It’s an 18th-century pub on a hill in an idyllic village in the heart of the countryside — but it is now surely facing a wave of bookings and publicity after being called “almost certainly the best pub in England” by one of the country’s leading food critics.
The Horse and Groom was already situated in what was last year described by Savills as one of the UK’s “most desirable” villages, Bourton-on-the-Hill in the Cotswolds.
And now it is making waves under its new owners, Nathan Eades and Liam Goff, who had previously secured a spot among the UK’s top 100 gastropubs for 2024 for another of their ventures, The Halfway at Kineton in Cheltenham.
And it’s been given a further boost, with Giles Coren, seasoned restaurant critic at The Times, calling by with his family and scoring the pub 10 out of 10 across cooking, service and its location in a village home to fewer than 400 people.
Coren says he and his family enjoyed an “immense” meal, including starters of Atlantic prawn cocktail (” two layers of fat, aromatic wild prawns in a cut glass whisky tumbler”, monkfish scampi (“freshly breaded and fried with a dark golden crumb”) and Scotch egg (“shiny as a brass finial, warm, porky and sweet, the yolk a sunshine gel”).
He described the double cheeseburger main as a “hip and sticky masterpiece of its kind” and a ham hock as akin to “Jesus rising again on the third day”.
The Horse and Groom was named the Good Pub Guide pub of the year in 2016, so it’s not a stranger to praise or a high profile. But Coren had said back then that although it was “a cosy spot with stunning views and lovely people” he had felt the food to be “pretty average”.
But he said that with Eades and Goff at the helm, the pub is now, “with their immense cooking bolted on to the rambling old space and fantastic gardens, almost certainly the best pub in England”.
He wrote: “It has not changed much inside, nor should it. It is lived-in and lovely, but on a rare warm summer’s day we busted through into the two-tiered garden, with its mature trees and shrubs and shaggy lawns, and… we climbed to the high lawn and a not too guano-spattered picnic table under a tree.
“Eating outside I can take or leave. But eating under a tree – the dappled shade, the birdsong, the faint insect hum, the view over yellow stone buildings, old slate roofs, bent chimneys, cobalt skies, fields slowly browning to the harvest, all framed by a good, sharp privet hedge – that is truly living. The English rural pub is the greatest of all things on earth and the Horse and Groom is perhaps its apogee.”
The review by Coren, who is the brother of television presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell and brother-in-law of comedian David Mitchell, marks a significant turnaround from his 2016 critique of the same pub, which he then deemed an “unassuming, brightly lit spot with none of the boozed-up sense of naughtiness that pubs in these parts usually have”.
While he acknowledged the good cooking at the time, he felt the atmosphere waned as you left the “vibes” of “the small front bar” for the “modestly furnished dining area”.
He previously gave the establishment a score of seven out of 10 for cooking, six out of 10 for table service, and a mere five out of 10 for atmosphere eight years ago, so his scores have dramatically changed this time around.
In a recent chat with Cotswold Journal, new owner Nathan Eades said: “We haven’t made any seismic changes, all we’ve really done is add a new lick of paint. We have also tried to tidy it up and dump as much love into the pub as we can. Not much needed changing, to be honest.
“We have good wine and a good environment and we have been highly encouraged by what we have seen so far. It’s been a good first few days and hopefully it’s only going to get better.”
Here are a few examples of a sample menu at the Horse and Groom
Starters
Atlantic prawn cocktail, buttermilk soda bread & butter, Bloody Mary sauce £11.50
Marinated Evesham tomatoes, bitter leaves, burrata, basil pesto £11.50
Monkfish scampi, saffron aioli, pickled shallot & watercress salad £11.50
24-month-old Comte & Donnington ale rarebit on O&B sourdough toast £9.50
Beef fillet carpaccio, wasabi mayonnaise, parmesan & rocket salad £11
Main courses
Double baked 24-month-old Comte cheese souffle, house salad £19
Double cheese burger, Otis & Belle brioche bun, house fries £18
Huntsham Farm sausages, creamed potatoes, buttered cavolo nero, onion gravy £21
Glazed ham hock for two, Cacklebean eggs, house fries £19.50 pp
Desserts
Black treacle & date pudding, clotted cream £9.50
Tiramisu, our style £10.50
Lemon posset, strawberry compote, crushed meringue £10
Affogato, pistachio biscotti £7