The best restaurants serving British food in East Midlands

A lovely country pub, a welcome to all.

We have never been to Spilsby before, and had a recommendation to try the Nelson for food. It's such a cosy pub! Cosy log fire, dog friendly, great beers and delicious food. The staff made us feel so welcome, squeezed us in last minute and treated us and our dog so well. We would highly recommend for either just a drink or some great food.

(Feb 2025) This was an overnight stay including an evening meal with extended family and breakfast for ourselves in the morning. We can not fault the stay and the attention we received from Becky. The accommodation was a really high standard, clean and very comfortable. It was lovely to chat to Becky over breakfast and she really did make us feel welcome. Thank you. Definitely recommend.

A wonderful evening to celebrate my dad’s birthday. The staff were so friendly and made sure we had everything we needed. The food was very tasty especially the tuna steaks. Antoniana was our waitress and she was great. Thanks for a Lovely evening.

Excellant food, excellant service. All staff very attentive and friendly found this place as a half way point to meet family. Will definitely be using this place as our meet up point in the future highly recommend !

Really good place good staff good prices

Came for works christmas party. Excellent food, service and bar especially as they were catering for a large number of guests. Great place for a party.

We visited this pubs with friends yesterday with 4 dogs who were very well behaved, the welcome was warm and friendly and pub lovely and cozy. Our order was taken quickly and food served promptly. The food was great quality, quantity and value for money, would recommend

Exceptional Sunday lunch on Mother’s Day, pretty much perfect. Noticeably unusually high quality ingredients combined with expert cooking of meat and also the vegetables, which are so often treated as an afterthought, but here were perfectly treated and cooked and delicious. Just about the best roast potatoes I have ever been served in a restaurant, together with delicious creamy textured mash. Obviously an extremely capable team in the kitchen. Charming competent, timeous yet unobtrusive service. A lovely unspoilt panelled dining room which also has the benefit of “natural” noise cancelling so you can easily have a conversation without having to raise your voice, and without hearing everyone else’s. No silly gimmicks and amazingly these days no “optional” tip added onto the bill, which was a real surprise, although a tip was definitely due and was left in the old fashioned way. Altogether a very pleasant surprise to find an old favourite which is clearly on an upward curve and deserves every success, as demonstrated by the healthy number of clientele.

I love this place so friendly and a down to earth pub plenty of laughs and love playing "sticky's" on Friday fun for all family. In summer nice to sit outside and have a cold beer and plenty of room for the children to run off steam

Dear TripAdvisor. You and the wider internet have well and truly lied to us. The Ship Inn of Retford is basically an absolute hole, disguised as a half decent establishment. The lass behind the bar was proper canny, but she was up against it when it became apparent that there was absolutely no-one in the building capable of heating up a chilli cheese dog. Problematically, though, instead of telling us that they couldn't quite manage to serve up said dish, they readily took our money and left us sitting for over an hour, with an oft-promised 'two-minutes on your food'. Coq au Vin to that we said, after 75 minutes of my stomach thinking my throat had been cut. The final straw was the pub football team(s) who gradually took over the place, who were canny to begin with but then the chief mischief maker entered stage rear, soon to be visited by his actual dealer, and with all the excitement of a new pencil case on the first day of term, took to smoking himself a nice blunt. Now there's a time and a place for this activity, and 1pm on a Sunday lunchtime in a pub next to little kids is not a single one of those. So we left. With a difficult-to-get refund, and still with the stomach and throat thing in full swing. What an absolute chuff on. Only getting one star because you won't let me give precisely none. Do your stomach and your nose a favour, give it a nice wide berth.

Breakfast finishes at 11.45hrs. If you queue from 11.30hrs they won’t let you have breakfast at 11.48hrs. The breakfast bun I eventually received at 12.00hrs had a lot of the ingredients of the all day breakfast. They don’t do the coffee’s displayed on the back wall. The coffee we did get doesn’t do Stokes the supplier any favours. I would be disappointed if it was my brand being advertised. The toilet smelt so bad my wife decided not to make use of the unpleasant facility.

My first time visiting England turned out to be the best experience of my life. The hospitality was excellent. The warm welcome by everyone in the cliff inn was amazing. As a tourist from America, i definitely recommend this pub.

Visited the garden centre. Food smelt good. Buts that’s as good as it got. Some tables were free, but still had the previous customers leftovers on. Asks if it could be cleared and wiped. Was given some blue cloth to do ourselves. Only ordered some cakes and a snack box For my son. Took over 10 minutes for his sandwich to come out. A sandwich made from only 1 slice of bread. Expensive for not much food. Will not visit again.

Super friendly service. Very reasonably priced. Food and drinks super quick and super hot. Food tasty. Highly recommended.