Rye has some great restaurants and most of them take full advantage of the area’s local produce, from Romney Marsh lamb to Hastings crab. If you want to dine out at the weekend, it is best to book.
Guide to Rye: Restaurants
Restaurants
Rye has some great restaurants, and most of them take full advantage of the area’s local produce, from Romney Marsh lamb to Hastings crab. If you want to dine out at the weekend, it is best to book.
Landgate Bistro
Passionate staff and great local ingredients add to up the perfect neighbourhood bistro. It offers a great set dinner on Wednesday and Thursday (also available weekend lunchtimes). Leave room for the English cheeses, if you can.
Webbe’s at the Fish Café
This modern and airy Arts and Crafts-era former warehouse can make a nice change from the low beams and crooked staircases that characterise many of Rye’s eateries. The open kitchen serves up the freshest fish and seafood, including rock oysters, Hastings crab and Rye Bay fish stew
The Union
A friendly bistro in a stripped-back former pub, keeping it local with a menu that features Dungeness crab and marsh lamb, plus a selection of 28-day aged steaks. Save room for the dark chocolate mousse or the blowtorched Burwash rose, one of Sussex’s most celebrated cheeses.
Simply Italian
Every town needs a no-nonsense, family-friendly Italian, and this is Rye’s, serving pizza and pasta galore, plus seasonal specials. It’s probably Rye’s most child-friendly restaurant – the colouring-in sheets and crayons are in place a millisecond after you’ve sat down, there’s a crowd-pleasing kids’ menu, and the staff take the time to check things like whether you’d like your children’s food to come out of the kitchen first.
The Standard Inn
One of Rye’s most ancient drinking establishments (it dates to the early 15th century), this is a fashionably stripped-back pub, with a tiled floor, bare-wood window frames and scrubbed wooden tables, softened by distressed blue paintwork. Candles, an open fire and some wonkily beautiful beamwork add to the atmosphere; this is a place for loud, buzzy conversation, not hushed tones, just as a pub should be.
The bar serves beer from nearby breweries including Three Legs, and the food includes local fish and seafood (the scallops with herb butter never leave the menu), Romney Marsh lamp rump and a pie of the day.
The Globe Inn Marsh
This very pretty weatherboarded pub is more of an informal restaurant, with an emphasis on local food. The interior is partly inspired by the rustic shepherd’s huts that pepper Romney Marsh (hence the corrugated-steel walls) and partly by the area’s maritime history (lobster pots turned into pendant lights).
The atmosphere is warm and the menu is extensive, from local fish and meat to ‘bonfire’ pizzas and imaginative dishes for vegetarians. Drinks include wine and beer from nearby Chapel Down and Gusbourne. The attractive raised terrace at the side is a good spot for an outdoor drink in a town that’s a little starved of beer gardens.
The Mermaid Inn
An alehouse since medieval times, the Mermaid’s cellars date from the 12th century, although what you see now is a mere 700 years old or so, with thick beams, elegant panelling and crooked floors.
Now a popular hotel – famously reputed to be haunted by the smugglers that used to hang out here in the 18th century – it also has an extraordinary lounge bar, dominated by an enormous inglenook ‘giant’s fireplace’, so big that it even accommodates a priest’s hole in the chimney breast.
The uniformed bar staff serve local ale and cider and there’s a good wine list. It’s a particularly welcome spot on a cold night, or after a big walk.
The Ship Inn
Originally a 16th-century warehouse that stored the contraband seized from smugglers, The Ship is now a family friendly pub and dining room, owned by Kentish winery Hush Heath. Enjoy its own Balfour English wines alongside an all-day dining menu of gastropub crowd-pleasers.
Marino’s Fish Bar
You can get fish and chips in loads of places in Rye, but (after extensive research) we think this is the best. In addition to being a takeaway it has a licensed restaurant. If you’re taking away, jump the queue on a Friday night by ordering online and collecting.