Good food just off the motorway

[Ari]

Thought it might be quite useful to list good places to eat just off the motorway if anyone has any good suggestions.

Maybe best to start with the motorway number, junction number, location. For instance.

M5 J13 Gloucester

Fromebridge Mill. Really nice lcation, good food, well priced.

http://www.fromebridge-mill-whitminster.co.uk/

Three minutes off the junction, first exit off roundabout if heading north, head down short dual carriageway, next roundabout it's straight across and you're there.

[Camaro91]

You don't own the Fromebridge Mill do you?

[kiethton]

The Lion Hotel (pub restaurant/bar) - as above, decent food prices and a nice river running past

J3 M25 - Brands Hatch (on the way to)

[Ari]

Camaro91 said:

You don't own the Fromebridge Mill do you?

Nope, no connection. It was recommended to me by a friend and I've used it a lot since.

I need somewhere further up the M6 at some point soon and it occurred to me that it'd be really useful to have a resource to look through to find another similar place to use.

[SpeedBash]

Ari said:

Nope, no connection. It was recommended to me by a friend and I've used it a lot since.

I need somewhere further up the M6 at some point soon and it occurred to me that it'd be really useful to have a resource to look through to find another similar place to use.

I believe that is the theory behind the below website - not used it myself, so can't vouch for how good/accurate it is.

http://somewherenear.com/

[tubbystu]

[Twincam16]

According to Quentin Willson, motorway service stations used to be a lot more upmarket. Forte used to run a lot of the restaurants and apparently people used to go for a meal out at places like Leicester Forest East services, where you'd get decent food and good table service too.

It's a shame they're all fast-food outlets these days as I can actually see the appeal in fine dining in a heavily insulated, glassy modernist restaurant suspended over a motorway, seeing cars rocket past beneath you.

In fact, what's happened to high-rise dining? Back in the '60s and '70s it seems to have been all the rage. There was the revolving restaurant at the top of the Post Office tower and the World Trade Centre had a restaurant quite high up too (Lincoln did the press launch for the Versailles up there back in the '70s). In Manchester there's Cloud 29 half way up the Beetham Tower, and a Chinese restaurant (now very down-at-heel but given its sense of faded glory you can tell back in the '70s when it was built it would've been quite sophisticated - not sure it was always a Chinese either) on a bridge over Oxford Road looking out towards the Manchester Museum through brown-tinted windows.

It must have been a popular fad - there's a scene in Get Carter in the multi-storey car park where Alf Roberts tells Michael Caine he wants to turn the top floor into a restaurant. Why wouldn't that happen nowadays? I can still see the appeal.

[jet_noise]

Dear Ari,

a couple of sites I've used for this purpose:
one & two,

Alternatively Tesco's cafe is dirt cheap & quick if you just need refi/uelling

regards,
Jet

[AlpineWhite]

Ari said:

M5 J13 Gloucester

Fromebridge Mill. Really nice lcation, good food, well priced.

Spooky. I saw the thread title, and thought of this place.

[Ari]

jet_noise said:

Dear Ari,

a couple of sites I've used for this purpose:
one & two,

Alternatively Tesco's cafe is dirt cheap & quick if you just need refi/uelling

regards,
Jet

They're both excellent, thank you.