A fire in the grate, a landlord who knows your name, and food worth the drive.
showing all 100
Best pub on the planet. Don’t tell anyone. A handsome stone inn on the green of a moorland village, where walkers set out across the North York Moors and wisely come back for lunch. Open fires, a long and generous menu, and the sort of easy, unforced hospitality that no amount of money can buy. Everything a pub should be, and nothing it shouldn’t.
After the Golden Lion, probably the best pub in Britain. Laurie Lee’s local, clinging to the side of the valley he made famous in Cider with Rosie. Small, scruffy in the right way, and cooking far above its station, with a daily menu chalked up and a view that knocks your breath away. Its sister bistro has London’s trickiest critics as converts; the original remains the legend.
The G of places to stay with good food. Go before you die. It sits in a thousand-acre deer park, hung with art the Tate would envy and decorated by the late Robert Kime. In the Elk Room, venison from the park is cooked over the open fire. Its own league.
Wonderful to have a Welsh pub in the top five, and the plaudits are earned. Not pretty outside; food and setting are. Between the Brecon Beacons and the Black Mountains, with a kitchen garden, armchairs by the fire and bedrooms that encourage a second night. The motto is the simple things in life, done well. They are.
Ed McIlroy is the best landlord in the UK, and his Finsbury Park corner boozer serves the best burger in the land. A proper pub with proper staff, cooking that would shame many restaurants and a crowd that has come for the pint as much as the patty. Booking is a blood sport; take a same-day cancellation if one comes up.
Stealth wealth country: hard to reach, quietly rich. A three-hundred-year-old inn beside the church, a stone’s throw from Petworth Park, with low beams, scrubbed tables and fires in every room. The cooking is simple, seasonal and very good; the garden in summer is paradise.
Margot Henderson’s country cooking in a seventeenth-century coaching inn tucked into a fold of Somerset near Bruton. Pies, puddings and plates of whatever the season has delivered, with wine chosen by people who drink it. As close to perfection as the English pub gets.
A fourteenth-century thatched inn down a sunken lane in the Nadder valley, all flagstones, high-backed settles and candlelight. Simplicity and flavour are key, and if you bring them a brace of partridges, they’ll have them in the pot in a jiffy. Sit near the bar for the proper experience, and stay over if you can.
A Victorian corner pub off Piccadilly Circus, reborn as the most exciting pub in London. Oisín Rogers pulls the best pint of Guinness in the capital, and Ashley Palmer-Watts cooks over fire in the grill rooms upstairs. Permanently packed and permanently cheerful: the landlord as showman, the pub as theatre. Book a table, then stand at the bar anyway.
Hot on the Horse Guards’ heels, and an equally gorgeous spot. An ancient inn on the edge of the South Downs, close by the River Rother, with a log fire, a pretty garden and a kitchen that knows what it’s about. Favourite find of the year.
Mark and Sophie Dorber’s seaside pub: beer and food matched with the zeal of true believers, the beach a short stroll away.
A Georgian pub on the edge of England’s largest common. Fires, flagstones and a kitchen proud of its county.
A fifteenth-century brewhouse, closed in 1998 and lived in as a house, now restored to what it was always meant to be. A local family runs it with Suffolk beers and East Anglian ciders on the bar and the county’s produce in the kitchen. The Tudor initials on the ceiling are original; so is the welcome.
A village pub beside the church that cooks like a serious restaurant and still behaves like a local. Go on a Sunday for the roast chicken, the best in the UK.
A fourteenth-century timbered inn in one of Suffolk’s prettiest villages, with a kitchen to match.
A fifteenth-century inn in the heart of Constable country, with an Italian-leaning menu and a wine list of real interest.
Oysters, samphire and a sunset over the salt marsh. The best seat on the North Norfolk coast.
No bookings, a long wait and worth every minute. Slow-cooked dishes for the table, and a wine list for serious drinkers.
No bookings. Turn up and be patient.
Tom Conran’s Irish-accented pub, a Notting Hill fixture for a quarter of a century. Oysters and Guinness upstairs, Beckham downstairs.
Where the gastropub was born in 1991. The steak sandwich remains a national monument.
Hidden down a cobbled mews where chauffeurs wash Bentleys. Bloody Marys, Beef Wellington and a ghost who was once an officer. You have to know where you’re going.
A pub has stood here since 1423, older than Berkeley Square by three centuries. Steak and kidney pie, a good claret, and the cognoscenti at the next table.
London’s starred pub, and still the best place in town for game. Order the venison Scotch egg before you sit down.
A tiled Victorian local that was serving proper food long before anyone called it a gastropub. Unshowy, consistent and much loved by those in the know.
An unlikely jewel on the Uxbridge Road: a blend of country pub and London pub, and it really works. Venison with anchovy sauce, then sticky toffee pudding, in a room that feels like a neighbour’s front parlour. Get drunk and catch a legendary Uxbridge Road bus home.
A Georgian warren up a steep lane, with low ceilings and lower lights. The ideal end to a winter walk on the Heath.
New to the stars this year and deservedly so. South London has never eaten better in a pub.
The Spiteri family, en masse: Lorcan in the kitchen, Fin on the drinks. Oxtail with mash and horseradish, and a wine list from Uncharted. Opened this spring and already indispensable.
Phil Winser and James Gummer took a tired corner boozer off All Saints Road and made it the pub every other pub in London studies. Proper beer at the bar, a dining room on the ground floor at the back. Book the dining room, eat at the bar.
On Ludford Bridge, with the River Teme rushing below. Ludlow’s best pub, in England’s great food town.
A smart, rambling country pub on the Derbyshire border. Fires in every room and a cellar worth exploring.
A flagstoned Cotswold-edge inn on the village green. Comfortable, unhurried and very well run.
Above the Derwent Valley, with a blazing fire, a sunny terrace and the Peak District from the door.
A stylish inn in one of the Welland Valley’s prettiest villages, with rooms facing the river.
Three farm cottages knocked into a pub a century ago. Unfailingly good for decades; England’s smallest county, its largest welcome.
A Peak District pub at the foot of Kinder Scout, with a kitchen that punches miles above its weight.
A half-timbered inn on the River Lugg, cooking from its own garden. Herefordshire at its most beguiling.
One of England’s oldest inns, and now one of its best. Small plates, big talent, a star on the door.
A stone village pub with a wood-fired oven and cooking of quiet confidence.
Across the lane from the ruins of a Cistercian abbey. Cooking and setting of rare beauty.
A Dales coaching inn and one of the pioneers of serious pub food. Now cooking at the very top of its game.
The Banks family farm, the Banks family pub. Tommy Banks grows what you eat a field away.
Terry Laybourne’s Quayside pub. Pork scratchings, ale and some of the best cooking in the North East.
On a crossroads above Ambleside, with fell views, its own brewery and very comfortable rooms.
An eighteenth-century coaching inn near Knaresborough, run with warmth and cooking with flair.
A city local at heart, and among the very best pubs in Britain. Proof that greatness needs no thatch.
A moorland village pub of the kind that makes you plan your next walk around lunch.
Stosie Madi’s pies are the stuff of legend. The Forest of Bowland is the setting; the pastry is the point.
Right on the Scottish border, a remote inn with a star and a kitchen garden. Worth the long road.
James Mackenzie’s inn at the gates of the Dalton estate. Hearty and refined in equal measure.
A Lyth Valley inn beside the church, with damson orchards all around. Lakeland comfort at its best.
An eighteenth-century drovers’ inn looking across the Tyne Valley. Fires, real ale and splendid Sunday lunches.
A whitewashed square of fishermen’s cottages, a brewery out back and a beach out front. Crab sandwiches and a pint of their own.
Andrew Pern’s thatched fourteenth-century longhouse, a Yorkshire institution for a quarter of a century.
Tom Parker’s cooking in a Timothy Taylor’s pub in Pendle witch country. Unassuming outside, outstanding within.
A Victorian pub hidden in the Chilterns, beside the Ashridge woods. The perfect Sunday lunch within an hour of London.
Seventeenth century, seven bedrooms, a vaulted oak dining room and a short walk to the sea. An ideal summer weekend.
The Fordwich team’s second act, cooking over fire in a village outside Canterbury. Unpretentious room, starry plates.
A handsome Cotswold-stone coaching inn cooking over wood. Hipster heaven: rooms upstairs, a fire downstairs.
A sixteenth-century inn beside the church, with inglenooks, beams and a superb local following.
Old Town Hastings at its best: a friendly, independent pub with a kitchen that champions the Sussex coast.
Country pub, smart rooms and a grill that takes beef very seriously. Polished but never prissy.
A 1930s pub on the Stour in Britain’s smallest town. Open fire, oak panelling, river terrace, and cooking of real finesse.
A flint village pub tucked into the South Downs, with walks from the door and very good cooking at the end of them.
Tom Kerridge’s monument, and the most decorated pub in the land. Book months ahead and order the glazed omelette.
A Tudor inn opposite the church, where Heston Blumenthal cooks the English canon with a scientist’s precision. Scotch egg, oxtail and kidney pudding, treacle tart.
A seventeenth-century coaching inn with its own brewery and kitchen to match. Very good rooms.
A Surrey Hills inn with rooms, a garden and, improbably, llamas. The cooking is serious; the mood is not.
A fifteenth-century thatched inn run by Mike and Imogen North for two decades. Pigs in the garden, a star on the door, and no airs whatsoever.
A neighbourhood pub cooking at a level that would embarrass many restaurants. The reason to take the train to Folkestone.
A corner pub turned seaside dining room, with an ambitious kitchen and fair prices.
A weatherboarded shack on a bleak stretch of marsh, and one of the great meals in England. Stephen Harris churns his own butter and makes his own salt. Book the tasting menu.
A thatched village pub in the Itchen Valley. Exactly what an English country pub ought to be.
A fifteenth-century chantry house with a soaring great hall and minstrels’ gallery. Dinner in a medieval room, for the price of a pub supper.
A village pub with rooms and a kitchen that sends the local larder out in its Sunday best.
A creeper-clad inn at the gates of Longleat. Ancient, handsome and entirely at ease with itself.
A Georgian inn on the edge of the Fonthill estate, with a parlour fire, a fine wine list and rooms of real charm. The model of the modern country pub.
A proper market-town pub with skilful, unfussy cooking. Dartmoor on the doorstep.
A sixteenth-century coaching inn on the western edge of the moor. Fires, flagstones and food to warm the bones.
The heart of a village reborn, cooking from its own farm, with rooms in cottages and above the village shop.
A lonely, yellow-washed inn between moor and Atlantic. Wellies by the door, books by the fire, superb fish on the plate.
A stone village pub in the Limpley Stoke valley, just far enough from Bath to feel like an escape.
A Georgian inn at the top of the hill. Glorious views and a menu that changes daily.
A cosy Cotswold inn with a fire indoors, a quiet garden out back and beautifully decorated bedrooms.
A stone village pub where the chef-landlord cooks honest, generous food. The sort of place you wish you lived nearer.
Relaxed and handsome, near Bruton, with a pizza oven in the old skittle alley. Racing folk from the nearby yards keep it honest.
A thirteenth-century thatched inn on the edge of Exmoor, with cooking of real distinction and the beams to prove it was here first. The best pub in North Devon.
A tiny pub at the head of a creek, reachable at high tide by boat. French-accented cooking, Devon ingredients.
Georgian stone, open fires and a cracking cellar, high on the Somerset and Dorset border. Stay the night.
A fifteenth-century inn beside the church in a hidden North Cornwall valley. Slate, oak and a range in the bar.
Over the Bealach na Bà, the most thrilling road in Britain, to langoustines landed yards away. Worth every hairpin.
Tom Kitchin’s inn in golf country. Muirfield is down the road; this is where to celebrate, or commiserate, afterwards.
A Galloway village inn of the old school, with roaring fires and cooking that celebrates the local game and fish.
A newcomer in Wales’s food capital. Bright, lively and very good value.
Tom Watts-Jones cooks over fire in his home village. The finest pub in South Wales.
A village inn above the Tywi estuary, with simple rooms and cooking that has the critics driving west.
A tiny inn in deep Argyll, all stone and peat smoke. Arrive in the dark and be very glad you came.
A whitewashed village inn near the East Neuk, cooking with a confidence that has made it Scotland’s best pub.
Tom Kitchin and Dominic Jack’s gastropub: Scottish nature to plate, in Edinburgh’s prettiest village.
On the banks of the Tay, with folk music in the bar and wood-fired cooking in the kitchen. Highland hospitality without the tartan.
No pub meets every requirement. Try the Golden Lion, and don’t tell anyone.
“Within 90 minutes” means from central London by fast train or a clear road, give or take a few minutes at the station. London’s own pubs are listed under London.