The UK's Best Restaurants with Rooms

Top restaurant with rooms in the Lake District

Tuesday, 16, Jun 2009 01:12

After a decadent dinner and several glasses of wine, sometimes all you want to do is clamber straight into bed and relax rather than having to start contemplating a long journey home.

Here Laura Caplin takes a look at a handful of the UK's best restaurants with rooms for travelbite.co.uk.

From extravagant fine dining to pubs serving food that would put your local gastropub to shame, we hope these suggestions will give you some inspiration on where to stay for some great food and a great night's sleep.

The Lords of the Manor, Gloucestershire

Summon up in your mind's eye a stereotypical image of the Cotswolds - daffodils lining the roadside, ducks lazily paddling down a stream and the golden stone of an old rectory just peaking through the woodland.

Here, in the unfeasibly pretty village of Upper Slaughter, this is the reality. Set in eight acres of parkland and garden, the 17th Century Lords of the Manor continues to dazzle once you make it past the grand exterior.

The staff are all friendly, knowledgeable and welcoming. The bedrooms are luxurious and the beds supremely comfortable. But it is the dining room which takes centre-stage here.

Awarded its first Michelin star this year, Matt Weedon is the chef at the helm and his kitchen serves up plate after plate of truly outstanding fare.

Highlights include perfectly cooked rib of Cotswold Longhorn beef with Hereford snails, a tasting plate of rabbit and an exquisite goat's cheese mousse with pain d'epices, beetroot sorbet, candied walnuts and truffle honey.

Dinner costs £49, although you may end up spending substantially more once you've taken a look at the extensive wine-list. Fortunately, fantastic French sommelier Fabrice Bouffant is on hand to offer expert advice to even the most inexperienced oenophile.

The Zetter, London

Restaurant manager Oliver Williams reckons the secret to a good restaurant with rooms is to do both properly - and the Zetter certainly does it with style.

Each of the fifty-nine rooms would be right at home in downtown Manhattan, with mood lighting, Aveda toiletries and a 4,000-track music system, but the view from the window out onto St John's Square is unmistakeably uptown London.

As is dinner, full of fresh ingredients and potent combinations: wild garlic soup, artichoke and chilli panzzotti and a killer banana ice-cream. The suave cocktail crowd milling downstairs don't realise they're missing out on Clerkenwell's best-kept secret, right above their heads.

Rooms start at £170 and it is worth checking the website for special offers and weekend deals.

L'enclume, Cumbria

The village of Cartmel in the heart of the Lake District is not only the home of the famous sticky toffee pudding that bears its name, but also to the famous restaurant with rooms, L'Enlcume.

Twelve individually styled, elegant rooms are set around an old stone farmhouse which houses the restaurant. This is one for more adventurous foodies as chef and owner Simon Rogan's ambitious cooking takes familiar ingredients and flavours and combines them in increasingly unexpected ways.

Take your pick of one of three tasting menus, ranging from eleven to seventeen courses and costing between £55 and £95. Prepare your tastebuds for pickled onion turkish delight served with foie gras ice cream, an egg yolk syringed into hot and sour soup, and monkfish cheeks with juniper butter.

Rogan's innovative use of high-quality, fresh ingredients results in visually stunning and beautifully tasting compositions.

The Hand & Flowers, Buckinghamshire

If you're after somewhere less extravagant and formal but still want delicious fare, head to Marlow's "Hand and Flowers".

Tom and Beth Kerridge took on the task of transforming this pub in 2005 and in under a year bagged themselves a Michelin star, 'Buckinghamshire Newcomer of the Year' in the Good Food Guide, 3 AA Rosettes and an Egon Ronay star.

Their success has grown and grown since then, thanks to a combination of great cooking, lovely rooms and a genuinely welcoming atmosphere.

The restaurant combines traditional modern British cooking with rustic French flavours and textures including lots of seasonal veg and locally sourced meat. Desserts are particularly inventive including a thyme panna cotta and a beautifully presented rhubarb crumble soufflé.

After dinner, head to one of the four luxurious cottage suites surrounding the pub which reflect the restaurant's combination of modern style with touches of traditional France. All the rooms are lovely, but our favourite is the Charolais suite, which comes with its own Jacuzzi terrace.

The Vineyard at Stockcross, Berkshire

In the Berkshire countryside not far from Newbury, the Vineyard at Stockcross is more of a hotel than a restaurant with rooms, but the food is so utterly delicious that it would foolish to leave it off the list.

Furthermore, by the time you've finished enjoying your dinner, you'll be too full and far from anywhere to venture home again, so you might as well as book a room and stay overnight.

John Campbell, the current 'chef of the year' is one of the few chefs in this country blessed with two Michelin stars and his cooking is understated but outstanding.

From ingenious amuse bouche - on our visit we were presented with a magical apple and cauliflower concoction - through to home-made petits fours, the food is all perfectly executed and John's trademark truffle risotto may well be one of the tastiest things you'll ever eat.

The three course a la carte menu costs £68 for three courses, and rooms start at about £100. As you would expect, service is impeccable, the rooms are spacious and classically decorated, and if you're up to it the following morning, guests can even take a dip in the newly renovated swimming pool which is surrounded, somewhat curiously, by brown carpet.

The Victoria at Holkam, Norfolk

Holkham Beach on the North Norfolk beach is without doubt one of the UK's loveliest stretches of beach and the perfect spot for a summer's day picnic.

Sadly, picnic weather is fairly hard to come by in this country so if sandwiches in the sunshine aren't an option, head indoors for lunch or dinner at the Victoria at Holkham.

Part of the Earl of Leicester's huge Holkham estate, this fantastic Victorian inn was extensively renovated in 2001 and is renowned for its good food and eclectic décor influenced by India and the Far East.

There is a strong emphasis on fresh, local and seasonal cooking and the menu often features local delicacies such as samphire from the coastline down the road and beef from farms on the Holkham estate.

There is a choice of 10 bedrooms and four lodges to stay in, each delightfully decorated and ranging in cost from around £100 to £260 a night.

Laura Caplin