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Royal Mail Hotel

With its beautifully crafted, brilliantly conceived, locally focused dégustation dining experience, The Royal Mail is one of the country’s must-do culinary pilgrimages. The improved but still prosaic dining room keeps first impressions muted, but excellent staff and a huge, eye-wateringly good wine list quickly raise expectations. These are met and often surpassed as the 10 or so courses arrive in well-timed, petal- and leaf-strewn succession. Eel, smoked and dehydrated to resemble paper, is teamed with beef tendon and eggplant. Chicken and scampi share space with buckwheat and sea lettuce. Duck is paired with fig and kohlrabi; eggs with slippery jack mushrooms and yeast. “Fallen Fruit” – a sculptural dessert of apples, almond and caramel – takes fruit from the Royal Mail’s orchard and turns it, like the whole experience here, into something unforgettable.