4 Best Restaurants in The Thames Valley, England

One of the original gastronomy-focused hotels, Le Manoir was opened in 1984 by chef Raymond Blanc, whose culinary talents have earned the hotel's restaurant two Michelin stars, now held for an incredible 39 years and running. The fixed-price menus start at a steep £245—with a six-course £220 lunch that's marginally easier on the wallet—and offer a culinary tour of innovative French creations concocted by Blanc and his team. There's a separate vegetarian menu as well. With more than 1,000 wines in stock, mostly French, you'll find the perfect glass to accompany your meal. You need to book up to three months ahead in summer. Elegant guest rooms are available, but at upwards of £1,000 a night in summer for even a standard double, you could just as well get a taxi back to almost anywhere south of Scotland. The pretty town of Great Milton is 7 miles southeast of Oxford.

Raymond Blanc's sophisticated brasserie in the Jericho neighborhood is the more affordable chain restaurant cousin of Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Great Milton. The changing menu always lists a good selection of steaks and innovative adaptations of bourgeois French fare, sometimes with Mediterranean or Asian influences. Try the confit duck or the rainbow beetroot salad. In a happy concession to more Anglo-Saxon tastes, the restaurant also does a fantastic traditional British roast on Sunday that includes bottomless roast potatoes!

This reliably good brasserie, one branch in an English chain, serves decent French-influenced cooking in a contemporary setting. Start with an order of excellent calamari, fried in bread crumbs with a subtle infusion of garlic, before moving on to a main of fish parmentier (pie with a potato topping) or a classic steak in peppercorn sauce served with french fries. Desserts are rich and tempting, although the simple French cheeseboard, taken with the last of the excellent bottle of red you had with dinner, can make for an unexpectedly fine finish. Reservations are recommended, especially on weekends.

Discreet and intimate, this restaurant is a showcase for the French-inspired cuisine of chef Michael Macdonald, who, as the restaurant's name implies, holds vanilla in high esteem. The fixed-price menu borrows the flavor of a French bistro and shakes it up a bit, so you might have filet mignon with polenta or something more adventurous, such as fennel escabeche with mackerel and vanilla. The three-course lunch menu is a fantastic bargain at £25, and the seven-course menu gourmand for £70 is a tour de force.