Tasting Menus in Cheltenham: What to Know Before You Book
Diaries that open months ahead, cancellation charges, allergy rules and the wine bill: my notes for a first-timer, taken from eight restaurants’ own small print
The food is the easy part. Nobody books seven courses expecting to be let down by the plates.
Where a tasting menu in Cheltenham goes wrong is everything around the food: the table you could not get, the allergy nobody mentioned, the charge for a friend who dropped out, the wine bill nobody planned for.
So this is not a ranking of plates. I have read the booking pages, FAQs and cancellation policies of eight restaurants in town and boiled them down to what I think a first-timer needs. Every price and rule below is as each restaurant’s own website states it on 21 October 2026, and menus change with the seasons.
First, decide how long you want to sit there
A tasting menu is the whole evening, not a meal before something else.
Restaurant Journey
My pick for anyone who wants the full, unhurried version is Restaurant Journey on St George’s Place.
- The menu: seven courses, £125 a head
- How long: the restaurant suggests allowing three hours
- Arrival: between 6.20pm and 6.45pm, with no lounge to wait in beforehand
- More than 20 minutes late and you may miss the first two courses
Lumiere
If three hours sounds like a lot, I would start with lunch at Lumiere on Clarence Parade, which calls its cooking “a Michelin-starred journey from soil to service”.
- Lunch, Friday and Saturday: four courses for £85, with an additional course at £15, and the six courses are served at lunch too
- Dinner, Thursday to Saturday: six courses for £130 or eight for £170
What I like about the lunch is that you can build up to the format rather than commit to eight courses on your first go.
Purslane
At Purslane on Rodney Road, the clock works the other way round.
- Six courses (£90) are served all day
- Eight courses (£115) only after 7pm
- Booked before 7.15pm? The restaurant says it may need the table back after two hours
My advice is to keep the long, slow dinner for the later slot.
The diary is the first course
The tables people want most go first, and each restaurant releases them in its own way.
- Lumiere opens its diary three months ahead. If your date has gone, email the restaurant with the date and a contact number to join its cancellation list.
- Restaurant Journey takes bookings online, and asks groups of more than six to email or call. Tables are live until 19 December, and the January 2027 diary opens on 15 November 2026 at 10am. I would set an alarm.
- Purslane posts late availability every Friday morning, when it has any. For a last-minute weekend table, that is the best tip I found.
- Prithvi on Bath Road has a reservations line open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, alongside online booking. It does not take reservation requests by email.
Its booking page explains why:
“We are open three evenings a week, exclusively for just 18 guests.” Restaurant Journey
Say what you cannot eat when you book, not at the table
This is the rule that catches most people out. Restaurant Journey is the clearest. With advance notice it caters for vegetarian, pescatarian and pregnancy diets, but if it is not told in advance, it cannot offer alternatives on the day.
Lumiere asks for every dietary requirement, vegetarian included, at the time of booking. It has a full vegetarian tasting menu, but its FAQ says it cannot offer a menu entirely free from butter, eggs, alliums or vinegar.
Some limits are fixed, however much notice you give:
- Purslane cannot accommodate vegan, dairy, nut or severe allergies.
- Prithvi offers vegetarian and pescatarian tasting options on request but cannot cater for a vegan diet. It also cannot leave out tomato, onion, garlic, dairy or ginger, because they are key to all of its sauces. Groups give their dietary needs 48 hours ahead.
The Nook On Five does it differently. It calls itself Cheltenham’s only rooftop restaurant, five storeys above Imperial Square, and asks you to tell the waiting team about any allergies as soon as you arrive.
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Its five-course tasting menu, created by John Burton-Race, runs every Friday and Saturday, with optional wine pairings. The menu is posted as an image, so I could not read a price as text. Check it when you book.
Read the cancellation line twice
Most of these restaurants hold the table with a card, and the charges are real money.
- Restaurant Journey: free to cancel or reschedule up to three days before. Inside 72 hours, or for any cut in party size, it charges £50 a head; inside 48 hours, the full menu price. The site says the policy is not discretionary.
- Purslane: £75 a head for less than 24 hours’ notice of a cancellation or a smaller party, waived if it can resell the table.
- Prithvi: £50 a head for dinner and £40 for lunch, for no-shows and cancellations within 48 hours of the sitting.
- The Nook On Five: £25 for a dinner booking after 6pm cancelled within 24 hours.
If there is any chance a guest drops out, I would choose the restaurant with the longest notice window.
Decide on the drinks before you sit down
The menu price is never the whole bill, and wine pairings are where it can nearly double.
- Lumiere: wine flights of £55, £75 and £95 for four, six and eight courses
- Restaurant Journey: an Explorer pairing at £85, or the Signature at £110
- Prithvi: five courses for £95 with a wine pairing at £75 (premium £105); seven for £110 with a pairing at £100 (premium £130)
- Purslane: pairings at £60 for six courses and £75 for eight
Or go somewhere the drinks are folded into one price. The Memsahib’s Experience at Memsahib’s Lounge on the Promenade is £95 without drinks or £130 with them.
Then do the sum. Seven courses at Restaurant Journey with the Explorer pairing come to £210 a head. Its discretionary 12.5% service charge takes that to about £236.
I think a pairing is worth it if you like being surprised by a glass and would rather not choose. If one of you is driving, a single bottle makes more sense.
Pick the restaurant for the evening you want, then read its booking page before you pick the date.
Clothes, children and stairs
Relax about clothes. Lumiere says smart casual, and that smart trainers and denim are perfectly fine. Restaurant Journey encourages smart casual but welcomes jeans and T-shirts. Prithvi is the strictest on my list: no shorts, caps or flip flops.
Children are another matter:
- Lumiere has no children’s menu or facilities for young children
- Prithvi welcomes diners aged 12 and over
- The Nook On Five allows under-18s until 6pm, then at the manager’s discretion
- Restaurant Journey welcomes all ages but not babies or toddlers, and younger guests pay the full menu price
Restaurant Journey’s dining room is also up a staircase, on the first floor.
Two other ways in
East India Cafe
If you want to try the format with less formality, I would start at East India Cafe at 103 Promenade.
- Seven courses: £79.95 a head, or £74.95 for the vegetarian menu
- Minimum two people
- After the fifth dish comes an interval, billed on the menu as “a surprise from the Kitchen and Bar”
It is the lowest price for seven courses on my list, and that interval is why it is here: it sounds like a restaurant that wants the evening to be fun.
Le Champignon Sauvage
Some people do not enjoy handing over the whole evening. For them, my pick is Le Champignon Sauvage on Suffolk Road, where David Everitt-Matthias and his wife Helen have cooked since 1987. It lists one Michelin star, and its menu page offers choices rather than a tasting menu.
- Open: Wednesday to Saturday, lunch and dinner
- The full menu: two courses £74, three £92, four (with cheese and dessert) £107
- Set dinner, Wednesday to Friday: £45 for two courses or £52 for three
- House rule: please do not use your mobile phone in the dining room
The restaurant notes that the menus on its site are samples, so treat those prices as a guide.
That is the small print, read so you do not have to. My tasting menus guide puts every menu side by side, with the days each one runs.
If you would like to know more about Cheltenham, visit my site here: Best of Cheltenham
