The 21 best gastropubs in the UK – updated for 2026

Norfolk

The Gunton Arms is home to the finest collection of modern art in a 100-mile radius and also one of the UK’s best chefs (Stuart Tattersall, the ex-head chef with Mark Hix). He cooks up local meat and fish on an open fire in the medieval banqueting hall-adjacent dining room, while you dine on venison from the 1,000-acre deer park where the rustic yet romantic boozer is situated. 

Art dealer Ivor Braka opened The Gunton Arms in 2011, bringing hearty cooking to a former country house hotel near the north Norfolk coast (which is where they source Cromer crab and other fabulously fresh fish). 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 restaurant area, there’s also a side room dedicated to the work of Tracey Emin. Awesome stuff. 

Lincoln

Sometimes, when a pub with food calls itself a ‘gastro pub’, the portion sizes diminish. Not so at Lincoln spot The White Horse, whose Sunday roast fills the plate right to its edges. You could put away a whole loaf of sourdough toast with that duck parfait starter, as well. But don’t assume that warm generosity is making up for poor provenance. The WH take sourcing seriously, with meat from local award-winning Redhill Farm, cheese from down the road in Derwent, Derbyshire, and charcuterie from cheffy fave SaltPig Curing Company, a bit further away in the Cotswolds. 

The White Horse features a bright and modern interior (pastel walls, sanded wooden furniture, herringbone floors, vivid artwork on the walls) while still pouring a cracking pint. You’ll find nibbly plates of anchovies or artisan charcuterie as well as dad-pleasers like a hefty Barnsley chop or charmingly craggy-crusted beef and blue cheese pie. The wine list is nicely pitched, with plenty of classics alongside more wine-curious bottles like Georgian Saperavi, and top-notch English Chardonnay from Whitewolfe.

Margate, Kent

Margate combines vintage English seaside kitsch with a generous scoop of queer, art-school sass. As well as the glorious sandy beach, there are caves, shell grottos and an excellent museum about crabs. But there’s also a jackpot of top places to eat and drink – and just a few steps from the aforementioned crustacean palace sits The Wellington. Owners Billy Stock and Ellie Topham have St John, Rochelle Canteen, and ‘premium fried chicken’ pop-up Chix Stock on their collective CV. The Wellington is very obviously borne out of their deep love for good food and drink, with fantastic wine and hearty dishes rooted in French cuisine.

The Wellington’s handwritten menu is based around whole-carcass butchery with dishes like lamb with roast shallots and runner beans sitting alongside lamb faggots and crushed peas, while other bits of the animal make their way into things like terrines and sausage rolls throughout the week. There is an ever-present and ever-changing pie, a cracking Sunday roast (ofc) and an outstanding rarebit, all served alongside a wine list of French beautés, or grab a bloody mary, a negroni or a pint, if you wish.

Leeds

Describing itself as ‘a drinkers pub with a dining room’, The Highland Laddie is a reinvigorated wedge-shaped boozer on the outskirts of Leeds – just down the road from the Emmerdale studios – that manages to combine all the oldie worldie charm of a proper pub with irresistible hipster chutzpah. Despite its Scottish name, The Highland Laddie is ‘very Leeds’, leaning into the Yorkshire dialect, gathering its produce from the slopes of the verdant bowl of countryside in which the city sits, and showing more than a smattering of influence from the Indian subcontinent. 

The interior is an antiquarian pub lover’s wet dream, all oxblood drapes, racing green leather banquette seating, and scuffed, black painted walls. The menu is grounded in classical cookery but doesn’t muck about with the gels and drizzles of fine dining. You’ll find seafood aplenty (smoked Shetland mussels on toast, a pint of prawns) as well as schnitzel, beef shin and mutton chops with quirky diversions like ‘clotted cheese’ and poppadom mash.

Glastonbury, Somerset

When people talk about Glastonbury, it’s usually in reference to the internationally renowned local music festival or its major league status on the druidic scene, rather than as a food destination. But Queen of Cups might change all of that. Chef Ayesha Kalaji is in charge of this Michelin Bib Gourmand-recommended gastropub, which opened in 2021 and has been quietly wowing locals ever since.

Set inside a 17th century coaching inn, the innovative menu is the product of Ayesha’s Welsh-Jordanian heritage, meaning Middle Eastern flavours peppered with Welsh touches. Silky hummus with crispy chilli and sweetly spiced date confiture with (or without) a dollop of creamy apricot and harissa hogget, ornate Tunisian-style brik au truite, chalkstream trout sitting in delicate, lacy brik pastry. And it’s all beautifully presented to the point of being bejewelled; there are rose petals here, pomegranate seeds there, and lemon balm leaves everywhere.

Wootton, Oxfordshire Cotswolds

They’re aiming high at this beyond-picturesque Oxfordshire inn. Down the road and across the River Glyme is Blenheim Palace, and the food here is fit for any big wigs who might happen by en route to the Cotswolds (Winston Churchill used to stop in). For head chef Rob Mason, once of Jamie Oliver’s family pub The Cricketers, it’s all about sourcing seasonal local produce for the ever-changing menus.

Expect juicy Cotswolds lamb, meaty roasted monkfish, and a chicken liver parfait that comes with chicken-fat brioche and an umami rush of flavour. The tasting menu is a journey through high-class modern English cooking (eight courses for £95), with an à la carte menu for more modest wayfarers (three courses for £65). The pillowy slices of home-baked treacle bread are worth the journey on their own.

Newton-in-Bowland, Lancashire

You could argue that a gastropub cannot be so named if it doesn’t do a proper pie. Well, Stosie Madi’s award-winning pies at The Parkers Arms are the stuff of legend. Their crimped crusts might contain curried mutton, Coronation cod or pheasant and mushrooms – as they did on my most recent visit. I was particularly seduced by the mash that comes with them, which is about 70 percent butter to 30 percent potato (the correct ratio).

You’ll also find dishes as eclectic as fresh langoustines slathered with garlic butter, Lebanese mezze with Cornish tuna koftas, and Portuguese-style custard tarts with asparagus and wild garlic.  Madi’s Senegalese, Gambian and Lebanese heritage come into play as much as the local game sourced from the surrounding woodland. This country inn is set in the jaw-dropping Forest of Bowland in Lancashire which looks like something from Lord of the Rings. Its roaring fire, impeccable wine list and real Lancashire approach to service will warm your cockles (and your mussels). 

Hayfield, Derbyshire

Although Manchester’s dining scene is super hot right now, if you ask your friendly Mancunian foodie (ie me) to recommend a next-level gastropub, they’ll likely point you in the direction of The Peak District, where you’ll find The Pack Horse in Hayfield. Pub classics abound (think triple-cooked chips, Barnsley chop, proper roasts and pies) but not without a touch of modern ‘citizen of the world’ flair (The piccalilli with your boiled ham and trotter terrine is fragrant with Indian vadouvan and sprouts are jazzed up with nduja butter). Don’t even think of sleeping on that salted caramel custard tart. 

This is one of my favourite places to go on New Year’s Day when I like to drag myself up to the highest hill I can manage, wistfully survey the landscape, and scramble back down as quickly as possible for a celebratory pint and a few oysters.

Camberwell, London

From the outside the Camberwell Arms is as classic as pubs get, with its Britain in Bloom-worthy hanging baskets and an extremely pub-like name picked out in gold lettering. But this grand Victorian boozer doesn’t need fanfare: it’s one of London’s greatest gastropubs (in fact, at time of writing it’s top of Time Out London’s ranking of the city’s best gastros). 

One of London’s most dependable gastropubs since it launched way back in 2014, the Camberwell Arms’ trademarks are small plates, rustic sharing dishes, an open kitchen, blackboards and scrubbed tables. A short menu is seasonal cooking at its finest: the likes of crispy barbecued mackerel on a bed of sweet and sour peppers, pork loin chop with semi-hearted red cabbage, and crispy fried pig’s head with piccalilli. And the drinks are just as exquisite, an entrancing cocktail menu and huge wine list.

Suffolk

Owned by the irreverent Brendan Padfield whose collection of ‘propaganda art’ adorns the walls of the 16th-century inn, Suffolk’s The Unruly Pig has won countless awards including topping the Estrella Damm Best Gastropubs list three times, most recently in 2025. 

Chef Patron Dave Wall’s menu honours British ingredients with a distinct Italian accent. Expect Anglo-Italian mash-ups like tortellini in brodo with game consommé, gremolata and parmesan, bistecca alla fiorentina with bone marrow sauce and Isle of Wight tomatoes, or Orkney scallop crudo with grapefruit, smoked almond and sheep’s milk. Wall is clearly a feeder, as all good gastro pub chefs should be. A signature dish is his Iberico presa, a highly marbled cut of pork, with an accompanying braised cheek raviolo. It’s one of the richest, most rib-sticking things I have eaten in a long time. 

Read more: We ate at the UK’s ‘best’ gastropub – here’s what it was really like

Bettws Newydd, Monmouthshire

If it’s castles you’re into, this part of the UK has them by the bucketload, so factor a few historical stop-offs into your journey before winding your way down the snakelike country roads to your Welsh gastropub reward. Welsh rarebit as an opening snack is a no-brainer, but the rest of the seasonally guided menu will be harder to choose from without FOMO. Will it be Wye lamb shoulder with confit potato, red wine sauce, kale and anchovy mayo or Cornish Octopus with rainbow chard and blood orange? Fish and seafood are a big draw too, while the wine list has everything from Pet Nat to Cote Rotie with plenty of local cider if that’s your preferred bevvie. 

Usk itself is a picture postcard Welsh town which is famous for being covered with flowers. It has won the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Wales In Bloom’ competition 37 years in a row. It takes its name from the River Usk on which it sits, perfect if you enjoy a bit of salmon fishing.

Manchester 

This Northern Quarter institution, formerly known as Trof, has been a popular boho neighbourhood hangout since the early 2000s (though the red brick building itself dates back to the 1880s). It has always featured on every Mancunian’s top Sunday roast list. It’s changed hands a couple of times over the years, but, under the stewardship of current owner Matt Nellany and star chef Jamie Pickles (the team behind one of Manchester’s hottest new restaurants, Stow), it has now been rechristened The Trof and metamorphosised into the grown-up gastropub the artsy, graffiti-daubed NQ has long cried out for. 

Pull up a pew in the relaxed second-floor dining room with its polished pine features and golden lighting, for a plate of impeccably cooked pork collar with cabbage, bacon and burnt apple, or a buttery crusted ox cheek pie with obscenely silky Ratte potato mash. A glass or two from the carefully crafted wine list (mine’s a Marchesi di Gresy Monferrato, ta) adds a sense of ceremony. Downstairs in the bar, you can get stuck into a pint or five of Jaipur pale ale from Peak District brewery, Thornbridge, with a panko-crisp, jammy yolked scotch egg or a bowl of amber-hued, beef-dripping chips.

Batcombe (near Bruton)

The Three Horseshoes was destined to be excellent; a spruced up (but still retaining plenty of ye olde character) 17th-century inn on the outskirts of artsy Bruton, with one of the UK’s best chefs in charge. Margot Henderson of east London’s much-swooned-over Rochelle Canteen oversees the joint and the menu has much in common with her long-running Shoreditch restaurant, where food leans every-so-slightly medieval.

In the small, flagstone-flanked dining rooms you’ll find a chalkboard menu brimming with the likes of steamed mutton pudding, beef and pickled walnut pie, and devilled kidneys on toast, as well as featuring foraged wild garlic from the local village lanes. These hearty but majestically well-considered meals sit alongside a crafty, punchy cocktail menu (make ours a martini, please) and the puddings selection reliably always features a seasonal crumble. If that all sounds a bit much, worry not, there are cosy bedrooms upstairs to flop into should you go too hard on the boeuf.

Bristol

This former biker’s pub in Bristol’s buzzy Redland was bought by local lad done good Josh Eggleton back in 2016. Josh owns a number of successful places in Bristol, including one of my personal favourites, Root. Fast forward to 2026, and Head Chef Hector Browne (of the Jason Atherton stable) is bringing his magic to this much-loved pub. 

The Kenny’s plates are skilful and full of creative energy. To start, you might find a fat polenta fritter topped with fennel ragout, Tabasco-spiked brown crab emulsion, and a snowfall of sweet white crab meat or a St. John-inspired great hunk of bone marrow, with parsley and caper salad. But it’s dishes like the signature ox-cheek and grape suet pudding pie with its glossy dome shape giving ‘mid-century lampshade’ that I can’t resist. This is also staggeringly good value at just a tenner, especially on Fridays, when it comes with a free pint of Guinness. 

Fife, Scotland

The adoration of your peers is surely the loudest applause you can get and The Kinneuchar Inn in Fife is constantly heaped with praise from esteemed chefs and restaurateurs up and down the UK. Simplicity is at the heart of the menu: expect a chalkboard full of high-flavour, low-faff dishes like grilled hogget chop with borlotti beans and cimi di rapa, house smoked sea trout, with cucumber, dill and Crème fraîche, or pig’s head croquettes with pickled radish and brown sauce. Scottish seafood is big here, too: Carlingford oysters, Skye langoustines or fried chipirones caught in the Moray Firth. On bank holidays, they do a mean fried chicken bun almost too big to get your chops around, all made from scratch. It’s all served in a cosy front-room-like space flooded with light from the big pub windows. 

If you fancy extending your stay, The East Neuk of Fife (Neuk means ‘nook’ in Scots), where the Kinneuchar sits, is sort of like Scotland’s answer to the Cinque Terre (albeit a bit nippier). All ‘Mini Eggs’ coloured fishing villages, coastal walks and spanking fresh seafood. If you visit during summer, you might even spot a puffin or two. 

Mitton, Lancashire

Nigel Haworth is a household name for anyone partial to a bit of fine dining in Lancashire, who has taken on the project of The Three Fishes since 2021. The pretty, whitewashed pub’s menu is proudly driven by produce from its one-acre vegetable garden complete with polytunnels, greenhouses and, eventually, an edible forest. Zero waste, permaculture and biodiversity are all part of the sustainable ethos underpinning everything and who doesn’t love a poke around a veg patch before lunch? It’s one of my favourite things to do. 

The food here is spectacular, with dishes like foraged herb soup with pink trout pâte, quail egg, and caviar, roe deer with purple flowering broccoli, damson jam, maitake mushroom and fermented pumpkin, or herb-crumbed fennel with broad beans and an onion fritter. I absolutely loved a simple plate of English asparagus with hollandaise and a trembling ‘lemon meringue pie’ souffle dessert which topped and tailed an impressive five-course springtime lunch. There’s even an entirely plant-based five-course, farm-to-fork menu. It’s not all highfalutin though: Fridays are still chippy tea night.

Charlbury, Cotswolds

Sitting pretty at the centre of one of the Cotswolds’ most picturesque and chi-chi villages, The Bull was taken over in 2023 by two local lads: James Gummer and Phil Winser, who made their name running swanky west London gastropub The Pelican. Its sparse and spartan saloons (500-year-old brick walls, polished flagstone floors, fireplaces almost big enough to roast an actual bull) are a tip-off for the Trad British menu, but they don't do justice to the generosity of the cooking.

We ordered enough small plates to set the wooden table groaning, and it was all incredible – from raw local beef with mustard to garden-fresh veg and pork and apple, plus an absolute heap of homemade soft-serve ice cream to finish. The huge, terraced beer garden is a leafy sun trap too.

Rock, Cornwall

A much-loved ’90s pub revamped by Paul and Emma Ainsworth in 2019, The Mariners in Rock near Padstow in Cornwall is, as you would imagine, heavy on the seafood. There are mussels for days, fried oysters with tartare sauce, locally caught dayboat monkfish with cockle and clam butter, and a hot dog made out of pollock. It’s not all fish though. They do a mean shepherd’s pie, seasoned with seaweed and an absolutely ridiculous Yukon Gold chip butty with three different types of cheese (Cornish vintage cheddar, Cornish brie, aged parmesan, since you asked) and truffle mayonnaise. 

This is a Sharp’s Brewery pub so grab yourself a pint of Doom Bar, gaze out at the view of the unspeakably beautiful Camel Estuary with its famous sandy beaches and breathe in the salty sea air as everything slides into perspective.

Sedbergh, Cumbria

As culinary mash-ups go, German and Japanese aren’t the most likely bedfellows, especially when they are found on the menu of a gastropub in a Cumbrian town most famous for its abundance of bookshops. But this is head chef Nina Matsunaga’s heritage and it’s expertly woven into the menu at The Black Bull. 

Produce doesn’t get much more local. Most of what’s on the table here is heritage breeds and game sourced within walking distance from the pub. Everyone is catered for. The main menu features dishes like Howgill Herdwick lamb tartare with kimchi, and Heights of Winder goat with sweetcorn and nori, or you might like to go the whole hogget with Nina’s new eight or nine-course tasting menu, Tsuchi for a very reasonable £79pp. If that’s too long-winded, there’s now a regular series of three-course dinners for £45 called From The Oven. Afterwards? Relax in the bar with a nightcap and flick through a few books on Yorkshire dialect and stay overnight in one of the properly gorgeous rooms.

Highgate, London

Highgate is posh, but I’ll tell you what – it’s one of the best parts of London for a proper slap up Sunday lunch. And there is no better Sunday lunch than at the Red Lion and Sun, a cosy, wood burning fire-type gastropub with cracking roasts (lamb shank, beef rib, Côte de boeuf for two and a whole lot more), and a very nice main menu for sharing: we’re talking oysters, Korean chicken wings and a mean roast chicken with chips, salad and mayonnaise.

There’s a very nice beer garden in the front and the back, and in winter, they put out heated tents with fairy lights and sell frozen margs from a little truck. The Red Lion and Sun was also crowned the UK’s third-best gastropub at this year’s Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs List.

Cornwall

The Gurnard’s Head feels a bit like the end of the earth. The solitary yellow former coach inn stands proudly on the Zennor headland, exposed to all the elements. But it’s certainly worth the trek. Not only are those uninterrupted views to die for, but the schlep pays off for the food alone.

On the superb seasonal menu expect to see modern British food with the odd Asian or Middle Eastern influence. Of course, seafood plays a big part, with goodies like hake cooked with girolle mushrooms and chicken butter, or mussels in a Thai broth, up for grabs.