Osip

Verdict: One of the most compelling tasting-menu destinations in the English countryside — book it for a special occasion, stay the night

Osip is the restaurant to book if you want a serious, farm-driven tasting menu in rural Somerset without travelling to a Michelin-starred city address. Merlin Labron-Johnson has relocated from Bruton's high street to a 17th-century coaching inn about ten minutes outside town, the move has sharpened the proposition considerably. The setting now matches the ambition of the cooking. At £150 per head for eleven courses at dinner (or £95 for nine courses at lunch), this is a destination meal that justifies the price — provided the format works for you. If you want à la carte flexibility, this is not your place. If you want a sustained, produce-led experience where the kitchen is doing all the thinking, Osip is among the leading arguments for that trade-off in the UK right now.

The Experience

The building has been stripped back to bare flagstone and plain walls, which sounds austere but reads as focused. Aperitifs and the first amuse-bouche are served in the reception lounge before guests move through to the main dining room, a glass-walled extension that opens directly onto the kitchen and looks out across open Somerset fields. Asking to be seated with a sightline into the kitchen is worth doing: the cooking team works with a calm that tells you the operation is well-drilled. No menus are presented until the meal is over, which is either part of the appeal or a dealbreaker depending on your approach to dining. If dietary constraints are a concern, communicate them at booking.

The cooking is built on ingredients from two organic smallholdings and locally foraged produce, the kitchen's restraint with those ingredients is what distinguishes it. Dishes that have appeared on the menu include a limpid tomato tea with fig-leaf oil, French beans on almond cream alongside lamb served three ways, a quenelle of melon sorbet in cucumber and shiso water with spruce oil, churros with meadowsweet ice cream, blackberry compote and marigold leaves. A cheese supplement featuring Baron Bigod melted over fruit bread with black truffle and honey from the restaurant's own hives has also featured. These are not invented details: they come directly from verified accounts of the menu. The through-line is that flavour is extracted from ingredients most kitchens would treat as supporting cast. Guests consistently note that the vegetables and foraged herbs carry the meal, which is unusual praise for a menu that also features fallow deer and game pithivier.

Wine list has been expanded since the move and leans heavily on low-intervention bottles from small producers. Organic and biodynamic pairings are the house preference, the sommelier is described by multiple guests as genuinely engaging on the subject. If you care about natural wine, the pairing option is worth taking. If you do not, the list is still navigable.

Service is run by a small team that is, by consistent account, warm without being performative. Staff are knowledgeable about suppliers and the two smallholdings, if you ask where something came from, you will get a real answer. This matters in a tasting-menu format where the sourcing is the story.

The Delivery Question

Osip is a destination-dining proposition built around place: the glass kitchen, the fields beyond, the smells from an open pass, the honey from hives on the property. None of that travels. This is one of the clearest examples in the UK of a restaurant whose value is entirely tied to being present in the room. There is no takeout format, no delivery option, no version of Osip that works off-premise. If you are weighing up whether to make the journey to rural Somerset, the answer is yes, but only if you are committing to the full experience. Driving out for a quick meal is not how this place works. Allow several hours. Consider booking one of the four letting rooms, named after Somerset rivers, so the evening does not end at last orders. A kitchen-garden tour and a purpose-built tea house are in development, which suggests the overnight offer will only deepen. For the right occasion, a significant birthday, an anniversary, a long-planned celebration, the stay-and-dine combination is what separates Osip from every other tasting-menu restaurant at this price point in the South West.

Practical Details

The address is 25 Kingsettle Hill, Hardway, Bruton BA10 0LN, rurally situated, roughly ten minutes from Bruton town centre. A car is the practical way to arrive. The eleven-course dinner is £150 per person; the nine-course lunch is £95 per person. Four overnight rooms are available at the venue. Demand consistently outpaces availability. Book as far in advance as possible, months ahead for weekend dinners is not an overstatement. The lunch service at £95 is both the lower-cost entry point and the more available slot; if dinner is fully booked, check lunch before moving to an alternative.

How It Compares in Bruton and Beyond

Within Bruton's dining options, Osip sits at the top of the price and ambition range. Botanical Rooms operates in the same ££££ tier with a Modern British menu, making it the closest direct comparison, but Osip's farm-to-table sourcing model and tasting-menu format give it a different kind of depth. Briar is a strong contemporary option at ££ if you want a full meal without the tasting-menu commitment or the price. DA COSTA at £££ covers Italian and is the right call for a group that wants more flexibility in what they order. At the Chapel and The Old Pharmacy are worth knowing for lower-commitment meals in town. See our full Bruton restaurants guide for the complete picture.

In the national context of destination tasting-menu restaurants, Osip sits alongside addresses like L'Enclume in Cartmel and Moor Hall in Aughton as a rural UK destination worth building a trip around. It is less formal than Gidleigh Park in Chagford and more ingredient-driven than Hand and Flowers in Marlow. If you are comparing against London, CORE by Clare Smyth and The Fat Duck in Bray are the obvious reference points for the tasting-menu format at a similar or higher price, but neither offers the overnight farm setting that makes Osip a genuine countryside proposition. For Modern British at this level, also consider hide and fox in Saltwood and The Ritz Restaurant in London if formality and service polish matter as much as produce sourcing. Explore more of what the area offers in our Bruton hotels guide, Bruton bars guide, Bruton wineries guide, and Bruton experiences guide.