Conservatory Restaurant at The Nurse's Cottage

Dinner is served seven nights a week in the Conservatory Restaurant, with short breaks for staff holidays, usually in February/March and November. They also welcome pre-booked non-residents to join those staying here for their award-winning breakfast, seven days a week.

They revise the main dinner menu seasonally, offering a mix of house specialities and British classics supplemented by daily specials using fresh local ingredients wherever possible. Much of their meat comes from Sway butcher David West, who has won prizes for his New Forest traditional sausages, served at breakfast alongside eggs from Fluffets Farm at North Gorley. English cheeses are supplied by Julian Rood of Leopard Dairy Products in Iwerne Minster in Dorset, with an emphasis on those from the West Country, and they have been serving Minghella's award-winning ice-cream from the Isle of Wight since they opened in 1992.

Many suppliers are (like them) members of Hampshire Fare, supporting the promotion of local produce. These include the Dolbear family farm at Hazel Copse on the Beaulieu Estate, who have supplied their fruit and vegetables since the earliest days, and the Beaulieu Chocolate Shop, where Trevor Smith hand-crafts the mint ovals and white chocolate truffles that complete dinner there in style.

The Nurse's Cottage Wine Collection features the most highly recommended wines on their 68-bin List. All five red wines, five white, one blush (rosé), one dessert and one Champagne are available in the restaurant by 175ml glass and some of them in halves as well as by the bottle. The Wine List is (as ever) dominated by France (35 of the 68 wines), but 15 other countries are also included (7 others from Europe and 8 from further afield).

There are 10 newcomers to their selection of reds and 7 new whites and every wine has its own tasting notes, which hopefully should encourage an adventurous streak on occasion. They try to advise wherever possible, but they strongly believe that, like food, wine is very much a matter of personal taste and no one wine can please everyone nor match every menu choice.

Hildon Water, a Hampshire company, has been associated with The Nurse's Cottage for nearly thirteen years: both Gently Carbonated and Delightfully Still come from Hildon House between Winchester and Salisbury. They are unusual in making no charge for this high quality mineral water, a policy acknowledged by Hotel & Restaurant magazine in a nationwide survey, which also placed their Wine List in Britain's Top 19!

The restaurant is fully accessible to people with impaired mobility.