01/11/2026
GILES COREN
Upstairs at Landrace review — my perfect Bath lunch
‘Past the Austenocracy, up a shonky staircase and into a beautiful wonky dining room where I had two main courses in sequence, both excellent’
Collage of Giles Coren and the dining room at Upstairs at Landrace in Bath.
Giles Coren; Upstairs at Landrace
TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE, DAVE WATTS
Giles Coren, Contributor
Wednesday October 28 2026, 5.00am, The Times
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This week has been dominated by two very positive fallouts from the review I wrote of Chez Moi in Bognor Regis, where I went in June on a sort of pilgrimage to the half-forgotten RC Sherriff novel The Fortnight in September, which is set in the town.
The first was an email from the chef/prop at Chez Moi, Michael Newton-Young, thanking The Times and saying that he had been packed out for lunch and dinner ever since. “They have come from Scotland just for lunch!” he wrote. “I have never served so much chicken in my life!” This in reference to the chicken with morels and vin jaune I had so much enjoyed in my review. I wasn’t surprised, though, because I have heard from so many of you since then, telling me how you were moved both to read the book (hurrah!) and to follow me down to the coast, book in hand, to Chez Moi.
The second and even more desirable outcome was another great meal, which came about because Persephone Books, the independent publisher responsible for the revival of RC Sherriff, had invited me, in the warm afterglow of the review, to go down to Bath, where their head office and bookshop are, to talk to the regulars about Sherriff and other things.
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The restaurant on Walcot Street is in the heart of the ancient (and modern) artisan quarter
DAVE WATTS
They had sent me, in the meantime, another of his novels, Greengates, which I can recommend almost as highly as Fortnight. Certainly, for those of you now grieving the end of your time with the first book, it will be very much more than a rubber bone to starving literary dogs. For it is nearly as wonderful as the other, featuring, as it does, a gentle, lower-middle-class insurance clerk who is similar in many ways to Fortnight’s Mr Stevens, facing the realities of retirement in Britain in the Thirties, and all the same sorts of tiny crises and domestic tragedies, albeit shot through a little more sombrely with the spectre of impending old age and death.
And no less shot through with spectres of death was the other novel Persephone had sent me and asked me to talk about, Sally Carson’s prophetic (and, again, unfairly forgotten) Crooked Cross, written in 1933 and published in 1934, about a German family riven by the rise of Hi**er, whose young sons turn towards Na**sm even as their sister falls deeply in love with a young doctor of Catholic faith but Jewish ancestry. As the novel lurches (clumsily at times) towards its tragic conclusion, it is astonishing to see how clear the impending fate of Germany’s Jews was to a young English dance teacher and aspiring novelist (who had merely holidayed in Bavaria) as early as the first year after Hi**er’s election.
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And so, in a gorgeous, sun-filled 1750s drawing room above the shop (as all rooms above shops in Bath seem to be), we batted around some pretty diverse literary ideas — me, two other chaps and 57 ladies (including the novelist Joanna Miller and Persephone’s MD, Francesca Beauman) — until it was time for lunch.
Read more Giles Coren restaurant reviews
Cassette review — ‘The claw-chicken pie? No better than pub fare’
Pignut & the Hare restaurant review — ‘Bargain of the century’
Zonda at the Halfway review: ‘The pizzas are just phenomenal’
Although the only one with time for lunch was me, the others having to crack on with further intense literary debate. But Francesca insisted upon walking me to what she had previously assured me was her favourite restaurant in Bath (and “Persephone’s de facto staff canteen”), despite my protestations that I’d be able to find it myself (possibly untrue; I’m a spatial moron).
“I’ll just take you to the top of the steps,” she said, mysteriously. “Because people do get terribly lost.”
And so we crossed the road from Persephone, with its yards of once forgotten, now urgently vociferous again novels, its towers of silver-jacketed paperbacks and festive shelves of pre-wrapped and ribboned volumes, down George Street to the junction with the Paragon and along that medieval (possibly even Roman) road with its mansard roofs, Tuscan pilasters and the church where not only Jane Austen’s parents (yawn) but also William Wilberforce got married and …
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Bluefin tuna: “creamy raw slices of the belly in grassy extra virgin olive oil with lobes of citrus, jalapeños and chives
DAVE WATTS
“You’ll be okay from here,” said Francesca, indicating a vertiginous flight of Georgian stone stairs descending moodily (even on this bright day) to my right all the way to Walcot Street in the heart of the ancient (and modern) artisan quarter where, fittingly, the super-artisanal Landrace bakery (they mill their own flour at their own stone mill) was humming with hankerers after its celebrated breads and cakes, queuing out the door and down the street.
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Carb-dodger that I am, I pressed through the slavering international Austenocracy (“And is this the same cinnamon bun that Catherine Morland thought was a haunted mouse in Northanger Abbey?”) up a winding and wonderfully shonky staircase, like something below decks on an 18th-century schooner (“Like the one Sir Thomas Bertram takes to Antigua in Mansfield Park?”), to a pair of beautiful wonky dining rooms, the first overseen by Rollo, who led me through to a smaller, cosier one by the kitchen operated by the estimable Hetty, whose knowledge, enthusiasm and good humour (especially around the ongoing “Coren v Natural Wine” narrative) were the making of my afternoon.
With a £7.50 glass of Vigneti Tardis (fine, refreshing), Hetty invited me to split two of the “snacks” into half-portions, so I got a good crisp handful of their sticky, golden cheddar curd fritters and half a dozen curls of fantastic capocollo — that dry, salty cured Italian pork neck that is so flaky and frangible when sliced thin — for about a tenner, which is toptastic value.
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Pappardelle with sautéed Scottish porcini — “firm, darkish, brittle and evidently freshly made”
DAVE WATTS
Then I had the bluefin tuna (£18), because it’s everywhere since the announcement last month of its return en masse to British waters. Here it was creamy raw slices of the belly (though not quite the fattiest part I think) in grassy extra virgin olive oil with lobes of citrus, jalapeños and chives. With this I ordered a pricier glass (£14) of what they call “skins” (as opposed to “red” or “white”) from their list of “cellar pours”, which was altogether baffling to me, being Swiss, cloudy, brown and tasting of muddy puddles. One for Peppa Pig, not me, which Hetty saw, understood and removed from the bill.
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Calf’s liver with bacon and Florence onions, “fried hard in the modern way, to give a gamey crust with caramelised blood and juices”
DAVE WATTS
And then I had two main courses in sequence, both excellent. There was a modest tangle of wide, firm, darkish, brittle and evidently freshly made pappardelle (£26) with its own weight of sautéed Scottish porcini and an egg yolk to stir in, which did well with a £14 glass of low-intervention burgundy pinot noir by Le Grappin (although I will never not regret the lack of intervention), followed by calf’s liver (£25), sliced thick and fried hard in the modern way, to give a gamey crust with caramelised blood and juices (as opposed to the creamier French finish of yore), with a rasher of strong, rustic bacon and Florence onions. And wonderfully dry, earthy chips (£5) with an eye-watering aïoli, and a peppery, chewy green salad from Fairy Hill (I gather she’s bezzies with Florence Onions). This with a glass of biodynamic montepulciano called Artù quite gently marked up at only £9.
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Treacle tart
DAVE WATTS
And then coffee and, alas, no slice of the treacle tart, which I am sure is excellent, because they are a bakery after all. But I don’t do pudding, as we know. And, after all that deliciousness and heft, frankly I do not see how anyone could.
Upstairs at Landrace
59 Walcot Street, Bath (01225 424722; landrace.co.uk)
Cooking 8
Service 9
Location 10
Score 9
Price £85/head
Life & Style
Food
Landrace is a bakery, shop and (Upstairs) restaurant specialising in sourdough bread from stoneground UK grains.
