Restaurants in Lincolnshire: The Good Food Awards
Congratulations this month to our local business as we reveal the winners of our Good Food Awards for 2025. Back in our October edition we invited our readers to vote for their favourite restaurants and food & drink businesses across Lincolnshire, and now… the results are in!
Restaurant of the Year 2025
The White Hart, Lincoln
Congratulations to Lincoln’s White Hart, the Bailgate hotel that reopened in October 2023 with a new, upmarket look and a brand-new restaurant in the form of Antlers. Its refurbishment was not for the faint-hearted, as a 49-bedroom hotel with a Grade II listing right in the heart of a busy city which is also located in a conservation area between not one, but two scheduled monuments, Lincoln Castle and Lincoln Cathedral.
Developer Andrew Long has made a success of the hotel’s refurbishment, and General Manager Paul Noble leads a team committed to offering quality dining and accommodation at The White Hart. Only a couple of years after the hotel’s initial refurbishment, The White Hart has added No7 Castle Hill and Leigh Pemberton House for guests as a luxury accommodation option, and it has launched its Aquitaine Spa.
Crucially, dining at The White Hart has also gone from strength to strength even during the past couple of years with well-known Lincoln chef Billy Frost joining the team as Head Chef. The hotel’s Gibson Bar and Colonnade Cocktail Lounge are elegant, but Antlers’ offering of food and drink includes a great à la carte menu, plus tasting menus and afternoon tea. Ingredients are sourced from within around 30 miles, except where there would be a concession either to quality or consistency, with names like Wards of Ruskington, Redhill Farm and Lincoln’s Vines Bakery being examples of local suppliers.
Sunday lunch at Antlers is remarkably good, everything is made in-house and plates are cleanly presented with an emphasis on flavour, not fuss.
Over the past 12 months the hotel was named Lincolnshire’s only AA 4 Silver Star hotel, and it was accepted into the Good Food Guide. It already holds an AA rosette for the quality of its dining and we really wouldn’t be surprised if it was to receive a second one.
Other Recommendations: Winteringham Fields remains a much-loved restaurant, as Lincolnshire’s only Michelin-starred establishment. The George of Stamford provides traditional coaching inn comfort, whilst Gareth Bartram’s Louth-based Auction House restaurant has star quality. In Lincoln, The Jew’s House Restaurant is a beautiful location in which to enjoy Gavin Aitkenhead’s cuisine and a warm welcome from Samantha Tomkins.
Café & Bar of the Year 2025
Grain Store & Farm Shop Cafè, Doddington Hall
Lincoln residents are fortunate that they don’t have to travel very far before finding themselves in the countryside. Surprisingly, the 1,900-acre country estate of Doddington Hall is only five miles or so from the centre of Lincoln. The Elizabethan hall is home to Claire and James Birch who became custodians of Doddington Hall in 2006.
As well as walled gardens and formal landscaping, the estate has a successful farm shop with café, plus quality retailers like its country clothing store, bike shop and Doddington at Home.
In 2024, the estate opened its Grain Store Café, Restaurant and Bar which offers very good daytime dining from breakfast to lunch, and also opens for evening service on Friday and Saturday.
The Farm Shop Café and Grain Store are both powered by the estate, including the Wilder Doddington nature recovery project, a driving force of the project is a herd of rare breed and pasture-fed Lincoln Red cattle, their low stocking rate allows biodiversity to build and stores carbon in soils and vegetation.
Lincoln Red beef, locally shot game, fruit and vegetables grown in the kitchen garden, and the best locally sourced produce are a theme across the menus.
Recommendations include the very good Lincolnshire breakfast, pancakes in the Farm Shop Café or an absolutely wonderful Sunday lunch in the Grain Store, as well as good ethically sourced and locally roasted coffee, and homemade cakes.
But the real story here is that both the Farm Shop Café and the Grain Store work together to provide a great place to enjoy anything from morning coffee and lunch to seasonal specials, offering something for everyone.
What’s more, the farm shop serves as an ambassador for the best local food producers and really helps to reset the relationship we have with food, from field to fork.
Other Reader Recommendations: Stokes High Bridge Café and Stokes at The Lawn offer great daytime dining and, of course, great coffee. Woodhall Spa’s Kitchenetta is small but brilliant. Bunty’s Tea Room is a reader favourite, as is Grayz Tea Room in the Bail, whilst Sleaford’s Tablez Bistro and Boston Lock Café are good options for brunch and morning coffee.
Best Restaurant with Rooms 2025
Pig & Whistle, Healing
Traditionally, the phrase Restaurant with Rooms was indicative of quality restaurants with a limited number of bedrooms for overnight guests. However, its meaning has evolved a little to indicate destination restaurants, such as Healing Manor Hotel. The place was taken over by Steven & Charlotte Bennett in 2018, who purchased the place in 2023. Steven is known as The Lincolnshire Chef and has a great reputation in the county, laser-focused on producing great dishes. Charlotte, meanwhile, is wonderful at managing ‘the business stuff.’ The two both have an eye for detail though, and they have created a great restaurant (offering two AA rosette dining; the tasting menu is highly recommended) with 36 bedrooms offering excellent accommodation.
Other Reader Recommendations: Washingborough Hall Hotel, Lincoln; DoubleTree by Hilton; Petwood Hotel, Woodhall Spa.
Best International Dining Restaurant 2025
San Pietro, Scunthorpe
For a proper taste of the Mediterranean, look no further than San Pietro and the husband-and-wife duo of Pietro and Michelle Catalano, founders of San Pietro, as featured in this edition. Raised in Sicily, Pietro’s food is an authentic reflection of the area, with specialist ingredients imported and olive oil sourced from the family’s own farm in Villalba. Everything is made in-house from pasta to bread to ice creams and sorbets; presentation is beautiful and the place itself is a great setting, located within a former mill, with a stylish boutique hotel adjacent to the restaurant and a terrace for summer dining, complete with an outdoor kitchen. Our recommendation is the new Sicilian Lunch/Dinner Experience, although the Menu del Giorno offers great-value dining too.
Other Reader Recommendations: Olé Olé, Lincoln, is a favourite tapas restaurant; Lincoln’s Castle View offers authentic Indian cuisine.
Best Food Producer or Retailer 2025
Myers Bakery & Deli
Lincolnshire is known as the county that feeds the country, so it stands to reason that there is some exceptional produce grown or made in the county. Lincolnshire sausages, haslet and chine are all notable examples, alongside cheese, vegetables and cereal crops. Lincolnshire’s Plum Loaf is another example, and arguably its greatest ambassador is Myers Bakery in Horncastle. The company was established in 1901 by Charles Myers, and today Rob and Marie are the fifth generation of the family to produce the moist, fruity teatime treat enjoyed cold or toasted, plain, with melted butter or even a slice of Poacher cheese and apple. The company today makes around 5,000 plum loaves each week and is stocked by 50 retailers, as well as being via the company’s own website and at its café and deli.
Other Reader Recommendations: Mountains Boston Sausage is one of the county’s most popular and best butchers. Doddington Hall’s farm shop is especially well regarded among readers.
Best Drinks Producer 2025
Tipplemill Distillery
Tipplemill Distillery has proved popular with readers in the Best Drinks Producer category of this year’s awards. Siblings Lily and James Craven are fifth-generation custodians of their family farm at Sutterton near Boston, and as well as their usual cereal, potato and oilseed rape crops, also produce an exceptional London Dry Gin which took Best Overall Gin at the World Spirits Awards in 2023. Among the botanicals used in the company’s gin are sweet fennel, and elderflower from the farm’s hedgerows, but the base spirit of the product is made using grain harvested straight from the family’s fields, and milled under stone at nearby Moulton Windmill. The result is an exceptional product with quality and provenance as well as sustainability at its heart.
Other Reader Recommendations: Belvoir Fruit Farm is always highly praised in our awards, as is Batemans Brewery, Stokes ground coffee, The Lincoln Tea & Coffee Company’s loose-leaf and bagged tea.