The best restaurants serving British food in Purbeck South West

Ate here last Sunday 27th April, I ordered crab salad advertised as "Traditionally dressed crab in shell, mixed leaves, lemon mayonnaise, crusty bread & butter", the crab was a massive disappointment, didn't taste like crab and certainly not fresh. It was served with a little mixed leaves and tiny slices of cucumber and tomato. There were also 4 slices of fresh white stick bread which took up half of the plate. For £25 it was certainly money down the drain. My friend had a kind of vegetarian Sunday roast, the roast potatoes were overdone, the pie crust was overdone and the swede tasted old. It's the only restaurant in the area so I guess they have a monopoly!

Bloody brilliant. Food and ambience superb. Service with a smile. Superb plaice and monkfish Thai curry. The desserts are all made by the chef. We had a pavlova but look forward to coming back for the chocolate torte. Very underrated restaurant of the highest echelon.

A wonderful Easter Sunday Roast! Always such fabulous and tasty food, wonderful ambience and delightful service. Thank you Tom, Amelia, Chefs and Waitresses Tracey, Andy & Roger

We regularly visit The Salt Pig in Wareham as it's simply the best in town. Perfect for Breakfast, Lunch or just coffee and cake. All the food is locally sourced which is very important to us. All the staff are really friendly and extremely hard working. The food is always delicious and fresh and what about the Sunday Roasts...Woweee!! Just theeeee best. I can probably say it's the best eat out roast I've had, hand down!! We love it here. Ps we buy all our locally sourced meat from the in house butcher as well. Superb!!!

A really stunning area. The castle is beautiful and the eatery benefits from the most beautiful landscape views. The menu is good. The service is good. I do feel the dinners work out better value than the lunches (panninis etc), The lunches are very tasty but a tad expensive in relation to the cooked meals. Great it accepts dogs obviously. The stroll from car park is easy. Overall highly recommended for the views, ambience and good quality food.

A lovely find on our travels. We enjoyed a lovely takeaway coffee and delicious cake which we ate across the road in the park/ garden.

Excellent cream tea. Such delicious fruit scones, and great portions of jam and cream. Fairly priced - a lovely little cafe!

They managed to fit us in without a booking and had a lovely meal, one fish and one steak. Delicious. We asked about booking for another evening but unfortunately they were closing that evening to retire!

Poor cooked breakfast. Despite asking for well done bacon and sausage it arrived undercooked, for me, with cold beans. Nice mug of tea and pleasant staff however much better breakfasts available elsewhere.

We bought this as a belated birthday gift for my MIL, after the last couple of years we were very much looking forward to it. Unfortunately, as we arrived we were told that we would be stationary for the majority of the meal as the driver had been working all day and will now be over hours. We stated that this is not what we had paid for and all we were told was “they were trying their best”. We were fine with accepting that it would be a diesel train instead of a steam train due to the heatwave, but to sit in a hot carriage with a view of Swanage’s finest COOP was not the experience we were expecting. We feel poor planning by the organisers if they are reliant on only 1 or 2 drivers for an event that had to be booked months in advance. We spent over £200 for this much awaited birthday gift and the only compensation we got was just £10 off our bar bill. Would not recommend this line. Also, do not choose the crumble, it came burnt and is served dry with no cream/custard/ice-cream.

These are the best chips in Swanage and I should know…. I have eaten ALOT of chips in Swanage The view of the sea and so close to the beach makes it extra special

Just had the best Coffee/Vanilla Milkshake. Custom made and definitely hit the spot. Service friendly, helpful and efficient. Thanks

Once again we were delighted with our visit to The Cock and Bottle for lunch. This pub is never disappointing. I have described a visit in a previous review, however I feel I must mention the salmon linguine we enjoyed yesterday. How the chef makes such magic with food I can only applaud. As before, the service and ambience are lovely.

After a terrible meal in another Wareham restaurant the night before, we were simply hoping for half decent food but this was much better than that! Sweet Potato soup with sourdough bread followed by local ham, egg and chips for me - huge portions and very tasty indeed. My husband’s choices were Thai Fish Cakes followed by Mushroom and Brie Wellington. All delicious and very good service too! Would recommend.

I was very excited to try this fish and chips for takeaway with my partner on the weekend. He had fish and chips and I had sausage and chips. Unfortunately, both of us ended up getting food poisoning. The fish and sausage both stood out in the heat lamps, so not sure if this had anything to do with it. Either way been feeling unwell for couple of days now. Hopefully something can happen about this as it can kill someone’s next time.