Nottingham, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

Near the castle, this long-serving stalwart occupies “comfortingly clubby surroundings” (seventeenth-century Newdigate House also hosts the Nottingham Club for the city’s business and professional community) and remains “a definite favourite” that “sometimes hits five stars”. Following the trend of over a decade, the kitchen is “wildly variable: some dishes can be wonderful, others poorly conceived and lacking in flavour”.

“Mind-blowing experimental food and interesting wine pairings” continues the acclaim for Alex Bond’s “totally unique” five-year-old, which deserves the comparisons it sometimes attracts with that of his former employer, Sat Bains. It helps that it occupies an attractively converted former Victorian coach house on the Park Estate (just outside the city centre) with very atmospheric, brick-lined vaulted rooms. Tasting menus start at £95 for five courses, and there are also options for seven courses (£130) and 10 courses (£160 pairings). “Very friendly staff, who are very knowledgeable about the offering” complete the rosy picture painted in reports.

“Having wanted to visit for a long time, I was not disappointed despite the strange location!". – Amidst motorway flyovers, industrial estates, electricity pylons and the concrete banks of the River Trent, Sat & Amanda Bains’s converted motel remains one of the UK’s more offbeat gastronomic adventures and is entering its twentieth year as a flagship of Nottingham dining. Here, one of the most expensive and ambitious tasting menus is served in a “high-class” if low-key setting: “a stunning 10-course extravaganza” where regulars note “increasing use of subtle spice” and the continual introduction of “many new dishes”. For those who stay, there are “great rooms and a lovely breakfast too”. Having topped our Top 100 UK Restaurants last year, ratings slipped a fraction this year: some regulars noted (as they have at some other top places this year) both pressures on service (“I felt standards had dropped since pre-pandemic days”); and concerns over value (“I have been eating at Restaurant Sat Bains since 2006… prices nowadays are becoming astronomical”).

With its untreated oak tables, black granite surfaces and antler candelabras, chef-patron Nick Gillespie’s unusual and “very quiet” venue makes an appropriate showcase for his distinctive modern British cooking, which provided some reporters’ best meal of the year. “Staff cannot do enough for you.”

“Outstanding cooking” – “impressive yet comforting” – is on the menu at this “well-loved country house – not too formal but everything just so” in a “beautiful rural setting” in the Belvoir Valley, with local produce including game from the nearby Belvoir estate well to the fore. Opened 40 years ago by the late Imogen Skirving in her family home, the hall’s regulars have ranged from Barbara Cartland to Jools Holland – and it’s “still quirky after Imogen’s passing (RIP)”, under her granddaughter Lila.