The Crown at Whitebrook is a remote and tucked away Welsh restaurant with rooms, near the river Wye and the border with England.
Matthew Fort of The Guardian once described its location: “The Crown is not the easiest place in the world to find. It lies off a narrow lane winding between steepling, canopied hills in an odd corner between Monmouth and Chepstow. In spite of its lost world location, the Crown has been a beacon of gastronomic adventure for at least 30 years – those with long memories will recall Stephen Bull carving out his reputation here.”
Presumably in part due to its hidden location, the Crown has had a rather turbulent recent history. Financial difficulties forced the restaurant to close down in March 2013 only for it to rise again, better than ever, with new head chef and owner Chris Harrod, only a few months later. Since then the Crown has made huge steps in the right direction, earning a spot in this year’s Good Food Guide, as one of just eight Welsh inclusions, to go along with unanimously positive reviews on Trip Advisor (although this is admittedly based on a relatively small sample size) and a five star rating from the AA.
The food looks like a fantastic selection of locally sourced ingredients and has received positive comments almost universally. Since the reopening there has been fairly little in the way of professional reviews but The Telegraph did briefly sum up the Crown at Whitebrook as follows:
“Friendly staff, a beautiful location – this restaurant-with-rooms is a cracking find. Foraged ingredients often crop up – suckling pig is served with wild onions and hop shoots, pine-nut purée and violet artichokes”
So the food is good but what of the disabled access? Unfortunately, here the Crown falls short. There is no adapted disabled toilet and both ladies and gents toilets have rather narrow doors. They do say that the ladies toilet can fit a wheelchair inside but there are no handrails or other expected adaptations for disabled visitors. The guest rooms are not adapted and as they are also upstairs they’re pretty much inaccessible.
However, On a more positive note, they do provide large print menus and welcome guide dogs. Also, it is easy to get inside as the Crown has two car parks – at the front and rear of the restaurant – for step free access you need to go to the car park at the back. The staff are trained in providing assistance to disabled people.
Additionally, despite the access being slightly disappointing, they have made information available on their website in the form of an access statement, which means they are at least letting people know about the access prior to visiting. Especially pleasing is that the access statement is made available through a link on the restaurant’s home page; not buried in some hidden corner of the site.
The Crown at Whitebrook seems to be a lovely, charming and secluded country restaurant with terrific food and a friendly atmosphere. Sadly, it just is not accessible enough to earn more than a provisional 1.5 BBS Ticks. So that’s what it gets…
