Osip, Bruton, Somerset Michelin-starred restaurant review 2025

We last visited Osip at the end of January 2020.

Back then this farm-to-table restaurant, which is owned by the ridiculously talented Merlin Labron-Johnson, was based in the heart of the Somerset town of Bruton.

We had a brilliant meal of fiercely seasonal and technically accomplished cooking in their stylish yet understated dining room.

However, as with most fancy restaurants, we hadn’t returned.

Then Osip 2.0 launched last year, and its update brought plenty of shiny new features to draw me back.

Now located in a beautifully refurbished pub in the countryside near Bruton, it’s one of the most stylish restaurants I’ve ever visited. Its standout feature, a dramatic glass-walled open kitchen that offers a constant reminder of the restaurant’s proximity to the land where its produce comes from.

In recognition of Osip's upgrade, they've been named Good Food Guide's restaurant of the year 2025, regained their Michelin star, won a Green Michelin star, and been named in Conde Nast’s best new restaurants in the World 2025. Not bad going.

The food and service have most certainly kicked up a gear since our last visit with more intricate plating and a flurry of enthusiastic front of house staff keeping a good pace to our meal.

At dinner there are ten-course non-vegetarian (£125) and vegetarian tasting menus (£125) on offer and we both opted for the former.

Our first appetiser arrived with pre-dinner drinks in the beautiful earthy-toned bar area. A selection of crudités from Osip's farm set the tone for the meal. Radishes, kohlrabi and sweet mangetout were accompanied by nutty sesame cream and herb oil.

As the inevitable designated driver, I appreciated Osip's interesting alcohol-free drink selection. Whilst Mrs G knocked back a glass of Moussé Fils Champagne (£21), I had a vivid green apple and sorrel juice (£6) that cleverly balanced fruit and herb and sweet and savoury.

A few more appetisers followed in the dining room.

A vibrantly herbal lovage broth tasted both healthy and luxurious simultaneously.

It was served alongside an excellent sharing loaf of warm fermented potato brioche with a crisp golden crust and the softest of crumbs. It was delicious on its own but even butter smothered with creamy and lightly tangy kefir cream topped with a savoury leek tapenade and fried nettles.

We were easily upsold the drinks pairings. However, it’s hard to judge their value for money with five 75ml pours of wine costing £75 and five 75ml pours of soft drink costing £45.

The first two white wines were on the natural barnyardy cider end of the spectrum. Things got a lot more exciting with an Alsace grape we hadn’t encountered before, a Pinot d'Auxerrois. A Prieuré St Christophe Savoie red with plenty of fresh fruit and a light Jurançon dessert wine with bright acidity were also both excellent.

 

My non-alcoholic pairing was even more impressive. Highlights included a beetroot, black garlic and long pepper juice that accompanied the meat course and a pine, verjus and Malawian white tea that was served with dessert. Clearly a lot of consideration and effort had gone into every pairing.

Anyway, back to the food and a comforting spring taco continued the green theme of the previous courses. A soft corn tortilla was topped with a vibrant mole verde, smoked creme fraiche, nuggets of green asparagus and crunchy braised pumpkin seeds.

A cold assembly of meaty chalk stream trout pieces, runny quail eggs, crunchy piedmont hazelnuts and sweet young leeks looked pretty as a picture with its modesty hidden beneath sorrel leaves. It was very tasty but felt quite traditional compared to the rest of the meal.

A rolled courgette dish wasn't quite at the same level as the other things we ate. Whilst its garnish of compellingly smoky whey sauce, crunchy buckwheat and intense preserved lemon were all excellent, the vegetable centrepiece was slightly bland and a little too firm in the centre.

Things really took off with the fish course. A plump Orkney scallop was dressed in a luxuriously fragrant elderflower sabayon and topped with charred white asparagus.

Osip slaughters a pig a week and serves different cuts each night. We had the privilege of eating its loin and belly with a well-caramelised exterior, deep flavour and melting fat. It was served with a slice of superb Toulouse sausage, Tokyo turnip, and homemade mustard.

On the side, a rich pig’s head croquette was given freshness by wrapping it in lettuce and shiso leaf and garnishing it with a dice of fresh and acidic cucumber and hay baked apple.

We shared an optional cheese course and what a blinder it was - toasted malt loaf soaked in cider brandy was topped with a slice of funky and oozy Bath soft cheese. Based on the success of this dish I’m planning to toast some Soreen and serve it with Camembert.

The transition between sweet and savoury was deftly handled with a peppery and verdant rocket sorbet bathed in sharp gooseberry juice and distinctive pistachio oil.

Dessert, a showcase of honey from Osip’s own hives, was bloody brilliant. A warm honey tart, which combined burnt sugar, floral custard and the thinnest of pastry cases, was a wicked hybrid between a pastel de nata and a creme brûlée.

It was served alongside a scoop of cleansing crème fraiche ice cream, Italian meringue made with honey, and a drizzle of honey cut with the acidity of verjus.

After a reassuringly lengthy wait in the lounge, petit fours arrived. A warm madeleine with toasty sesame seeds (a birthday extra), zingy bergamot and earl grey pate de fruit, and a remarkably good Pump Street chocolate and blackcurrant jam macaron rounded off the meal.

We had a fabulous meal at Osip and its great to see its evolution to become a top tier destination restaurant whilst still retaining what made its original incarnation so special. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if they get a second Michelin star to match their second version.

The Details:

Address - Osip, 25 Kingsettle Hill, Hardway, Bruton BA10 0LN
Web - https://osiprestaurant.com/

Telephone - 01749 987277

The Bull's Head, Craswall, Herefordshire gastropub review

I love the charm of country pubs with their roaring fireplaces, picturesque settings, and historic buildings.

But boozing and guzzling in a rural setting normally poses a bit of a challenge when Mrs G and I invariably both want a drink or two.

It means that normally I (i.e. always) end up as designated driver.

So, having spotted there was a campsite just a few minutes’ walk from The Bull’s Head at Craswall in the Black Mountains on the border between England and Wales, I hatched a plan for a night away with friends.

After pitching our tent, we yomped up the Black Hill to work up an appetite, before heading over to the pub for dinner.

Placed 33 in the most recent Top 50 Gastropubs list, the Bull’s Head is a refurbished drovers inn with plenty of charming original features.

Owned by Wild by Nature, the Bull’s Head’s understated cooking utilises seasonal ingredients from the company’s own regenerative farm as well as a network of small local producers.

The bottles of wine we ordered, a Saint Vincent Chardonnay (£28) from the Pays D’Oc and an Antiche Vie Chianti (£36), were both good although the white could have been more chilled.

We went straight into the snacks and golden Welsh rarebit croquettes (£4) were filled with a pokey, mustardy molten cheese sauce and buried under a drift of salty parmesan.

To start, a brick of a short rib croquette (£12) yielded a core of tender, big-flavoured shredded beef. Excellent accompaniments took it up a gear - a thick, rich and herby sauce gribiche, well-dressed peppery rocket and zingy pink pickled onions.

A chunky smoked mackerel rillette (£12) let its headline ingredient do the talking. The homely dish was accompanied by a mountain of rye cracker shards and another excellent salad of pickled fennel and radishes.

Lobster ravioli (£16) was described as some of the best pasta our friend had eaten in a while. The well-filled, delicate pasta cases were bathed in a corker of a sherry and shellfish sauce.

Onto mains, and the Bull’s Head clearly knows how to source and cook a fine bit of meat.

Rare breed pork slices (£26) were tender, melting of fat and had good flavour. Sat on a bed of soft and delicately spiced harissa beans and accompanied by charred spring onions, it was a delicious piece of pork cookery.

A sharing wing-rib of 40-day dry aged Belted Galloway beef (£75) was a new cut on me. I imagine it must be the part of the cow where a rib meets the bingo wing. It was a fabulous cut of meat – cooked rare to medium-rare in different places, the ruby red slices were gorgeously tender with an excellent beefiness.

It was elevated by some atypical accompaniments, a compelling smoked beetroot ketchup that should be sold by the bottle, salt baked onions, vibrant greens, and a superbly meaty bone marrow and peppercorn sauce. This was one hell of a steak dish.

Sides were all riproarers too.

Golden chips (£5) looked suspiciously uniform in texture, but they’d been fried in beef dripping to render them rustlingly crisp and addictively savoury. A pot of honking aioli wasn’t half bad too.

Romaine lettuce (£5) had been assertively charred over wood fire to give it an addictive smokiness and crisp edges. A creamy and tangy buttermilk dressing tempered the char.

Braised bitter greens (£6) contrasted beautifully with the savoury hit of anchovy and warmth of Espelette chilli.

Desserts brought the only misstep of the meal.

A sticky toffee pudding (£9) looked the business, but the cake’s crumb was disappointingly dry. Thankfully, a ton of roasted hay butterscotch sauce and thick vanilla ice cream did some heavy lifting to turn it into a decent pud.

A very grown-up take on strawberries and cream (£8) saw marsala booze-charged berries piled on top of thick vanilla whipped cream and served alongside an excellent shortbread biscuit.

A glass of vin doux (£6) ordered to accompany dessert eventually showed up at almost the exact same time we were told the pub needed our table back without any pre-warning. Service was otherwise faultless throughout the meal, but this made for an unexpectedly rushed end to the evening.

Still, as we were stumbling distance from the campsite, we wandered back for a nightcap and bedded down in the field adjacent to the rare breed pigs. I certainly felt among good company.

The Bull’s Head is a top-drawer country pub and I can see why it was packed out on our visit. If you’re thinking of visiting and want to avoid squabbling about who’s designated driver then I’d highly recommend pitching a tent down the road. Or if you’re a little more luxuriously inclined, the Bull’s Head also happen to have their own quartet of cabins.

The Details:

Address - The Bull's Head, Craswall, Hereford HR2 0PN

Web - https://www.wildbynaturellp.com/the-bulls-head-inn

Telephone - 01981 510616

South Kitchen, Roath, Cardiff Yemeni restaurant review

I’m all in favour of compact restaurant menus.

It’s normally a sign of a focus on a few things done well.

At one point Burger & Lobster had the city’s most compact restaurant menu with just three dishes on offer. Whilst it’s long gone, and was pilloried by many at the time, I still think their burger is one of the best Cardiff has ever seen.

Nowadays, the accolade of the city’s most compact menu most likely belongs to South Kitchen, a Yemeni restaurant on Albany Road.

There’s a choice of just two main dishes - lamb mandi or chicken mandi.

It’s clearly worked well for them so far as they’ve recently relocated from their original base in Adamsdown to the former home of Ichiban, a venue with a bigger kitchen and dining room.

On my first visit at six o’clock on a weeknight I bagged the last table. When I attempted a second visit around 6pm on a Wednesday, there was no room at the inn. So, I went even earlier a few nights later and thankfully it was much quieter.

South Kitchen’s dining room is split into traditional Arabian-style floor seating and conventional sit-down tables. However, wherever you sit, your dining space will be covered with a disposable plastic sheet. It’s clearly a sign that mess is inevitable. 

On my first visit, I ordered the lamb (£15) and I was swiftly brought a large stainless-steel plate piled high with rice and meat.

Beautifully tender, slow-cooked lamb with wobbly fat nudged off the bone with ease – I think there was a bit of shank and some ribs. There was a much lighter touch with the spicing and caramelisation compared to Hadramowt’s version, but it was still very good.

A vast amount of fluffy rice was compellingly perfumed. I kept on going back for more and more. Thankfully, there was more and more. 

There was also raw white onion, a slice of lemon and birdseye chillies. I gave the former a miss, but a squeeze of lemon brought welcome zest whilst a nibble on the chilli bought a kick of capsaicin.

A pair of dips brought bags of flavour too. A super fresh and cleansing blend of tomato, parsley and chilli had pico de gallo vibes. Creamy yoghurt with a nutty and peppery twang of tahini and hit of garlic was enjoyable but a slightly acquired taste.

On my second visit, I ordered the chicken (£10). A yellow-skinned half bird was soft of flesh and delicate of seasoning; I made a right mess teasing it off the bone with my hands. It was lovely but I think the lamb edged it for me.

If you’re looking for a restaurant with a compact menu, either because you like to see a few things done well, or just because you’re not very good at choosing what to order, then South Kitchen’s Yemeni cooking is well worth a look.

The Details:

Address - The South Kitchen, 167 Albany Rd, Cardiff CF24 3NT

Telephone - 07547 396432

Gorse, Cardiff Michelin-starred restaurant review, 2025

Stop the clocks. Ring the church bells. Launch the confetti canons. Mint the limited-edition coins. Publish the commemorative blogpost.

Cardiff has its first ever Michelin-starred restaurant.

Repeat, Cardiff has its first ever Michelin-starred restaurant.

For many of you this won’t be news. After all, Pontcanna’s Gorse was awarded the accolade back in February 2025.

However, I’ve only just got around to visiting since they’ve been awarded the star. And after years of questioning if and when Cardiff would ever be recognised by the tyre people, the time has finally come.

Whilst the Michelin Guide and its brand of fayne dayning has become increasingly irrelevant to many. For certain hospitality professionals, journalists and ‘foodies’, it’s still the benchmark accolade for recognising the highest standards of hospitality.

Having followed Gorse since its initial pop-up days in 2022, I’m very glad to see it become Cardiff’s first ever Michelin-starred restaurant.

Tom Waters’ cooking feels modern, distinctly Welsh, and refined yet approachable.

If this is Cardiff’s destination restaurant then I’m sure it will leave a very good impression for visitors to the city.

So, what’s changed since our visit to Gorse in June last year?

Well, it’s a case of evolution rather than revolution with marginal gains in the standard of cooking. Desserts felt particularly strong this time around when perhaps they’ve been less memorable than the savoury dishes.

It looks like there might be another member of staff or two to share the load. It's a lot harder to bag a reservation. And there’s been an almost inevitable increase in the price of the tasting menus. The seven-course menu now costs £95 instead of £75 whilst the ten courser costs £125 instead of £100. Still, Gorse’s tasting menus compare very favourably pricewise with others in Wales.

This time around we went for the seven-course tasting menu with paired wines (£75).

It’s hard to say exactly how good value the smaller tasting pours of wine represent compared to drinking by the glass or bottle, but it was an excellent selection that matched well with each dish. The standouts were a trio of whites, a herby Thymioloulos Malagouzia and Assyrtiko blend, a crisp Loimer Gruner Veltiner, and a lemony and slightly buttery Restless River Chardonnay. The only disappointment was a White Castle 1581 port style wine that lacked the richness and punch of fruit of the style it emulated.

But first, a bowl of cold spring vegetable tonic - a palate livening cold broth full of fragrant fresh veggies with bright acidity.

Then, a trio of snacks, the standout for me a crisp cornet filled with thick and earthy preserved mushroom puree with pickled juniper.

Both a rye cracker topped with roasted yeast cream and a dollop of smoky pike perch roe...

and a buckwheat tart filled with raw trout and salty pearls of trout roe very much hit the mark too.

The evolution of a familiar dish saw meaty raw bass accompanied by a creamy, sinus tickling horseradish cream, discs of cleansing apple and herby lovage oil.

It was great to see celeriac on Gorse’s menu. One of my favourite vegetables, it only ever seems to crop up as a remoulade or the occasional soup. Here, a spoonably soft wheel of the celery-fragranced root vegetable was bathed in a creamy and lightly tangy buttermilk sauce pocked with chervil oil.

A delicately cooked, meaty piece of turbot was treated with the love it deserves. Bathed in an oregano scented buttery sauce and accompanied asparagus, it was a corker of a fish dish.

Gorse’s signature Bum Bread™ inevitably showed up at some point. With a loaf of the warm, glossy, light-crumbed and slightly sweet bread served per person, it ensured there was no fighting. This time it was accompanied by a plain cultured butter. I think it was an improvement on their seaweed butter, allowing the excellent bread to take centre stage.

Welsh mountain mutton, a protein which features far too infrequently on restaurant menus, had a superb depth of flavour, tenderness and layer of melting fat. A glossy sauce dotted with pickled mustard seeds, a clever morel mushroom stuffed with mutton sausage meat, silky wild garlic puree and asparagus completed the excellent plate.

Dessert felt like it came around too quickly. And I perhaps had a pang of regret that we hadn’t opted for ten courses.

First up was a riff on strawberries and cream. Creamy chamomile custard hid a layer of thick strawberry puree and was topped with a quenelle of strawberry sorbet. The scent of preserved rose came in somewhere but I’m doubting the details after all the booze.

The star of the sweet courses was a glossy, toasty and wobbly set oat custard with a lightly smoked raspberry jam and apple caramel. Crème caramel is one of my favourite desserts in the world, so this was right up my street.

Finally familiar treats came in the form of a squidgy brown butter cake topped with blueberry puree...

and a cube of clever carrot jelly with lemon verbena sugar.

This was another excellent meal at Gorse and it’s great to see Tom and the team win the accolade they fully deserve. In a way, the star is also a recognition of Cardiff’s hospitality scene as a whole, which has improved immeasurably over the last fourteen years that I’ve been writing this blog.

If you’re looking for a special meal in Cardiff, then you won’t go wrong with a visit to Gorse.

The Details:

Address - Gorse, 186-188 Kings Rd, Cardiff, CF11 9DF
Web - https://www.gorserestaurant.co.uk/
Telephone - 02920 372055