Restaurants worth travelling for: From Le Clarence to Longueville Manor, where to visit this summer

A big summer holiday is a double-edged sword: the glimmer of hope on the horizon, but also the bringer of stress (the last-minute hand-overs; the correct way to word an out-of-office; the looming doom of returning to work). Regular weekends away are easy resets. But where to go? Below are 16 of our favourite restaurants with rooms, which will reward any traveller, weary or otherwise.

Everyone in Jersey knows that Relais and Chateaux’s Longueville Manor is the poshest restaurant and hotel on the island, a place for high tea or a splash-out meal.

It doesn’t disappoint. The core of the imposing 29-bedroom manor house — its richly panelled dining room and adjacent lookout tower, once the tallest in Jersey — dates from the 14th century. German generals, naturally, used it as a base during the second world war.

The walls of the superb character restaurant are covered with exquisite carved wooden panelling taken from a Spanish galleon. The huge stone fireplace and crackling fire adds to the cosy olde English atmosphere.

Food-wise, think homemade breads and butter, delicate starters, rich mains and indulgent puds. The wooden cheese trolley, replete with at least 40 home-made cheeses is a revelation. Allow the sommelier to choose you the finest wines money can buy. Handmade petit fours complete the feast. Guests are guaranteed a jolly time. Anna Van Praagh

Longueville Rd, Jersey, JE2 7WF, relaischateaux.com

Le Clarence is no hidden gem, instead a late 19th-century town house not far from the Champs-Élysées, just behind the glass-roofed Grand Palais. It is almost too opulent for words; there are cartoon castles with less grandeur. It is a building restored to the tastes of Prince Robert of Luxembourg; his tastes, evidently, veer to the extravagant and sumptuous. It is a fantasy of riches made real, staircases leading to rooms imagined in operas and Roman epics. There is velvet and gold and polished wood everywhere; antiques as ornate as sugar icing. Here, indulgence is king and decadence is not a sin.

Here they run a surprise menu, a menu made up each day. But whereas most chefs tweak a formula, at Le Clarence head chef Christophe Pelé seems to take the idea as far as it can go. He starts from scratch each morning, staring at what is in front of him, dreaming from there. Pelé is a monster talent; his two Michelin stars are hard-earned but still, perhaps, one too few.

31 Av. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 75008 Paris, France, le-clarence.paris

Some restaurants are about the food they serve, others are about the setting they’re in. It’s hard to know which impresses more at Ugly Butterfly, the first Cornish outpost from newly-MBE’d chef Adam Handling. Butterfly sits watching over Carbis Bay, as romantic a length of sand as they come, and Handling’s dishes on the £135 menu are astonishingly good: you might expect lobster caught that morning, or lamb from nearby fields. Seals and dolphins play in the water below the dining room; keep an eye on them from the beach-front lodges (whose guests have included Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden). A cheaper bar menu is also offered.

Carbis Bay Estate, Carbis Bay,St Ives, TR26 2NP, uglybutterfly.co.uk

Billy Bob’s Parlour in Skipton is the best place in the world. You won’t believe this but it’s true. It’s in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales, surrounded by hills and fells and becks and ghylls and other things that just aren’t the same anywhere else in the country. What a diner it is. This is a veritable extravaganza of Americana, from the signage to the typefaces, to the refurbished soda fountain that does cherry coke and raspberry lemonade and cloudy ginger beer, served up in one of those sundae glasses with sherbet all round the rim, like a family-friendly margarita. It’s the sort of diner I thought only existed in Grease, where, for a fleeting moment, Rydell High also looks like the best place in the world, before social pressures and teen pregnancy start to rear their heads. Yes, Billy Bob’s is like Grease, only instead of the bully-driven stratification of the teen experience, it’s 33 flavours of ice cream (all made on site), crispy waffles and steaming pancakes and maple syrup that tastes like it genuinely started life inside a tree. Oh, and a bloody good smash burger.

There may be more sophisticated, fancier restaurants out there. If that’s what you’re after, Hetton’s just up the road, and the Angel’s a bloody dream. If, though, the day calls for a cracking burger, with a side of joy, wrapped up in barnyard frolics, more ice cream than you’ve ever seen, and a cup of coffee that would keep Jack Reacher going all week, then Billy Bob’s is there for you, quietly being the best place in the world.

Calm Slate Farm, Bolton Abbey, Skipton, BD23 6EU, billybobsparlour.com

Among the blue and peach houses in the seaside village of Aldeburgh — quaint but not that quaint, given it’s full of retired spies — is the Suffolk. It comes from George Pell, a name known to Londoners for his work at L’Escargot. Are there such things as daydream catchers? It seems so; leaving Soho, another life beckoned for Pell, who came here, bought an old coaching inn, did it up and now serves great platters of oysters, garlic-sloshed lobsters, twice-baked soufflés and monkfish chops. Pell picks up his seafood locally, knocking on the doors of fishermen’s huts and finding his favourites. The martinis are first-rate; have a couple, gently totter upstairs to the comfortable rooms (from about £135), and wake to the sound of sea rolling on the shingle. Read our full review.

152 High Street, Aldeburgh, IP15 5AQ, the-suffolk.co.uk

Among Wiltshire’s winding lanes is found a three-acre Georgian walled garden, Pythouse. Usually there is a fire crackling. On this might be cooked pigs cheeks or mackerel, vegetable skewers, venison haunches (at £37.50 for four courses, the place is a bargain). Seasonality is taken extremely seriously here, as is sustainability: owners Piers and Sophia Milburn have three stars from the Food Made Good Standard, which is a hard thing to achieve. That aside, guests come here for the tranquillity, for the sunlit afternoons and the candlelit evenings, for dogs snoozing under the tables, for families enjoying themselves. City dwellers might briefly fancy themselves outdoorsy here, especially if glamping.

West Hatch, Tisbury, SP3 6PA, pythousekitchengarden.co.uk

That Raymond Blanc, whose Le Manoir turns 40 this year, has held two Michelin stars since 1985 is an impressive feat in itself; it becomes an astonishing one when remembering that he is entirely self-taught. Le Manoir, now owned by the Belmond group, feels of another time, another country. The sense of occasion is obvious and warming. Luke Selby, formerly of Soho’s Evelyn’s Table, now heads the kitchen: he is an uncommon talent and the fine, delicate French food is exceptional, with many ingredients grown on the grounds. It can be reached in an hour from Marylebone, and the rooms are beautiful. It all costs a small fortune, but they’re delightfully heavy-handed pouring out the glasses of wine, so after a while the financial blow begins to soften. Read our full review.

Church Road, Great Milton, Oxford, OX44 7PD, belmond.com

Pine is genuinely excellent: surprising and reassuring by turns, never less than absolutely bloody lovely. Service is beautifully judged: friendly, informative, and attentive; never oppressive or cloying. And, dare I say it, while it’s not cheap, there is value there. Proper value. very, very special. And the food — every last one of the 16 courses — is gloriously, what-the-hell-did-I-just-eat mad. Chef Ian Waller gleefully says that if the team don’t swear when they first taste a dish, it doesn’t make it onto the menu — and f*** me, it shows. In lesser hands, fermentation and compression can scream “test subject”. Not so here.

Michelin stars were originally doled out based on how far you should travel to eat the food, and by that metric, the single one that Pine currently boasts is nowhere near enough. This is a restaurant worth travelling for, a restaurant worth changing at Crewe for, a restaurant worth asking the cabby if he can stop at a cashpoint on the way for.

Vallum Farm, Military Road, East Wallhouses, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE18 0LL, restaurantpine.co.uk

Hard to imagine a more picturesque setting than overlooking the sea, shingle and sand of Lyme Bay. The owners here are Mary-Lou Sturridge andTony Mackintosh — both of the Groucho in-its-heyday fame (the pair co-founded it) — and their commitment to a joyful time endures. They keep the recipe simple: local fish and meat, classic dishes (prawn cocktail, steak tartare, Dover sole), a heavily-French but fairly-priced wine list. It is not cheap but nor is it expensive (mains are mostly in the £30s, but start at £22). It is all just… right. The chef guest series, where big London names head down to cook (Jeremy Lee of Quo Vadis, Anna Tobias of Café Deco, Abby Lee of Mambow and so on) only adds to its enormous appeal. Rooms seem reasonable at £235.

Cliff Road, Burton Bradstock, Bridport, DT6 4RB, theseasideboardinghouse.com

Midlanders probably wanted to keep Hampton Manor to themselves. Alas, the secret’s out. Once owned by former prime minister Sir Robert Peel, the Warwickshire estate is now home to a Michelin-starred restaurant in Grace & Savour, and a more casual, food-over-fire space in Smoke, which offers an £85 menu alongside interesting, mostly natural wines (if the South African wine El Bandito is available, order it). Guests can stay in the manor house (rooms around £230) — which is grandly old and elegant — or in one of the outbuildings dotted around the grounds. Free wine tastings and an artisan bakery are bonuses. Read our full review.

Shadowbrook Lane, Solihull, B92 0EN, hamptonmanor.com

The Harcourt Arms is the last surviving pub in Stanton Harcourt, a typical Oxfordshire village less than two hours’ drive from London. Run by brothers Will and Olly Oakley, the comforting set-up has a sense of local boozer but with room for more upmarket food, cocktails and finer wines. What is most impressive, though, is their commitment to value for money: starters hardly top a tenner; an excellent steak frites is just £24. Rooms, from £150 a night, include a mighty breakfast made with produce from farmers nearby.

Main Road, Stanton Harcourt, Witney OX29 5RJ, theharcourtarms.com

Though their timbre is different, Yorkshire’s Grantley Hall might rival Le Manoir for the sense of occasion (though it is cheaper; rooms start at about £600 a night). It is an old stately home of a place, inside all ornate wood-panelling and finely detailed cornicing, outside idyllic streams and a Japanese garden. They are not short on eating-and-drinking spots, but the one to go for is Shaun Rankin’s. His kitchen garden makes its way onto the £160 menu, with vegetables gently championed, but elsewhere is a mix of high-lo: beef tea with bread, butter and dripping (heavenly), for instance, and then Dover sole with scallop, oscietra caviar, Champagne and sorrel. One to dress up for.

Grantley Hall, Ripon, HG4 3ET, grantleyhall.co.uk

At five-star Coworth Park — from the Dorchester group, to give an idea of both the standard and the price — is the cleverly-named Woven: chef Adam Smith has laced all sorts of influences together, but also stories too. This is fine-dining in a fine-dining setting, but staff keep it light, and food is plated with finesse. Smith, who made his name at the Ritz, does things like Cornish crab with a Thai green dressing and lemon verbena. Now and then, he adds unusual little twists, though nothing that would scare the horses. Just as well, given Coworth Park is known for its polo fields.

Coworth Park, Sunningdale, SL5 7SE, dorchestercollection.com

The two mysteries of Mark Birchall’s Moor Hall: one, it’s in Lancashire, yet somehow just two-and-a-half hours from Euston, and two, it has a reputation for seriousness, but is in fact rather a laugh. Don’t get it wrong, the food here is as precise as can be, and the place has been named the National Restaurant of the Year twice. But they read each table, lean into whatever mood you find yourself in. The 16th century bar is a looker, while the dining room is more modern, perhaps a little Nordic in style. What comes out is the blockbuster stuff — turbot, lobster, duck — at £125 for lunch and £235 for supper. Ouch. But Moor Hall is for those who seek theatre. These are meals to be remembered elsewhere, at another time, in other expensive dining rooms. Read our full review.

Moor Hall, Prescot Road, Aughton, Ormskirk, L39 6RT, moorhall.com

Updown is an endless summer: it is a retreat, respite, somewhere offering human restoration among its rambling gardens. Oliver Brown and Ruth Leigh run the place: in a conservatory, under vines, they serve Mediterranean-inflected dishes — things like lamb with sweet cipollini onions and artichoke and mint, or hake and mussels cooked in the Italian “acqua pazza” and plated with courgettes and tomatoes. Food is reasonably priced, especially the summer set menu (three courses for £40), while the wonky old farmhouse, where the rooms are, teems with good taste: decent art, stylish fittings. A joy.

Updown Road, Betteshanger, Deal, CT14 0EF, updownfarmhouse.com

Admittedly, this one doesn’t have rooms, but it offers such extraordinary value that it is worth the hassle of sorting out a nearby B&B. The menus (lunch £45, supper £75) are dedicated to daily-caught seafood: chef Mike Naidoo can tell you, down to the name, who caught the stuff and when. He then decides not to mess about too much with it. The result is in many instances flabbergastingly good. Barbecued lobster to dream about, crab dumplings to hazily mumble about, too lost to the memories of them to really find descriptors (can you tell?).

1 Custom House Quay, Weymouth, DT4 8BE, @catchattheoldfishmarket