Our top local food spots
Guests ask us where to eat more than they ask us anything else, so here is the list we actually give them: the dining room worth dressing for, a pub garden with a view of the marshes, breakfast and bakeries in Holt, and a few worth getting in the car for.
For more information please email stay@kelling-estate.co.uk or call the Estate Office on 01263 712202
Meadowsweet, Holt
The occasion meal of the list, and ten minutes away in Holt. One Michelin star, a small dining room and a tasting menu built on Norfolk produce, with a wine list chosen to go with it rather than to impress. Worth booking a long way ahead, and worth planning the rest of the day around.
The Dun Cow, Salthouse
A mile east of us, and the pub meal with the view. The garden sits on a rise above the coast road with the benches pointed north over the marshes to the sea, which is where everybody wants to be on a long evening. Proper pub food, local ales and one of the better sunsets in Norfolk thrown in.
The Owl Tea Rooms, Holt
Start the day here. A green awning and a yellow front on White Lion Street, a walled garden out the back for when the weather allows it, and a kitchen that bakes its own through the night. Breakfast is the reason to come, and the counter on the way out is the reason most people leave with more than they meant to. Ten minutes from the Estate.
Two Magpies Bakery, Holt
The dark blue shopfront a little further along, and the right answer to the middle of the morning. Bread, pastries and cakes baked daily, good coffee, a few tables on the pavement to watch Holt go past from, and a queue at the counter that moves quickly. Easy to call in for a cinnamon bun and come out with a loaf for the cottage as well.
Eric’s Pizza, Holt
The one for all the family. Slow-fermented dough, stretched by hand and cooked in a wood oven, in a green-fronted shop on Fish Hill in the middle of Holt. Eat in if there is a table, or take it back to the cottage if there is not, which on a night when nobody wants to cook is arguably the better plan.
Holt Fish Bar
Fish and chips, done the way you want them done. A family business on Shirehall Plain since 1973, three generations in, with a proper sit-down room behind the counter and a separate fryer for gluten free. Nothing about it has been reinvented, which is the whole point of it.
The Gunton Arms
A little further afield and well worth the drive. A pub set in a deer park near Thorpe Market, about half an hour east, with the herd usually somewhere in view. Big cuts of meat cooked over an open fire in the middle of the Elk Room, and an art collection on the walls that would not look out of place in a gallery.
The Suffield Arms
The Gunton Arms’ near neighbour, a few minutes away beside Gunton station and under the same ownership. Plain red brick outside and anything but inside: gold ceilings, dark panelling and long communal tables, with cooking as serious as the setting. Also the easier of the two to get a table at on short notice.
The Maltings, Weybourne
Our closest of all, a few minutes west along the coast road at Weybourne. A flint hotel with the kind of sitting rooms you end up staying in longer than you planned, and a kitchen doing everything from coffee and scones to a full dinner. Good for a walk along the shingle and lunch afterwards without moving the car twice.