St Michaels

St Mick's House, as its web address affectionately has it, is a 17th-century listed building opposite the village church in a thoroughly engaging Cotswold setting. Done in tones of dark brown and white with a woodblock floor, the restaurant is a minimally adorned but comfortable space where the ambitious modern British cooking develops with the seasons. Opening the proceedings might be Scottish razor clams with trompettes and spring onions in a white wine velouté, ahead of appealingly traditional pot-roast of local partridge with a ballottine of the leg meat in game jus with crab apple jelly and bread sauce. The hard-to-resist dessert consists of little doughnuts filled with chocolate truffle, served with a miniaturised Irish coffee and apple and hawberry sorbet.