The story
The Terrace at Swinton Park Hotel, Swinton Estate, Masham, North Yorkshire, HG4 4JH, serves a relaxed modern British menu, and the Good Food Guide lists it as Good for 2026. It sits in a converted outbuilding with a more casual, contemporary feel than the hotel's Victorian dining room.
Small plates and shared dishes draw on the four-acre Walled Garden, which grows more than 60 varieties of fruit, herbs and vegetables. The Good Food Guide singled out fried chicken with gravy mayonnaise and a fishcake topped with chunky tartare. The AA has given the kitchen one Rosette for Culinary Excellence in 2026.
The bar pours cocktails, local beer and wine. In fine weather the terrace gardens come with blankets, heaters and sheepskins for cooler evenings. Dogs are welcome in the bar and outside, and Twilight on the Terrace brings live music on summer Sunday evenings.
Recognition
Details
History
While Swinton Park’s main restaurant, Samuel’s, is as grandly Victorian as the rest of the turreted pile, the Terrace offers something more casual and more contemporary. Located in the same sensitively converted outbuilding as the hotel’s health club and comes with a neutral colour scheme, patio doors and a namesake terrace for fine-weather alfresco, plus a bar for well-made drinks in the evening. The menu deals in crowd-pleasing small plates to share (from 'garden and field, land and sea') as well as banquet-style feasting dishes, though after attempting with difficulty to divvy up an oblong of pork croquette among the table, we found the style of presentation lends itself rather better to three courses ordered individually. Either way, a plate of fried chicken with a gravy mayonnaise for dunking, cabbage slaw and baby gem (for a touch of greenery) should not be missed among the starters. To follow, an excellent fishcake comes topped with chunky tartare in a pea-scattered cream sauce, while a sweet-fleshed wedge of gammon gets a topping not only of fried egg but two crisp commas of pork scratching. None of this, admittedly, is particularly complicated, but it’s all made from decent ingredients, cooked with skill and elevated by elegant presentation: bangers and mash arrives as a pair of sausages with pomme purée and a frothy velouté-like sauce, while an essential side order of onion rings is stacked like a particularly delicious game of hoopla. There’s a children's menu, too – cod goujons, cheesy penne – while furry, four-legged family members are welcome in the bar (where the full menu is also served) and on the terrace itself when the sun shines.
1 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
Location
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