3 Best Restaurants in Lavenham, East Anglia

This excellent "restaurant with rooms" on the medieval Market Square takes deeply traditional flavors of the British countryside and updates them with a slight French twist. Served in an elegant, whitewashed dining room, the five-course, fixed-price dinner menus use a reassuring amount of local and regional ingredients. The selection might include breast of pigeon with caramelized endive or halibut with ginger foam and parsley sauce. The five spacious guest rooms have sloping floors, beamed ceilings, well-appointed bathrooms, and antique furnishings.

In a town ready to burst with cream teas, it's a bit of a surprise to find an Indian restaurant, let alone such an exceptional one. Among the classics one would expect from a curry house—from mild kormas to spicy madrases and jalfrezies (traditional curries made with chili and tomato)—are some finely executed specialties, including Nizami chicken (a fiery dish prepared with yogurt and fresh ginger) and tiger prawn bhuna (with ginger, garlic, and spring onion). The menu also contains regional specialties from Goa and Hyderabad.

The villages of England are awash with cream tea cafés, but none are as quaint and cute as the Lavenham Blue Vintage Tea Rooms. Having converted the ground floor of the 15th-century timber-framed cottage into a café, the proprietor set about making a name for the place with the best cream teas and door-stop sandwiches this side of the Broads. And if you can't manage another cream tea then indulge in a classic ploughman's lunch, a quintessential country lunch of cheeses, cold meats, pickles, and bread.