible salty crumb exploding with garlic and anchovy and the beautifully cooked chard blew me away. A dish you would expect to find at over £20 in most other places was just £14. The side of mash I ordered worked very well too. The Cheese Burger was recommended by Pete. A meal once looked upon as dull and pointless is now a mainstay on every good menu. The meat in this one perfectly cooked, the sauce was similar to what you might find in a Big Mac (completely intentional as Pete's favourite burger) yet nicer and it arrived under an avalanche of fries. 

There wasn't enough room for pudding but it was hard to resist the Chocolate Nemesis. There were Maldon Salt flakes sprinkled on top and crème fraîche on the side. It was as rich as its name suggests and however much you will try not finish it, the saltiness and sweetness will make sure you do. 

The pub has only been open for 10 months but you would never know it. They have just finished eight stylish newly renovated rooms, all with king size double beds and en-suite walk in showers and again you will be shocked at the prices that start from just over £70 a night B&B. Their ethos is all about offering people good food, good wine, good beer and a good experience and they do it in droves. The manner in which they cater for everyone; young and old, local and further afield and deliver it with such quality, ease and value is simply outstanding. 

www.thebelllangford.com