Osip

It’s fair to say, Osip is not your average neighbourhood restaurant in this part of the world. You wouldn’t guess from the modest frontage but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes - Osip is a true farm-to-table event, with produce coming largely from the farm and kitchen garden, as well as via local suppliers. 

The dining room is equally humble, but like Labron-Johnson’s cooking it highlights beauty in simplicity. A pale green leather banquette hugs one wall, contrasting against whitewashed brick and a flash of original stonework. Dried flowers hang from the walls, alongside a shelf that shows off a handful of influential cookbooks. There are white tablecloths, and crisp, white-shirted servers too, but everything is relaxed. Front-of-house manage the room with ease - never intrusive, but always on hand. 

We proceed through eight courses of outstanding food - the sort where recency bias takes hold and each dish becomes your new favourite. A Jerusalem artichoke snack - steamed then fried in tempura batter, dusted in togarashi and served on a splodge of black garlic - is unique and eye-widening. It only gets better from there: creamy white onion royale with morels and vin jaune has a comforting Gallic richness to it, but interspersed with rich courses are lighter ones, like a taco of spring vegetables and mole verde, or young leeks with almond and ricotta. 

We found a dessert of herb ice cream with Italian meringue to be a little on the bitter side for our tastes, but we respect the originality of the concept and sometimes, you want a restaurant to challenge your expectations. That’s part and parcel of Osip - the blind tasting menu means you put yourself in the hands of Labron-Johnson and team and on this evidence, there aren’t many places we’d rather be.

Located in the Somerset village of Bruton, Osip is a tiny restaurant owned and run by Merlin Labron-Johnson, who conjures impossibly beautiful, hyper-seasonal British tasting menus using locally-grown and reared produce. The 22-cover restaurant is housed in a charming stone building which used to be the village ironmonger and brings top-quality cooking to this idyllic rural spot.

The interior is typically understated, as Labron-Johnson’s restaurants tend to be: tiled walls, a flash of exposed brickwork and muted blue and white tones strike a bright and airy pose that makes the most of the small dimensions.

Serving a refined line-up of farm-to-table food, the 22-cover restaurant works grows much of its own produce and works closely with local suppliers to source the rest for a predominantly vegetarian menu. A couple of tasting menus are on offer - lunch diners can choose between a shortened tasting menu plus the full 'Osip' menu, whilst dinner guests just have the latter. Osip has taken the decision to make the tasting menus completely blind - you leave yourself in the hands of Labron-Johnson and his expert kitchen team here (though you get a lovely printed menu to take away with you afterwards). 

Dishes at the time of writing include roasted vegetable tea with burnt garlic oil, young leeks with almond praline and ricotta, roast chicken with hen of the woods mushroom, bearnaise, chicken sausage and cider mustard. The menu is bookended by snacks and petit fours. 

The drinks menu is similarly focused - the wine list is almost exclusively European, and there are West Country ciders and beers on offer too, as well as aperitifs and cocktails. The latter two might include a Somerset negroni, red vermouth with blood orange or a seasonal cocktail. Like the rest of the menu, the drinks selection changes regularly.