Rosemary Restaurant, The

This most English looking hotel in the charming village of Stanton Fitzwarren boasts an excellent and extremely authentic Japanese restaurant, The Rosemary.

Execution of all the expected dishes, like sushi and sashimi, is top notch, putting it well up in class among the best Japanese restaurants in Britain. The very Japanese menu offers many other treats, and the place comes highly recommended by guides and food critics, including the influential Matthew Fort, the former restaurant critic of The Guardian, who wrote.

"I would never pretend to be a leading authority on Japanese food, but if the evidence of my taste buds and pleasure centres is anything to go by, I'd say that the food coming out of Rosemary's kitchen is among the classier Japanese grub in Britain. It's little things that we noticed. The daughter was particularly smitten with the yakitori, which was sweet, dainty and tender within the glossy sauce into which it had been dipped, a distinctly better class version of this old favourite.

The soup with the udon noodles was very refined, allowing the delicate flavour of the mountain vegetables - bracken and fern shoots - and the omelette to shine. This reappeared cold in my bento box, providing a curious, but utterly delicious, surprise. Before that came the tongue, salt-grilled, which increased that organ's already marked density, and made it almost crisp on the outside, its concentrated flavour edged with salt.

And in the eight compartments of my bento box was some of the finest sashimi and sushi I have had for years; a notable fillet of grilled eel, the richness of the flesh offset, oddly, by the sweetness of its glaze; textbook tempura; and a rather more gutsy stir-fried sirloin of beef with peppers and a mild chilli sauce. The contrasts between these dishes was nicely judged."

All 86 bedrooms in the hotel are equipped with en-suite facilities, direct dial telephone and satellite TV.

For more information, including menus, do have a look at their Website.