Sherborne is becoming our favourite artsy staycation

Address: New Road, Sherborne DT9 5NR
Website: thegardensgroup.co.uk

The Green

Best for: locavore fine dining with a family touch

This family-run neighbourhood restaurant sits at the very top of Cheap Street (Sherborne’s main high street) in a biscuit stone building consistent with the rest of the historic market town. Its racing-green windows blink out beneath fuzzy, floral brows, and inside, a cosy, original-beamed pub feel pervades. Until, of course, you sit down, and the menu strikes as something rather special – an ode to West Country produce and its wild ingredients. Head chef and owner Sasha Matkevich’s passion for locality and freshness translates into inventive dishes such as Dorset crab crème brulée and lime mousse, or black bream fillet with caper mash and charred tomato. Stick around for the carrot and ginger sticky toffee pudding with Sherborne castle brandy caramel sauce, and it’s worth knowing about the £46 set three-course lunch menu.

Address: 3 The Green, Sherborne DT9 3HY
Website: greenrestaurant.co.uk

Macready’s at the Sherborne

Best for: Champagne and steak

Housed in the newly spruced arts centre, The Sherborne, Macready’s strikes as more West London than West Country, with its brasserie-style tables, botanical prints and adjoining, oxblood-hued steakhouse. Cashmere-clad folk quaff Champagne with Lyme Bay Dived scallops at the bar, having browsed the latest exhibition upstairs and the deftly-curated gift shop, and in the evening, candles flicker over brasserie classics with a local twist: whipped ricotta and squash, pan-fried fillet of halibut with sauteed potatoes and perfect hunks of bavette steak lathered in béarnaise sauce with crispy fries.

Address: Newland, Sherborne DT9 3JG
Website: thesherborne.uk

Ecco Gelato

Best for: ludicrously tasty Italian ice cream

For the irresistible texture and taste of gelato you’d otherwise need to jet to Italy for, owner Philippa Tarling enrolled at gelato university near Bologna, and brought her skills home to Sherborne. Since 2016, this small family business on Long Street has mastered over 50 different flavours from rhubarb and toffee apple to sea buckthorn and honeycomb (a firm favourite with the school children piling in here after the bell). Their dairy-free options are delicious, as are the sinfully dense hot chocolates on a chilly day.

Address: Long St, Sherborne DT9 3BS
Website: ecco-gelato.co.uk

Bean Shot

Best for: speciality coffee

Keep stomping down Cheap Street, without turning right to the Abbey, and you’ll stumble upon a sign reading ‘Bloody Good Coffee,’ a psychedelic window and, inside, a hubbub of in-the-know coffee snobs. They’re here for the right-on cappuccinos and (gasp) the decaf, which confounds nearly all caffeine hounds. This is the Sherborne outpost of the Bruton original – started by Australian Nick Law, who refused to part with Aussie speciality coffee having married an English woman – which now feels deeply anchored in the community, with art dealers, reverends, and writers popping in for their morning fix. James Budden’s oil paintings line the walls, and the treacle flapjacks on the counter are divine.