Michelin Star Restaurants Ludlow: Our Dining Experience
There are 5 restaurants on the Michelin Guide in Ludlow. This historic town has won many accolades for its food, and we recently visited it as part of our trip to Rest & Wild. If you’d like to learn more about Micheline star restaurants Ludlow and see our dining experience at Mortimers, where we had an 8-course taster menu, this blog is for you!
If you’re looking for a place to stay while you’re enjoying the amazing food of Ludlow, checkout the link below:
The Five Michelin Star Restaurants in Ludlow
Michelin’s Red Guide is a restaurant guide with a global reach, and its star system is considered the most reliable international benchmark of excellence in the restaurant industry. The guide offers both an extensive list of restaurants and helpful advice on how to find them, as well as an online reservation service that enables users to book tables at more than 20,000 restaurants worldwide.
In this section, we will explore the five Michelin star restaurants in Ludlow before going into more depth on our dining experience at Mortimers.
Old Downton Lodge Ludlow
The surrounding landscape around The Old Downton Lodge is expansive and enriched by a combination of medieval and Georgian buildings, with some even dating back as far as the 13th century.
The dining experience is in an 18th-century farmhouse with views across the Herefordshire countryside. The cook at the helm of this restaurant has been cooking for four decades and does so with great care.
Also offering a taster menu, the Old Downton Lodge is renowned for its homely feel delivered via the barns. This is matched by its excellent food, which will leave you satisfied! They also have an extensive wine list, which will have something for every taste and price range.
French Pantry Ludlow
If you love French food, you need to book into this little piece of France located right in the heart of Ludlow town centre. The bistro has a very inviting ambience. The furniture and decor might not seem too modernised, but it definitely has that homey touch. There is also a classic French menu of hearty dishes and pastries to accompany an espresso or tea.
Took over by Olivier, who was a former chef between 2011 and 2017, in 2020, you will not be disappointed by the French Pantry’s menu, which boasts:
Fresh and tasty starters including Smoked Eel, Chicken Liver Parfait, Scallops and Escargots
Incredibly well-balanced mains which include Moules Marinieres, Sea Bass, Filet Of Cod, Coq Au Vin and Pork ‘’A La Normande’’
Even better desserts which you just have to save space for, including Chocolate Brownie (Robyn’s favourite), Brioche & Butter Pudding and Lemon & Lime Posset
Forelles Fine Dining Ludlow (at Fishmore Hall)
At Forelles, you can find attractively presented dishes that use local produce and modern techniques. This includes some unusual flavour combinations, such as salt and vinegar beetroot. Their dinner menu is small but regularly changes, and they have a team that puts meticulous detail into everything they do - which is what you want from a restaurant on the Michelin Guide.
One of their goals is to source the majority of food from within a 30-mile radius so that they can offer you the freshest food around. Unfortunately, as with all of the restaurants in land-locked Ludlow, they cannot source fish locally, so instead get the majority of it from the Isle of Skye and Brixham.
The Charlton Arms Ludlow
This pub sits on the banks of the River Teme and is owned by Claude Bosi’s brother Cedric and his wife, Amy. The Charlton Arms’ menus offer something for everyone, and the carefully prepared dishes are good value, flavourful yet affordable.
As you would expect with an independently run and family-owned restaurant, that homely feel comes through on every single dish, with the menu offering:
To start: Fish Soup, Twice Baked Cheese Souffle, Crispy Ham Hock & Mozzarella, and Maple & Scottish Scallops (complimented with Asian Spiced Pork Belly & Burnt Apple Puree)
For main: Gluten-Free Battered Haddock, Stuffed Free Range Chicken Breast, Stone Bass, Dressed Crab, Bacon Cheeseburger and a 32 Days Dry Aged Uk Sirloin Steak
Last but not least: Passionfruit Cheesecake & Mango Sorbet, Vegan Apple Tarte Tatin, Chocolate Fondant and Sticky Toffee Pudding
The Charlton Arms hotel rooms also aren’t too shabby - meaning you can visit Michelin star restaurants Ludlow in style.
Mortimers Ludlow
And finally, the Michelin star restaurant Ludlow that we visited, Mortimers. Below we have given this restaurant a complete review, including images of what we ate and how we found the whole dining experience.
If you are visiting Ludlow and want to treat yourself, we would highly recommend going to this restaurant (located just off Corve Street) and trying the tasting menu. As you will see below, it was beautifully presented, tasted excellent and wasn’t too expensive compared to some of the Michelin Star restaurants we have visited in the past.
Ludlow’s Hidden Gem - The Michelin Starred Mortimer’s Restaurant
It was our first time at Ludlow, and we were keen to explore what it had to offer. We started with drinks at the bar before being seated for dinner in their dining room, which has an intimate atmosphere perfect for romantic evenings or catching up with friends over a glass of wine or two.
When we sat down and browsed the menu, it was clear from the beginning exactly what we were going to go for - the taster menu. Read on to find out what our experience was like at this Michelin star restaurant Ludlow.
Mortimers Ludlow Menu
We went for the taster menu at Mortimers - in our opinion, if you’re going to go to a Michelin Star restaurant, you want to get all the tastes that the place has to offer and get the whole experience. For us, the combination of scallops, duck, trout and beef, followed by a chocolate dessert, is precisely what we’re about and was worth £68 per person.
Unfortunately, Henry was driving, so we didn’t go for the option with the wine pairing, but it looks like we’ll have to do another visit to try it out!
To see the full menu that we experienced, check out the below:
One thing that we didn’t realise was the “snacks” on the first course of the menu was actually two separate dishes. These snacks were a bread selection with three different butter options; salted butter, olive butter and parsley butter followed by a selection of cheese tart, fish paste and croquette (above).
The scallops were first to arrive, coming with gazpacho, aubergine puree and ratatouille; we weren’t sure what to expect.
We found the sauce was the perfect combo of sweet to match the flavour of the pan-fried scallops, which went really well with the tiny pepper - which you can see in the image below.
Next came the Duck, served with ballotine, pastrami, cherries and brioche. One thing we absolutely loved about this was how well the sweet cherry flavours balanced out the gamey taste of the duck. While Robyn wasn’t a fan of the pate, this left plenty of leftovers for Henry to polish off! Again, exactly what we wanted from a Michelin star restaurant Ludlow.
The 4th course was trout, paired with baby beets and horseradish creme fresh - the whole theme of this course was pairing the beautifully delicate fish taste from the trout with the relatively harsh sweet taste of the beets.
This was probably Henry’s favourite dish, as it was relatively filling. Still, the trout was perfectly cooked, and there were some unusual tastes that you expect when coming to a Michelin star restaurant Ludlow. Such taste included a meringue (below), which went surprisingly well with the trout!
After the sea trout came the beef dish, accompanied by confit onion mash (which was absolutely amazing), shallots and baby leek.
We would say that this dish was the ideal dish to finish off with before the desserts came, as it filled us up and left us with that meaty feeling that needs a pallet cleanser to follow (which came in the form of a sorbet!).
As a massive fan of Sunday lunches and an explorer of Michelin star restaurants (check out our coverage of Michelin star restaurants in Swansea), this course encapsulates everything you expect from a Michelin restaurant. It was perfectly cooked, with a rich sauce and a side which complements everything the dish is about.
We didn’t opt for the cheese option, as it was an extra £12.95, and we’re not cheese fans, which meant the desserts were:
A strawberry sorbet, paired with lavender cream and pistachio
A chocolate “thing” (below), which was basically a chocolate shortbread, topped with cream and a chocolate piece, paired with salted caramel ice cream, another chocolate piece and a walnut. It was really, really good.
Mortimers Dining Experience, Food Service & Atmosphere
When you walk into Mortimers, you are greeted with an elegant (something) century dining room with oak panelled walls. It almost feels like you are visiting your wealthy family relatives who live in an old-style feature house rather than a Michelin star restaurant.
There is a waiting lounge-type area near the front of Mortimers, followed by a dining area at the back. At first impression, we thought the furniture and decorations were outdated. However, given the age of the building and its history, it makes sense to keep the Mortimers restaurant following the same theme.
The lady that showed us to our table was lovely and attentive. The service overall was informative and very formal. One of the waitresses even gave us a list of taxi numbers we could use the following day to watch the champions league final and have a drink. This shows going the extra mile you would expect from a Michelin star restaurant Ludlow.
We noticed that the drinks menu was limited and did not offer any beers on draft. For a Michelin star restaurant, you expect to be able to order most drinks depending on your preferred choice, but at Mortimers, it was limited. As Henry mentioned previously, he was driving, so he only had one 1 drink which he was disappointed by.
The three things we probably would have changed about the experience were the decor (young people want a fresh interior), a more extensive beer list (including at least 2 draft beers) and a bit more class with the service. One of the waiters pointed to each part of our dishes to explain what it was, and his finger got a bit too close to our food for our liking!
Michelin Star Restaurants Ludlow Conclusion
This blog gives a complete guide to the five restaurants in Ludlow which have made it onto the Michelin Guide.
We also gave a complete run-through of our experience at Mortimers, one of the best Michelin star restaurants Ludlow.
If you have any questions about any of the above or would like your restaurant, hotel, or product to be featured on our blog, then feel free to get in touch. We’re always looking for new places to try and will continually be updating our blogs, such as our guide to the top romantic places to visit in the UK.
