The Back Garden

Where the Cotswolds Larder Meets a Mediterranean Lens

Certain dining rooms earn their atmosphere through architecture alone. At The Back Garden, inside Dormy House on Willersey Hill above Broadway, the floor-to-ceiling windows do most of the editorial work: the garden presses against the glass, light shifts with the weather, and the room reads as an extension of the grounds rather than a retreat from them. That physical continuity between interior and landscape is not incidental. It sets the terms for what arrives on the plate.

The Cotswolds has always supplied its restaurants well. The region's combination of ancient pasture, walled kitchen gardens, and proximity to specialist farms gives chefs a larder that most urban kitchens have to reach considerably further to access. The Back Garden works within that tradition, grounding a concise Modern British menu in locally sourced ingredients, including rare breed meats and produce grown closer to the kitchen than most restaurants in the country can manage. The result is a menu shaped more by what the surrounding land offers in any given season than by fashion or fixed formula.

A Modern British Menu with Mediterranean Inflection

Modern British cooking in the Cotswolds has followed a wider national pattern. The genre that once meant reassembled nursery food has gradually absorbed technique from southern Europe, lighter acids, more herb, a willingness to leave things simply dressed, without abandoning the seasonal British larder that gives it weight. The Back Garden occupies that middle ground: the menu reads as Modern British in its produce sourcing and seasonal instincts, but carries a Mediterranean influence in approach and flavour register.

Concision is a deliberate editorial signal in restaurants at this level. A shorter menu at a hotel dining room in a competitive leisure destination like Broadway signals confidence in the kitchen's ability to execute a narrower range at high consistency, rather than serving every possible preference with volume. It also lets the kitchen follow the produce calendar more closely: when the menu is tight, switching dishes as the season turns is far simpler.

Rare breed meats deserve specific attention in this context. The breed recovery movement in British farming has given chefs access to animals, Dexter cattle, Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, Herdwick lamb, that produce flavour profiles markedly different from commercial breeds, though they require longer cooking windows and more considered sourcing relationships. When a restaurant at the ££ price point commits to rare breeds, it is absorbing a meaningful cost premium in its ingredient sourcing. That commitment, alongside garden produce, points to where this kitchen's priorities sit.

The Michelin Plate in Context

The Back Garden holds a Michelin Plate for 2024, a recognition that signals cooking of consistent technical quality and fresh, seasonal ingredients, without reaching to the star level. In the wider Cotswolds and West Midlands dining picture, the distinction matters. Michelin-starred properties in the region, and beyond, at properties like Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, a Belmond Hotel in Great Milton or Gidleigh Park in Chagford, operate at price points that price out a significant portion of leisure visitors. The Plate sits at a different tier: quality-flagged, accessible within the ££ bracket, and positioned as a serious dining option rather than a casual hotel feed.

For comparison, British hotel restaurants that have built sustained Michelin recognition at the star level, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie in Auchterarder and Moor Hall in Aughton among them, tend to operate destination-dining formats with price tags to match. The Back Garden's position as the dining offer inside a country house hotel, at a mid-range price point, with Michelin recognition, is a relatively uncommon combination.

Broadway's Dining Position

Broadway sits at the northern edge of the Cotswolds, a village with a high density of accommodation options relative to its size and a visitor profile that skews toward leisure travellers with more than passing interest in food. The dining offer within the village has evolved accordingly. For visitors working through our full Broadway restaurants guide, The Back Garden sits at a distinct point in the local range: hotel-anchored, produce-led, and Michelin-flagged in a way that neither MO (Modern Cuisine) nor Moda quite replicate.

The national Modern British conversation that includes properties like CORE by Clare Smyth in London, The Ledbury, L'Enclume in Cartmel, and The Fat Duck in Bray operates at a price point and ambition level several rungs above. But they share with The Back Garden a commitment to sourcing from the immediate landscape and letting that sourcing shape the menu. The difference is scale, investment, and the ambition of the critical project. The Back Garden is not trying to sit in that tier; it is doing something more specific and arguably more useful to its guest, quality-flagged cooking in a setting with an unusually close relationship to its own grounds.

Seasonal Signals and What to Expect

A produce-led kitchen in this part of England tracks a fairly predictable seasonal arc. Spring brings asparagus, early herbs, and the first lamb of the year. Summer produces salad leaves, courgettes, and soft fruits. Autumn is the richest quarter for a kitchen with access to rare breed meats: game comes into season, root vegetables reach their depth, and hedgerow ingredients, sloes, crab apples, elderberries, can move from garden to plate within the same week. Winter menus tend to rely on stored and preserved produce, slow-cooked cuts, and the deeper flavours that cold-weather cooking rewards.

For a restaurant emphasising garden produce and rare breeds, autumn and early winter represent the leading conditions. That is broadly true of serious British kitchens across the country, from Hand and Flowers in Marlow to hide and fox in Saltwood. The seasonal calendar, not the kitchen's preferences, determines when the larder is at its most complete.

Planning a Visit

The Back Garden sits within Dormy House hotel at Willersey Hill, Buckle Street, Broadway WR12 7LF, a short drive from the village centre, on refined ground with views toward the Vale of Evesham. The price range sits at ££, placing it within reach for guests not staying at the hotel as well as those who are. Visitors exploring beyond a single meal can use our full Broadway hotels guide, our full Broadway bars guide, our full Broadway wineries guide, and our full Broadway experiences guide to build a fuller itinerary around the area.