Established as a coaching inn in 1789 and owned by the Miller family since 1921, Durrant’s Hotel boasts heritage that few modern, ultra-luxe hotels can match. Still independently owned, more than 70 artworks hang throughout, alongside antiques, colourful sculptures and other curiosities collected by the family over the years.
Inside, Durrant’s Hotel is a warren of nooks and drawing rooms. The George Bar & Pump Room makes for a good first stop. Enter via the secluded George Street entrance for elderflower Negronis, then settle into the raw-wood-lined bar, where there’s a crackling fireplace in winter and a dinky terrace for summer evenings.
But it’s The Dining Room at Durrant’s Hotel that best reflects what this sprawling Georgian hotel is about: no fuss, just classic British heart. Dark varnished wood, leather seating, and flowers on every table signal there’s some honest cooking to come. Chef Rumel Pinnock, who boasts ample fish cookery experience, delivers on that promise.
His menu sees West Country white crab, piled generously over avocado, lightly dressed, and scattered with sesame and nigella seeds. Thin-cut melba toast provides the crunch, and it’s an immediate hit. We follow with excellent Newlyn lemon sole: bronzed at the edges, beautifully flaky and pulling cleanly from the bone, served with a silver jug of nutty meuniere.
Ribeye steak, aged and cooked to a handsome medium-rare, comes with homemade bearnaise. Crispy matchstick fries are an obvious partner; clever implements to make the most of any sauce remaining. To finish, there’s rum baba, capped with a thick drift of Chantilly and a smear of sharp rhubarb. A dram more rum would improve it, but that light, fluffy sponge is hard to fault.
It might not be swanky, groundbreaking cooking, but that’s how we like it. Durrant’s deals in the pleasures of a proper British dining room: comfort eating, good wine, and charming, ever-helpful staff always primed to assist. Let the design-led hotels and mega groups chase the next big thing; the original is still better.