Random adventure time. We paid a visit to The Rosemary restaurant in Stanton House Hotel which is just outside Swindon. From the outside you would not expect this hotel to be the kind of place that we would drive for an hour to get to for lunch as it looks like a business hotel. However this hotel is different because it is owned by Honda who have a factory nearby, so the hotel caters mainly for Honda people travelling over from Japan to the factory. This in turn means that the two restaurants in the hotel are Japanese! There is also a small Japanese food shop with a few essentials that is only open on Sunday afternoons for the Japanese expat needs.
I had heard about this place in a roundabout way, when I last visited Bristol I was flipping through the stockists list in the back of one of my sister’s Harumi cookery books and noticed that it mentioned a Japanese food shop in Swindon. I was intrigued… Swindon? Then after some research I found that this shop is in the hotel and that the hotel serves Japanese food. I also found two old reviews of The Rosemary, one by Jay Rayner and one by Matthew Fort.
We went on Sunday when they have a Japanese buffet lunch, and it was good. I’ve never had Japanese food buffet-style but things are cooked in small portions so it all seemed very fresh. There were all kinds of dishes of a fairly homey nature, salmon teriyaki, yaki soba, curry, fish croquettes, cold soba noodles, maze gohan, tofu, etc. Lots of choice. Of the other diners there were lots of people who looked like locals but the majority were Japanese. The buffet was ¬£11.95 each which seems very reasonable to me, drinks were extra, and you could order additional sushi for ¬£2-¬£2.50.
If this place was nearer I’m sure I would be stopping by more often. The dining room of the Rosemary was, as the two reviews said, fairly ordinary and not particularily romantic, the more formal Japanese dining room that is open in the evening sounds interesting. As a random adventure it was fun, that is a long way to go for a meal but as it is pretty much half way between Oxford and Bristol I hope that we will have a chance to pop by again. As there is only one other true Japanese Restaurant anywhere near here (that I know of, any tips?) we are willing to travel.
10 Comments
Looks like a fun daytrip! I would definitely go far for a good japanese meal.
My favourite Japanese restaurants in London are Asakusa (it feels like im in Japan when i go here), Soho Japan, Akari and Donzoko if that’s any help!
Thank you very much for the recommendations! I will bookmark this for next time I am London bound.
You take lots of random trips and they’re always great fun to read about. A hotel in the middle of nowhere in England servicing mainly Japanese businesspeople. Interesting! The shot of the windmills is my favorite. I’ve never seen a wind farm in real life and pictures of them always look a bit menacing and alien.
I am glad they are of interest! :) This was only a small wind farm I think, I’d love to see one of those really big ones with loads of windmills.
A Japanese food buffet? That sounds worth a 1 hour drive to me!
I really like that last shot too!
Totally worth it :)
They look really nice.
Japanese buffet lunch in England? Interesting:)
I’m glad that you enjoyed it.
It was good :) I wish there was more Japanese food for sale around here!
I’ve heard about that place! Maybe a serious Japanese cookery course would be the best way to get easy access to the food. Fun too! The food can be time-consuming to make though… we’re spoilt in London, I take it for granted. I’m overdue a trip to the Japan Centre…
How random! But also, brilliant. My boyfriend has been spending some time in Japan for his PhD and is about to go out there for a year. We’ve been trying out some Japanese retaurants in London in preparation, good to hear about this one if we’re ever in that neck of the woods!