The story
Tucked just around the corner from Bournemouth’s sandy South coast beaches, Restaurant Roots is a relaxed, intimate tasting menu restaurant that has earned a recommendation in the Michelin Guide (2026). Since opening in 2015, it has also collected three AA Rosettes and a spot in the Good Food Guide’s best of Dorset. The dining room is small, elegant and comfortable, with service from a knowledgeable team that puts guests at ease.
The cooking at Roots is unapologetically flavour-focused. Dishes are simple – sometimes built from unusual combinations – to let the beautiful local ingredients shine. The Times’ Tony Turnbull, normally wary of tasting menus, admitted he “totally understands it here”. AA Inspector Paul Hackett calls the food “inventive but uncomplicated, thoughtful and confidently constructed and presented”.
Menus change monthly and are offered for both lunch and evening. The evening tasting menu (from £99 per person) might start with house-marinated olives, a quail’s egg with spinach and smoked almond, and a truffle sourdough bread dumpling with Tunworth soft cheese. A “Countryside Supper” course brings rye bread, cultured butter, cured meats and home-smoked salmon. Main courses such as quail with New Forest asparagus, morel mushrooms and wild garlic lead to a lemon and blueberry dessert with coconut and lemongrass. Optional extras include seared scallop with Thai curry flavours and a chef’s cheeseboard.
A vegetarian evening menu mirrors the structure with plant-based alternatives – crispy banana blossom, plant-based “chick’n” – and a separate lunch menu is available Friday and Saturday (from £69 per person). Sunday roasts are also served, with a choice of starters, mains like fillet of beef or lamb, and puddings such as bitter chocolate millionaires trifle.
The wine list has been built to complement chef Jan’s creations, mixing classics with bottles from smaller artisan winemakers. Wine flights (50ml measures per course) are offered with the tasting menus, giving guests the chance to discover new favourites alongside each dish.
The overall experience is one of relaxed precision – a place where modern cuisine is treated with seriousness but without pretension.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
The location in a little parade of shops in the Southbourne district of Bournemouth may lead you to expect a run-of-the-mill neighbourhood bistro, but Roots has rather loftier ambitions than that. Its pint-sized dimensions and simple-enough decor, with sea scenes on exposed brick walls, belie the wide-angle culinary lens of Jan Bretschneider. That's abundantly evident from the off, with a serving of sumptuously textured rye bread with various spreadable toppings – a fond wave to the proprietor's German heritage. To follow, expect a range of dishes that look distinctive, even occasionally bizarre, but that mobilise layers of flavour of unexpected subtlety and impact. Kombu potato with cream cheese in seaweed beurre blanc might precede a pairing of scallop and oxtail, powered up with horseradish and salsify in red wine dressing. Another successful twinning, of halibut and lobster, comes in massaman curry guise, full of the sweetness of carrot and passion fruit, while the principal course on the taster could be as old-school as beef en croûte with parsnip in garlicky bourguignon. Bretschneider's signature ‘jelly and ice cream’ finisher might well be scented with winter truffle and boozed up with Tokaji, but the superb cheese selection is worth saving a little capacity for too. A relatively compact wine list is served with enormous enthusiasm by one of the most engaging front-of-house managers on the whole South Coast.
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