Embedded firmly in the Wye valley, Chris and Kirsty Harrod’s Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms again delighted readers’ taste buds in 2018. Once located – ‘above a hamlet’s single track road, only signed once you’re there’ – it offers guests a fine welcome: ‘Lazarus and his Salvador Dalí moustache greeted us with enthusiasm, showed us our room and returned with warm, meltingly delicious Welsh cake.’ ‘Well-equipped’ contemporary bedrooms are ‘functional rather than overtly luxurious’, with ‘good-quality bedding, enormous bath and walk-in shower, organic toiletries and very good tea from a Cornish estate’. Chris’s cooking, however, is the true star. The veteran of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons exploits the verdant locale to forage for ingredients, combining them with local produce to spectacular effect, perhaps Huntsham Farm sucking pig, caramelised celeriac, pear, lamb’s sorrel. ‘The food is absolutely delicious, the concepts brilliant. My wife declared the poached pear with buttermilk, maritime pine yogurt crumble to be the finest dessert she’d tasted.’ Good food comes with ‘knowledgeable, efficient and very entertaining service: a great meal’. (David Hampshire)