‘So relaxing and homely, but with style and much attention to detail’, Emma and Tim Ford’s ‘absolutely delightful’, ‘tranquil’ restaurant-with-rooms is the ‘complete package’, say Guide readers this year. The ‘handsome old’ Georgian country house is set in ‘peaceful, secluded gardens’ including a towering cedar tree where guests take afternoon tea. ‘I couldn’t believe it’s only a mile from Yeovil but in the depths of the country.’ Acclaimed service is courtesy of an ‘attentive hostess’ and ‘pleasant well-trained staff’. ‘Lovely’, airy bedrooms have a country house feel; comfortable beds, sash windows, home-made shortbread, and ‘free-range coat-hangers’, although ‘some guests might baulk at the number of scatter cushions’ (one reader counted 13). In the crisply smart restaurant, the ‘amazing cuisine’ of Tim Ford and son Olly uses seasonal, mainly local, ingredients for dishes such as Cornish red mullet fillet, basil-crushed new potatoes, saffron sauce; saddle of wild roe deer, beetroot purée, savoy cabbage, rösti. The acclaimed wine list offers exceptional wines by the glass. ‘Our first visit and not our last.’ (Mary Coles, Ross Urquhart, Zara Elliot, Michael Cross, Lindsay Hunt)