Worton Organic Garden - Cherwell

I booked a table here a couple of weeks ago after reading an article in the Saturday or Sunday Times (can’t remember which one! and what an absolute treat it was, number one lunch spot of 2024 so far. The gardens are bursting with life and tables are dotted around this beautiful space. You can eat indoors in the restaurant or conservatory but on a sunny day, outside is perfect. Vegetables are home grown and full of flavour. Simon the owner is very welcoming and will happily have a chat about the history of the kitchen gardens and how they came to be. My partner had the marinda tomato, buffalo mozzarella and lovage salad to start and I had the pear, endive and stichelton (blue cheese and walnut salad. We both commented on the freshness and quality of the ingredients. Next was smoked bacon with lentils for him and the Cornish cock crab for me (half . It was all super fresh and my crab came with a herb salad from the garden with sour dough and a sorrel mayonnaise. Everything on my plate was to die for and exceptional. It took over an hour and a half to eat the crab alone which was huge! For pudding we copied the people on the next table to us with the spiced plum pavlova to share. It was huge and had lovely spicy notes of cinnamon. The waitresses were fabulous and very chatty and helpful too. The only thing my partner said was that maybe they could have had more local beers with the abundance of breweries in Oxfordshire and maybe offer some English wine but that didn’t really matter. We can’t wait to go back and I’m going to recommend it to all my friends and family. Thank you to Simon, his daughter working in the kitchen that day and all the staff who make Worton Kitchen Gardens the success that it is.

What a unique and wonderful sensory experience, a hidden gem! Fabulous garden, fresh 3 course late lunch for two on Friday 2nd August. The passion and love for their ingredients was self evident but to be clear this place is big on “character” and “slow food”, the antithesis of modern chain restaurants and more authentic and in stark contrast to the more formulaic and manicured “farmshop garden centre” restaurants typical of the area. It’s like eating in someone’s private kitchen garden or giant allotment. Talk about field to plate provenance, ingredients don’t get fresher than this! We were fortunate to visit on a warm summer afternoon and our table for two, shaded by parasol and fruit trees, was alfresco rambling kitchen garden summer perfection. Other tables for 2, 4 and 6 are spaced so far apart around the restaurant sheds and out into the abundant gardens that we didn’t notice half of them until we explored later. For seating at other times of year there appeared to be rustic tables in two parts of the shed and one high ceilinged greenhouse. The menu is short and, as advertised, seasonal. To start we shared decadent pork crackling with a mirabelle chutney and beautifully sweet tomatoes in a caprese like salad. For our mains we chose the house mezze principally homemade babaganoush (fabulous), hummus, tomatillo salad with crusty white house baked ciabatta style bread and then whole mackerel (bbq chard) and beetroot. It was a crime not to try more than one of the three fabulous looking puddings something chocolate, an amazing sounding cheesecake and a mixed fruit frangipane. We had the latter a taste sensation. We made the most of the suggestion to explore the gardens and there appeared to be no limitations to this. There are a number of huge greenhouses bursting with tomato plants, vines and other veg. These are interspersed with combined vegetable and flower beds and fruit trees. We found chickens, geese and turkeys but must have missed the pigs. On our way we came across friendly gardeners and Stacey Gledhill, the artist in residence for the summer. To be clear these are not manicured gardens, they are beautifully wild and at this time of year watering and harvesting takes priority over weeding or meticulous tidying up. Since our visit I’ve read back through reviews on the usual platforms and have noticed occasionally severe criticism of this establishment when it comes to service, speed of service and pricing. We have no such complaints but it is possible to imagine how they might occasionally arise. Staff are surely not drilled to corporate style rulebooks; some tables are hidden and further from the hub; for this quality, prices are understandably at the high end of gastropub levels; and this is a working kitchen garden. In the end it’s a matter of taste, preferences and expectations. For us this was genuinely a five star exceeded expectations experience in all respects.

Visited today for lunch. Beautiful setting and lovely food but I have never experienced such appalling service anywhere in the world! Our waitress was surly, clueless and couldn’t hide the fact that she hates her job. Repeated requests for cutlery, repeated requests for serviettes, repeated requests for water. Huge waits, no response. And it was far from busy … If the management of this place has any self respect it needs to sack the staff who have no respect for their customers. This restaurant is expensive so to charge these prices, the staff need to be trained properly. This place has such potential but sadly, we will not be returning…

The place may be quirky and lots of produce home grown but it needed a clean, service was slow and some of the dishes were simply awful. Burnt bread, burnt leaks, dry and overcooked Hake, rock hard roast potatoes, greasy gravy. The puddings were good which gave it an extra star. Too expensive for why it was.

Fantastic food, heavenly setting. We had a wonderful lunch at Worton Kitchen Garden at a table surrounded by shoulder high flowers. Our meal was excellent delicious gazpacho, tomato salad, artichokes and perfectly cooked fish. We chatted with Simon, the owner, and his co chef daughter Bea, and wandered through the beautiful organic farm. Highly recommended.