Feast your eyes: the UK’s best restaurants with sensational views

There are many rules of thumb in the restaurant game, especially when it comes to picking your table. Luckily, award-winning Financial Times food writer, Bill Knott, has found half a dozen UK restaurants where you’ll be served magnificent views and oodles of atmosphere, no matter where you sit

The Three Chimneys, Skye

Now in its 35th year, The Three Chimneys continues to offer intrepid gourmets ample rewards for making the trek to the wilds of Skye. Chef Scott Davies’s menu celebrates the finest local produce: Portree monkfish, perhaps, with chicken wings, or local red deer with artichokes, a venison faggot and elderberry sauce. Here you’ll graze as contentedly as the sheep just beyond the window, between the picket fence and the shoreline of Loch Dunvegan. Lunch menus £40/£60; dinner menus £68/£95

The Mash Inn, Buckinghamshire

With matchless views of the gently rolling Chiltern Hills, The Mash Inn is a mere hour’s drive from London, but could be a million miles away – chef Jon Parry’s food, however, is bang on trend, with its emphasis on all things cured, fermented and pickled. Quail leg and breast is refashioned into a battered, Korean-style ‘lollipop’ and served with purple-sprouting broccoli kimchi; burrata has cardoon for company; sea urchin is presented with prune and caviar on a rice cracker. On a sunny day, an outside table is a delight. Set lunch £25/3 courses; set menus £60 to £80

Hutong, London

The original Hutong, in Kowloon, specialises in Sichuan and Northern Chinese cuisine and boasts spectacular views: ditto the London branch, on the 33rd floor of the Shard. Designed so that every table has a panoramic view of the city’s skyline, you might suppose the food would be an afterthought - not so. “Red Lantern” crispy soft-shell crab for instance, features the delectable crustaceans dramatically submerged in an earthenware bowl of sichuan peppers: combined with the heady, atmospheric old-Beijing décor, it will have your camera lens wavering between window and table. Set lunch £35/4 courses; signature menu £88; à la carte £70 to £100

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Harry’s Shack, Portstewart

An old hut on a National Trust-owned beach an hour’s drive north of Belfast might seem an odd location for a restaurant, but Harry’s Shack has been winning plaudits for its beautifully simple food since it opened in 2014. Derek Creagh’s kitchen excels at local fish – tuck into megrim sole with brown shrimps, cauliflower and capers; or hake with Moroccan-style chickpeas and couscous, while your eyes feast on the pristine beach and the Atlantic surf. £35/3 courses; À la carte £25

Six Restaurant, Gateshead

On the top floor of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Six has terrific views of the Tyne, its historic bridges and the Newcastle skyline. It’s the perfect lunch or dinner spot for hungry culture vultures – kick off with smoked cod’s roe with cucumber salsa and a squid ink cracker, then perhaps North Sea cod with parsnip purée and shellfish butter, or haunch of venison braised in red wine, served on trofie pasta. Set lunch £25/3 courses; set dinner £30/3 courses; à la carte £35-£45

The French Horn, Sonning

There’s an eternally, ineffably English quality to The French Horn. On the banks of the Thames, with lawns leading down to weeping willows by the water and neatly-clipped hedges fringing flamboyant flowerbeds, it has been welcoming the well-heeled since 1972. The menu is just as timeless – order the duck, spit-roasted over a wood fire and carved from a trolley at the table and, just for a few hours, forget all about the modern world. £100/3 courses; À la carte £80

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This article has been tagged Food + Drink, Destination