The story
Le Champignon Sauvage is the Cheltenham restaurant of Helen and David, a duo whose cooking has earned them a Michelin star and the title of Chef of the Year 2014. The Guardian’s Marina O’Loughlin awarded the restaurant a rare 10/10 for food – the first time she gave her maximum score. The Good Food Guide also rates it 8/10, and the restaurant is consistently named among the UK’s top dining destinations.
The kitchen focuses on refined modern cuisine, with a menu that changes regularly. Diners can choose from an à la carte lunch and dinner, or a set menu (two courses £43, three £50) – a more accessible way to experience the cooking. The full menu offers two courses at £74, three at £92, or four courses including cheese and dessert at £107. A downloadable wine list complements the meal.
Helen and David have also published three award-winning cookbooks, the second of which, dessert, won second place in the World Gourmande Best Cookery Book awards. Their third book, Beyond Essence, was met with critical acclaim.
The dining room is calm and unhurried, with an emphasis on letting the food speak. The restaurant is open Wednesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner, and closes for a brief summer holiday each year. Reservations are best made by phone for last-minute availability, or via the online form.
Le Champignon Sauvage remains a benchmark for modern cuisine in the Cotswolds – precise, personal, and quietly exceptional.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
High quality cooking
It's a tribute to the serene longevity of the Champignon that reporters typically begin their accounts by reckoning up in decades, rather than years, how long they have been coming here. David and Helen Everitt-Matthias are well into their fourth decade of operations in the Montpellier district of Regency Cheltenham, and their restaurant still radiates energy and commitment. In an understated dining room – its sandy and stony tones offset with splashes of contemporary art – a highly burnished Anglo-French culinary repertoire continues to dazzle, with all the extras one might expect, from extraordinarily creative nibbles to serried regiments of petits fours. Prawn ravioli with wilted spinach in lemongrass bisque kicked things off in fine style at an August dinner, an outrider for Cotswold white chicken with charred aubergine and girolles, and a dish of plaice with celeriac purée and rocket. There is always a neat balance between flavours that come at you full-throttle straight off, and others that develop more slowly and subtly, but still land perfectly. Combinations can be the last word in daring, as in a starter of pigeon with black pudding, chocolate ganache, cherries and radicchio, to the extent that one can only shudder at what would happen to them in a less assured kitchen. By contrast, other ideas work with the grain of ingredients and tradition, perhaps for a main course of miso-glazed monkfish with barley broth, cockles and samphire, or glorious chump of lamb with romaine lettuce, peas and sheep's curd. That August dinner ended with poached peach, yoghurt sorbet and honeycomb – at least for those whose heads were not turned by the two dozen or so fabulous cheeses – while others will hear of nothing but bitter chocolate and pistachio délice with positively luminous pistachio ice cream. The fixed-price menus at both lunch and dinner are an amenity for which Cheltonians give thanks. As for wine, the list is a carefully curated and quality-conscious collection with house Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at £28 (or £8 a glass), and markups that city-dwellers might find surprisingly kind. An extensive listing of half-bottles has long been one of its attractions.
3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
Location
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