Lumière
“Inspiring modern British cuisine with plenty of bold flavours.” - AA Inspector
CHELTENHAM, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
- Social distancing and safety measures in place
- Follows government and industry guidelines for COVID-19
- Signed up to the AA COVID Confident Charter
We have reduced tables & covers to ensure guests feel safe & have no need to wear face coverings. Each table has their own hand sanitiser made by a local distillery. We have a discrete virtual queuing system for the bathrooms - the bathrooms are thoroughly cleaned after each use. The restaurant is now paperless - all menus, wine lists and bills are accessed via individual ipads. Cloakroom procedures are in place - each jacket is placed in a clean suitcover to ensure there is no cross contamination. Enhanced staff welfare checks to include daily anosmia & ageusia testing.
Our Inspector's view
It maybe set in an unassuming parade a street over from Cheltenham’s leafy Promenade, but inside, Lumière (owned and run by the Howe’s), is the very embodiment of a modern dining room. Elegant and stylish, and decorated in soothing pastel tones, highlighted by statement mirrors and abstract artworks that announce an operation of serious culinary intent. Front-of-house, Helen Howe is a natural host, so nothing is too stiff or formal. In the kitchen, Jon Howe’s highly inventive British cooking comes classically underpinned, delivering vibrant modern flavours with balance, precision and creative plating, deploying plenty of technical wizardry across his tasting-menu repertoire of six or eight courses (with or without a wine flight), while a four-course tasting-menu lunch on Friday and Saturday offers a seductive introduction into the Lumière experience. Jon is also proud to use daily-harvested, organic ingredients (like herbs and vegetables) from their own 15-acre smallholding. The evening tasting menu begins with a volley of sparkling snacks, perhaps a silky smooth taramasalata paired with cucumber, lemon, Avruga and squid ink tuiles, while moving on, an Orkney diver-caught scallop might arrive in an Isle of Wight tomato dashi partnered by cucumber, Thai basil, ponzu, and a scallop roe rice cracker. A mid-meal signature palate-cleanser ‘tequila slammer’ (think salt tuile, tequila sorbet and a lime spear) comes with a surprise helping of molecular gastronomy, before moving on to the likes of a trio of pasture-fed Mount Grace Farm Kerry Hill hogget, served with garden sand carrot, Roscoff onion and mint. Dessert creations are equally standout, witness a Valrhona Guanaja 70% dark chocolate fondant with coffee, mango, passion fruit and sushi rice. A separate vegetarian tasting menu shows the same level of creativity in dishes like Wye Valley asparagus with morel, wild garlic and sweetcorn. A corking wine list and ‘box’ of petit four delights adds to a sparkling performance.
Awards, accolades and Welcome Schemes
3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
AA Notable Wine List
Facilities – at a glance
Credit cards accepted
Gluten free menu
Tasting menu
Vegetarian menu
Wheelchair access
Features
- Seats: 20
- Wheelchair accessible
- Steps for wheelchair: 3
- Assist dogs welcome
- Closed: 2 weeks Winter, 2 weeks Summer
- Wines under £30: 18
- Wines over £30: 88
- Wines by the glass: 14
- Cuisine style: Modern British
- Vegetarian menu
Also in the area
About the area
Discover Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is home to a variety of landscapes. The Cotswolds, a region of gentle hills, valleys and gem-like villages, roll through the county. To their west is the Severn Plain, watered by Britain’s longest river, and characterised by orchards and farms marked out by hedgerows that blaze with mayflower in the spring, and beyond the Severn are the Forest of Dean and the Wye Valley.
Throughout the county you are never far away from the past. Neolithic burial chambers are widespread, and so too are the remains of Roman villas, many of which retain the fine mosaic work produced by Cirencester workshops. There are several examples of Saxon building, while in the Stroud valleys abandoned mills and canals are the mark left by the Industrial Revolution. Gloucestershire has always been known for its abbeys, but most of them have disappeared or lie in ruins. However, few counties can equal the churches that remain here. These are many and diverse, from the ‘wool’ churches in Chipping Campden and Northleach, to the cathedral at Gloucester, the abbey church at Tewkesbury or remote St Mary’s, standing alone near Dymock.
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