The Wild Rabbit
A polished 18th-century inn on the Daylesford estate, hyper-local and seasonal, in one of the Cotswolds' prettiest villages.
A polished 18th-century inn on the Daylesford estate, hyper-local and seasonal, in one of the Cotswolds' prettiest villages.
The Wild Rabbit sits in the picture-book village of Kingham, an eighteenth-century building reimagined as a relaxed modern inn for dining, drinking and an overnight stay. It belongs to the Daylesford estate, one of the country's most sustainable organic farms, so the kitchen leans hard on hyper-local, seasonal produce served in warm, unfussy surroundings. It sits in the current Michelin Guide, and there are twelve bedrooms upstairs, each named after a creature of the English countryside. Roughly twenty minutes from Well Cottage, it makes an easy and memorable evening out, and pairs naturally with a daytime wander around the neighbouring Daylesford farmshop.
We tend to treat it as the grown-up option: somewhere to book when there is something to mark, or when friends are down and we want the meal to be the event rather than an afterthought. The room does the work for you. There are flagstones and open fires, deep armchairs to sink into with a drink before the table is called, and a bar that feels as happy hosting a quiet pint as a long dinner. It never tips into stiff, which is the trick of the place: the cooking is serious, the welcome is not.
The kitchen takes its cues from the Daylesford estate on the doorstep: vegetables from the market garden, meat from the farm, herbs and leaves that were growing that morning. The menu is described as constantly evolving as the seasons turn, so there is no fixed set of signature plates to memorise; what you order in October will not be what you order in May, and that is rather the point. The bar keeps pace, with local ales, a proper wine list and plenty by the glass, so a light lunch and a full dinner are equally at home here.
It helps to know the shape of the week before you book. Service moves around a little, and a wasted drive to a closed kitchen is a poor start to an evening.
Hours do shift with the season and with private events, so check the current times when you book rather than taking any of the above as gospel.
Kingham is around twenty minutes from Well Cottage by car, heading south and west through quiet lanes. Book ahead, especially for weekend lunch, which is the busiest sitting of the week. If you would rather not drive, Kingham station sits a short way from the village and runs direct services to London Paddington, which makes a long lunch here a perfectly reasonable reason to invite friends up from town.
The neat trick is to build a whole day around the estate. We usually do the farm shop in the morning and the Wild Rabbit later on: the two sit on the same estate, and the kitchen uses much of what you will have just been browsing in the aisles, which is a satisfying thing to eat your way through.
It fills up, particularly at weekends, so it pays to have a fallback in the same village. The Kingham Plough is a short stroll away and every bit as good in its own, more traditional register. For the farm shop itself and its all-day café, Daylesford is the obvious daytime pairing, and The Trough at Daylesford is the relaxed spot to eat right there on the estate. If you want the wider picture, our guide to eating and drinking in the area runs from village pubs to farm-to-table restaurants and everything between.
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.