What’s the vibe?
Let’s be honest; some gastropubs can be a little bit wanky. The Gunton Arms is not one of those pubs. It might be home to the finest collection of modern art in a 100-mile radius and have one of the UK’s best chefs (Stuart Tattersall, the ex-head chef with Mark Hix) cooking up local meat and fish on an open fire in the medieval banqueting hall-adjacent dining room underneath a supersized set of elk antlers, but the pub remains uniquely down to earth.
Art dealer Ivor Braka opened The Gunton Arms in 2011, bringing hearty cooking to a former country house hotel near the north Norfolk coast. Rustic and rugged, but romantic too, there are 16 bedrooms for the DFLs (down from Londoners) to crawl into after an epic feed, but there’s also a traditional pub space complete with pool table, dart board and thirsty locals that make it feel like a boozer for everyone, not just those with a Tate membership who’ve travelled via vintage Land Rover. There’s a roaring fireplace and cosy armchairs as soon as you enter, and welcoming staff serve reasonably priced pints for you to sink in various spaces across the maze-like pub, including a perfect William Morris-wallpapered nook. World-beating works by Damien Hirst, Lucian Freud, Paula Rego and Frank Auerbach lay in casual wait behind various corners, and though the imposing Elk Room is the main dining space, there’s also a side room dedicated to the work of Tracey Emin. Awesome stuff.
What should I order?
Situated in a sprawling, 1,000 acre deer park, seasonality and locality are key to what makes food at The Gunton Arms so special. Venison bagged by the gamekeeper makes a regular appearance on the menu, and it’s foolish not to order something with such a brief field-to-table commute, while beef comes from nearby Blickling. Cromer crab is also fabulously fresh. My starter of crab soup is delightfully moody and magically murky, lifted to heroic heights thanks to an enlivening splash of Somerset cider. It’s what Stuart Tattersall calls ‘Norfolk country cooking’, and includes pork crackling served warm (complete with a bramley apple sauce, soft and sweet pork belly, smokey steak straight from the fire, cavolo nero dressed with fierce ginger and garlic, and earthy, luxe venison lion that comes with a tangy jelly. Try not to look out of the window when you put it in your mouth, lest one of the thousand deer out there spot you scoffing their cousin.
Art is seamlessly integrated in the main room. No big deal, but our table is situated right under an original Tom Of Finland pencil drawing. Beefy bliss. If you stay the night, breakfast is included. We went for potent kippers from nearby Cley, and a slightly less pungent offering of drop scones with bacon and honey, washed down with apple juice made with fruit from the park.
What are the prices like?
Bar snacks are around £5-7, and starters £8-15. Mains are £16-30, with 10oz sirloin steak at £48, and a sharing rib of beef £110. Desserts are £8-10. Rooms start from £160 a night, and go up to £380 for the barnhouse suites on Friday and Saturday nights, when there’s a two night minimum stay.
Time Out tip
The team behind The Gunton Arms also run another gastropub, The Suffield Arms, re-opening the spacious boozer in 2021. Just a four-minute drive away from the Gunton Arms (and a minute’s walk from Gunton train station) the food here is markedly different, with a focus on Mediterranean-inspired tapas (order the parsnip fritters and pan con tomate), but it’s just as stacked with art, including photography by Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus and Helmut Newton, as well as works by Jeremy Deller and a pencil drawing by Bob Dylan (and that’s just the loos).