In this current climate where the restaurant and hospitality industry seems as volatile as ever – and so many venues are reported to be closing each year – it can be difficult to find a favourite place for food.
Awards such as The Good Food Guide Awards can be great at highlighting local and faraway places to try, as well as celebrating our local talented chefs and the dishes they create. The 2025 edition of the awards are this year in partnership with OpenTable and will be taking place on February 3 at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in central London. They’re set to be hosted by broadcaster and former Blue Peter presenter, Richard Bacon.
And the shortlist for this year’s awards have just been unveiled, with an array of local talent right here in the West Country. Here’s a list of the Bristol and Somerset restaurants and chefs shortlisted for an award this year…
Dongnae, Bristol
Address: 5-7 Chandos Road, Redland, BS6 6PG
Awards shortlisted for: Kyu Jeong Jeon and Duncan Robertson are up for the award for ‘Chef to Watch’ this year
The team behind popular Korean restaurant Bokman in Cotham opened the doors to their newest venture, Dongnae, on Chandos Road, back in September 2024. The new restaurant takes its name from the Korean word meaning ‘neighbourhood’, and the team says that this conveys the ‘laid-back atmosphere and sense of community’ diners will find here.
Kyu Jeong Jeon and Duncan Robertson, the chef owners of Bokman and Dongnae, say that this new venture is set to ‘raise the bar of Korean cooking in the UK even higher’, with a ‘refined menu’ that draws inspiration from Kyu’s upbringing in Korea, and their time spent living in Seoul as a family.
Kyu and Duncan had been working on the concept and menu for more than two years prior to its opening, with the aim of ‘pushing the fermentation elements of their dishes and creating even more Korean staples from scratch’, including artisanal doenjang, gochujang and makgeolli (Korean rice ‘beer’). The team create menus that feature ‘plenty of variety’ and consist of different types and price points to allow greater accessibility for diners.
Wilsons, Bristol
Address: 24 Chandos Road, Redland, BS6 6PF
Awards shortlisted for: Best Value Set Menu
Back in June last year Wilsons, which is usually featured on many a top list and recommendation, was listed among the top 100 restaurants in the UK in the National Restaurant Awards. Also situated on Chandos Road in Redland, Wilsons was founded in 2016 by partners Jan Ostle and Mary Wilson and boasts a 24-cover restaurant and a two-acre market garden from which it sources many of its own produce.
Each week, the Wilsons team write a menu that is nearly entirely based on what is to be harvested that week and what the team has preserved earlier in the year. Home-grown produce is supplemented by high-quality ingredients sourced from a small network of like-minded producers, and in keeping with its neighbourhood location, the 24-cover restaurant is described as ‘extremely affordable especially given the effort that goes into its growing and sourcing’.
What’s more, in 2022 the pair launched a bakery two doors from the restaurant, called Wilson’s Bread Shop. Here they serve up home-baked breads, patisseries and desserts, hot drinks and surplus fruit and vegetables from the restaurant’s market garden, with the aim of providing local people with ‘outstanding local produce’.
Osip, Somerset
Address: 25 Kingsettle Hill, Hardway, Bruton, BA10 0LN
Awards shortlisted for: Restaurant of the Year, Drinks List of the Year
Described as a ‘farm-to-table restaurant’, Osip in Bruton is situated in a 300-year-old country inn, on the brink of a pine forest. It boasts four guest bedrooms, opening soon, so you could roll out of bed and into the dining room for a set tasting menu that ‘goes big’ on ingredients grown on the restaurant’s own farm.
The lunch menu costs £95 and features things like Jerusalem artichoke, Orkney scallop, roasted chicken juices and treacle and ale sourdough with kefir butter, as well as an ‘intriguing’ pudding of winter roots, bergamot and pine nut ice creams. Osip, its fruit and veg plots and sister wine bar and bistro, The Old Pharmacy, are the work of chef patron Merlin Labron Johnson who got a Michelin star when he was just 24, at a former venue, Portland.
It’s up against the gold and glitz of The Ritz Restaurant in London, as well as the influential St John (Smithfield), also in London, for the Restaurant of the Year gong.
Briar, Somerset
Address: 1 High Street, Bruton, BA10 0AB
Awards shortlisted for: Best New Restaurant, Chef to Watch (Sam Lomas)
Another West Country restaurant describing itself as a ‘farm-to-table’ venue is Briar, also in Bruton. This restaurant comes from former River Cottage alumni and Great British Menu 2022 finalist Sam Lomas – he also happens to be up for the Chef to Watch award, too.
Briar is in the old ironmonger’s shop at hotel Number One and the menu is ‘super seasonal’ and what the team call, “unfussy” – from Westcombe cheddar gougeres, wild garlic capers to smoked pork sausage, cider mustard and Somerset apple cake, butterscotch and clotted cream. Stay at the hotel and you’ll be able to try breakfast too – think compotes and soft boiled eggs.