The story
Le Champignon Sauvage, at 24-28 Suffolk Road in Cheltenham, is a modern French restaurant that holds one Michelin star for 2026. David and Helen Everitt-Matthias have run the kitchen for well over three decades in the Montpellier district of Regency Cheltenham, and the cooking still reads as confident and unhurried.
The menu swings between bold pairings and slower, subtler flavours. A pigeon starter arrives with black pudding, chocolate ganache, cherries and radicchio, while miso-glazed monkfish sits over barley broth with cockles and samphire. The Good Food Guide rates the restaurant Very Good for 2026 and notes that the kitchen keeps a neat balance between flavours that land immediately and those that develop over time.
The restaurant's website cites a 10/10 score from Guardian critic Marina O'Loughlin and a Chef of the Year title from 2014.
The dining room is understated, with sandy and stony tones and splashes of contemporary art. Petits fours and nibbles arrive in generous numbers, and the cheese board offers two dozen or so choices. For dessert, poached peach with yoghurt sorbet and honeycomb sits alongside a bitter chocolate and pistachio délice served with pistachio ice cream.
Fixed-price menus run at both lunch and dinner. The wine list is compact and carefully chosen, with house Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at £28 a bottle or £8 a glass, and a long run of half-bottles.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
High quality cooking
It's a tribute to the serene longevity of the Champignon that reporters typically begin their accounts by reckoning up in decades, rather than years, how long they have been coming here. David and Helen Everitt-Matthias are well into their fourth decade of operations in the Montpellier district of Regency Cheltenham, and their restaurant still radiates energy and commitment. In an understated dining room – its sandy and stony tones offset with splashes of contemporary art – a highly burnished Anglo-French culinary repertoire continues to dazzle, with all the extras one might expect, from extraordinarily creative nibbles to serried regiments of petits fours. Prawn ravioli with wilted spinach in lemongrass bisque kicked things off in fine style at an August dinner, an outrider for Cotswold white chicken with charred aubergine and girolles, and a dish of plaice with celeriac purée and rocket. There is always a neat balance between flavours that come at you full-throttle straight off, and others that develop more slowly and subtly, but still land perfectly. Combinations can be the last word in daring, as in a starter of pigeon with black pudding, chocolate ganache, cherries and radicchio, to the extent that one can only shudder at what would happen to them in a less assured kitchen. By contrast, other ideas work with the grain of ingredients and tradition, perhaps for a main course of miso-glazed monkfish with barley broth, cockles and samphire, or glorious chump of lamb with romaine lettuce, peas and sheep's curd. That August dinner ended with poached peach, yoghurt sorbet and honeycomb – at least for those whose heads were not turned by the two dozen or so fabulous cheeses – while others will hear of nothing but bitter chocolate and pistachio délice with positively luminous pistachio ice cream. The fixed-price menus at both lunch and dinner are an amenity for which Cheltonians give thanks. As for wine, the list is a carefully curated and quality-conscious collection with house Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at £28 (or £8 a glass), and markups that city-dwellers might find surprisingly kind. An extensive listing of half-bottles has long been one of its attractions.
3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
Location
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