The Best UK Restaurant Openings Outside of London in 2025

London’s restaurant scene was a thrill a minute in 2025, with barely a breather between openings, closings, revamps and new menus. But outside of the capital’s gravitational pull, there was plenty happening – unleashing a bounty of excuses to venture beyond the M25. From a seaside spot where local seafood reflects is cooked through an Italian-Brazilian lens to an 18th-century coaching inn doing elevated classics (including Yorkshire puddings filled with braised beef shin) and a tapas bar in a beachfront gallery, here are the best of the UK’s new openings outside of London for 2025.

For more guides to the best of London in 2025, read our list of this year's best new restaurants and best new bars – plus our team's favourite dishes.

This year, Newquay’s storied Headland hotel became home to the re-hatched version of Adam Handling’s sustainability-focused British restaurant Ugly Butterfly, previously found further south in Carbis Bay. Its grand new setting, with widescreen views across Fistral Bay, inspired a more elevated take on the Ugly Butterfly concept, but one still driven by Handling’s zero-waste approach. Seasonally led and using produce sourced from across the south-west, the menu veers from the simple (Porthilly oysters) to the conceptual (a dish named Mother features celeriac, dates and a salted egg yolk) and is paired with one of Cornwall’s most extensive wine lists.

The self-proclaimed “little tapas bar hidden in a gallery on the edge of the sea” came courtesy of the team behind St Leonards-on-Sea favourite Bayte and occupies a prime sea-view section of the Hastings Contemporary. It functions as a relaxed cafe by day and a warmly lit restaurant by night, taking its cues from the fuss-free tavernas of Spain and Greece to serve dishes such as sobrasada, tortilla and squid with salt cod rice. Its all-day appeal (it opens at 11am for coffee) has quickly made Coquina a Hastings must-visit. The gallery’s not bad, either.

Meaning “tide” in Portuguese, the new venture from Rafael Cagali and his life and business partner Charlie Lee (they also operate Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel’s Michelin-starred Da Terra and more casual Elis) sprung up in a long, light-filled room a block from Hove’s seafront this autumn, thrilling locals and enticing tourists. The pair’s protege Ewan Waller takes on head chef duties and his menu balances Cagali’s Brazilian-Italian heritage with plenty of south-coast seafood (native lobster, Dorset crab, Fowey mussels and more). There’s also a private dining room for up to 14 guests should you be plotting a group escape to the seaside and fancy more than fish’n’chips on the beach.

This 18th-century coaching inn was brought back to life in the summer after an extensive restoration by chef Tommy Banks (who owns Michelin-starred restaurants The Black Swan at Oldstead and Roots in York, as well as The Abbey Inn at Byland). First and foremost, Banks and his team wanted to create a gathering space for the local community, but those making the journey to north Yorkshire will find eight stylish, spacious bedrooms. Down in the hearth-warmed pub is an exceptional menu of elevated classics (the Yorkshire puddings come filled with braised beef shin), plenty of local ales and a well-chosen wine list.

“I originally wanted to open in Peckham,” chef Maria Bradford told Broadsheet earlier this year, “but it was ridiculously expensive and I didn’t want to commute every day”. So Sevenoaks in Kent became the lucky recipient of its first Sierra Leonean restaurant in the shape of Shwen Shwen (“fancy” or “beautiful” in the country’s lingua franca, Krio). Bradford set out to show Sierra Leone “has its own flavour profile, its own stories, its own rhythms” in a menu that fuses fine-dining flair with heartfelt home cooking; the likes of beef short rib with groundnut and coconut, banana leaf-wrapped sea bass and confit duck with pepper soup quickly making converts out of the locals.

The Hoxton empire extended ever further this year, including its first Scottish outpost in Edinburgh’s Haymarket. For a 214-room hotel it cuts a relatively low profile on an elegant Georgian street, but its restaurant dials things up a few notches. Patatino (“little potato” in Italian) is an ode to Amalfi, serving hearty trattoria fare – and a fun, OTT tableside tiramisu – in decadent surroundings complete with a trickling indoor fountain, lemon-bright ceramics and striped awnings. Just the thing to brighten up a dreich day in Auld Reekie.

Daniel (son of Simon) Rogan has been working hard to put his native Southampton on the culinary map, and the previous incarnation of his modern British fine diner AO, which closed in 2023, was listed in the Michelin Guide to Great Britain and Ireland in 2022. Last month it reopened in the space formerly occupied by Rogan’s previous venture, Album, on the city’s charming Oxford Street. The aim of its new seven- and 10-course tasting menus is to champion Hampshire’s bountiful produce, with Winchester cheese, yoghurt from nearby farms and plenty of locally made English sparkling wine among many of the county’s standout offerings plated and paired by Rogan and his team.

Husband-and-wife team Sam Carter and Alex Olivier (Carter is the chef, Olivier works front of house) took over fine diner Twenty Two in Cambridge in 2018 and won its first Michelin star in 2023. One local, Margaret, loved it so much she’d come in for a solo lunch every single week and now she lends her name to the couple’s new venture, a relaxed sharing-focused celebration of British produce in an intimate setting by the River Cam. The convivial ethos and seasonally changing chef’s choice set menu have drawn superlatives from visitors (and Margaret too, we hear), plus it makes for an easy day trip from London.

James Wilson, formerly head chef at The Newt in Somerset, upped sticks for this new 10-bedroom Cotswolds retreat that dates back to the 17th century (it was once the village of Broadway’s doctor’s surgery). Wilson’s restaurant, Moda, is the heart of the hotel: a 30-cover fine-dining space that draws inspiration from his time cooking in Michelin-starred kitchens across Scandinavia. His nine-course tasting menu is an ever-changing affair – a signature hand-cut beef tartare with a hay-smoked oil emulsion, wild garlic and smoked bone marrow and lovage vinaigrette is often present, and roasts on a Sunday are a given. Meat is sourced from nearby Toddington and fruit and veg from an 800-acre farm in the Vale of Evesham to ensure a local-as-possible commitment to produce.

The village of Cuddesdon isn’t far from the spires of Oxford’s historic centre but feels far removed from any kind of city life at all. Despite its 2025 refurbishment and relaunch (by the team who made a big success of the Lamb Inn in Little Milton) the Bat and Ball still feels like an archetypal country inn with slate floors, wooden beams and a menu of “pub bangers” – black pudding croquettes with apple sauce, slices of pork pie and a steak burger with house-made sauce – cleverly finessed by ex-Le Manoir chef Rick Owens (not that one). If you get too full to move, there are five pastel-toned guest rooms upstairs sporting ornate headboards and tactile Fairfax fabrics.