Woodbridge · Suffolk

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Wed – Sat, lunch & dinner Sunday, one long lunch 28 covers

14 Market Hill · 18:40

Two things name this place: the chalk under the fields, and the embers we cook over.

We took on a tired coaching inn on Market Hill in 2019 and stripped it back to lime plaster, stone floors and one enormous hearth. There is no walk-in freezer. There is a chalkboard by the door, rewritten every morning, and a delivery van that comes from eleven miles away.

Lunch is short and quiet. Dinner runs to five courses if you let it. Either way you will be looking at a fire, and someone will probably tell you which field the carrots came out of.

One room, one long table, eighteen chairs.

Above the kitchen, with its own hearth and a door you can close. We write a single menu for the table and serve it family style. Used mostly for birthdays, wakes, harvest suppers and the occasional very small wedding.

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Tom learned fire on his grandfather’s farm, long before he learned a kitchen.

He grew up at Bredfield, three miles north, where the kitchen range was lit before dawn and went out only when the last pan was done. Nine years in London followed — two kitchens you would recognise — and he left both the week the lease on Market Hill came up. His partner Sam runs the floor and the wine, which leans towards low-intervention English and Loire whites.

The kitchen is five people. It is open to the room, so you will hear it.

Sit by the fire

We hold six seats at the counter for walk-ins every service. Everything else is worth booking, especially Saturday and Sunday lunch.

14 Market Hill, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 4LU. Ten minutes from the station, twenty from Sutton Hoo.