The Loch & The Tyne

A Country Inn That Takes the Pub Seriously

The approach to The Loch & The Tyne, along Crimp Hill in Old Windsor, sets a clear register before you reach the door. This is a country inn in the traditional sense, the kind of building with enough age and texture to carry its own atmosphere without theatrical intervention. The terrace, visible from the path, runs alongside raised growing beds. Herbs and vegetables from those beds move into the kitchen. The connection between garden and plate is literal here, not decorative language.

Inside, the room leans into vintage character rather than away from it. The styling sits somewhere between the warmth of a well-worn local and the considered restraint of a dining room that knows it has something to prove. That tension is precisely what the gastropub tradition has been working through for the past two decades across Britain, and The Loch & The Tyne represents one of its more coherent recent expressions.

Where the Gastropub Revolution Actually Landed

The reinvention of British pub dining has gone through several phases since the mid-1990s. The first wave was largely about removing the embarrassments: the microwaved lasagne, the carpet, the indifference. The second wave brought trained chefs into pub kitchens and began taking ingredients seriously. The third, where venues like The Loch & The Tyne now operate, is about something more specific: using the pub format as a frame for a distinct culinary identity, rather than as a compromise between ambition and accessibility.

The clearest evidence of where this venue sits in that sequence is the Michelin Bib Gourmand, awarded in 2025. The Bib Gourmand category specifically recognises cooking that delivers quality at a moderate price point, the ££ range. It is a different signal from a star, but not a lesser one. It positions The Loch & The Tyne alongside a tier of British gastropubs and country inns where the food is the primary reason to visit, and where the price point does not require the decision calculus of a special-occasion tasting menu. For a useful comparison on what that culinary register looks like at a grander scale nearby, Hand and Flowers in Marlow holds two Michelin stars and operates from a similarly pub-rooted format, though at a markedly higher investment per cover.

Beyond the local comparison set, the broader British contemporary category has been producing confident regional work at every price tier. hide and fox in Saltwood and the Dog and Gun Inn in Skelton represent the same impulse in different geographies: serious cooking in unshowy rooms, grounded in place. Further up the prestige ladder, L'Enclume in Cartmel and Moor Hall in Aughton demonstrate what the country-setting British restaurant can become at its most technically extended.

The Menu: Pub Classics Taken Apart and Reassembled

The kitchen's approach to the menu is clearest in the dishes that play with recognition. A haggis Scotch egg arrives as a piece of considered reworking: the format is pub standard, the filling swaps in a Scottish reference that connects to the restaurant's founding story, and the execution is precise enough to earn its place on a Bib Gourmand table. Mac and cheese, listed as 'our way', operates on the same logic. The dish is familiar enough to land without explanation, different enough to signal that the kitchen has opinions.

The raised beds on the terrace feed directly into the seasonal rhythm of the menu. This is not an unusual arrangement among serious British kitchens in 2025, but it remains a meaningful one. Herbs and vegetables grown on site compress the supply chain to a few metres and allow the kitchen to respond to what is ready rather than what is available from a wholesaler. The practical effect is dishes that read as genuinely seasonal rather than seasonally labelled.

Trifle is the dessert with the longest tenure on the menu, described as ever-present but seasonally variable in its composition. In the current British dining scene, a dessert that changes with the seasons but retains its structural identity across a year is a more interesting commitment than a fixed showpiece. The kitchen has to keep finding new versions of the same form, and the trifle's continued presence on the menu implies it is passing that test repeatedly. A King's Trifle variant has been noted in the menu documentation, suggesting the format extends to occasion-specific editions.

Chef Jonny McNeil leads the kitchen under the Adam Handling group. Handling's wider operation spans London and beyond, but the group's country inn concept is expressed specifically here, in a format that draws its name from the geography of its co-owners: Scotland (the loch) and Newcastle (the Tyne). That provenance feeds the menu's Scottish and northern English references without forcing a regional identity onto what is otherwise a contemporary British kitchen.

Staying Over and Planning the Visit

The inn offers bedrooms for those who prefer to extend the visit rather than drive back the same evening. Old Windsor sits close enough to Heathrow and central Windsor to be genuinely convenient from London while feeling removed from both. The village scale and the inn's character make an overnight stay a logical extension of a dinner booking, particularly for those arriving from further afield.

The ££ price range places the meal comfortably below the special-occasion tier of venues like The Fat Duck in Bray or Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton, which means it works as a regular-use restaurant for those in the area, not just a destination booking. For visitors already planning time around Windsor, it fills a gap in the local offer that a hotel restaurant or a standard village pub would not.

For a fuller picture of what else the area offers, see our full Old Windsor restaurants guide, our full Old Windsor hotels guide, our full Old Windsor bars guide, our full Old Windsor wineries guide, and our full Old Windsor experiences guide.

For those building a wider itinerary around British contemporary cooking, Midsummer House in Cambridge, Opheem in Birmingham, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie in Auchterarder, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, The Ledbury in London, and Jaan by Kirk Westaway in Singapore each represent the category at different price tiers and geographies.