A Seat at the Table: THE GORDON ARMS Restaurant with Rooms
Bryn and Oxana Jones's restaurant in the Yarrow Valley — home-grown, hand-picked, and curated from the best of the Borders.
Last issue I sent you over the hill to Gattonside. This time you needn’t even leave the valley. THE GORDON ARMS sits at the meeting of the Yarrow and Ettrick roads, the old coaching inn at the crossroads where, the story goes, Walter Scott and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, used to meet. It has been an inn for a very long time. What it is now is one of the best places to eat in the Scottish Borders, and it is barely eight minutes from the cottage.
It is run by Bryn and Oxana Jones, and it is a family affair in the truest sense. Bryn cooks alone, a chef-patron in the old style, one man in the kitchen, no brigade, building seasonal menus on the principle he states plainly: maximum flavour, minimum fuss. Oxana leads front-of-house with a warmth that the guidebooks keep trying and failing to describe, and bakes a good number of the desserts herself, under the name ‘She Likes Baking’. There are seven tables. That is the whole restaurant. Seven tables and one chef and a wife who makes the puddings.
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Seven tables and one chef, and a wife who makes the puddings.
The food is produce-led to an almost literal degree. They have an established kitchen garden and greenhouse now producing a great deal of their own fruit, vegetables, herbs and salads. The Scottish growing season is shorter than the south of England’s, but they have adapted around it, and some of what reaches the plate has travelled, in Bryn’s own reckoning, about ten steps from the soil. The rest comes from Borders farmers, estates, and coastal suppliers — the same web of small producers that makes this corner of Scotland quietly one of the most interesting places to eat in Britain. The restaurant menu changes weekly and the five-course tasting menu monthly, so no two visits are quite the same. The cooking is rooted in classical technique and entirely unshowy. Balance and depth matter more than theatre. Nothing arrives on a slate or under a cloche. It is just very good food, cooked by someone who has nothing to prove and a great deal of skill.
The recognition has followed, as it tends to. The Good Food Guide named THE GORDON ARMS Restaurant with Rooms among its Best 100 Local Restaurants in Great Britain. It holds a Green Tourism Silver award, and in 2026 was named Winner – Independent Hotel of the Year, Scottish Excellence Awards 2026. It has been listed among The Scotsman’s 12 Best Restaurants with Rooms in Scotland and SquareMeal’s 25 Best Restaurants with Rooms in the UK. But none of that is the reason to go. The reason to go is that it is a small, serious, deeply hospitable restaurant in the middle of a quiet valley, run by two people who care enormously, and you can walk back out afterwards into the dark and the silence and the stars.
Book ahead — seven tables go quickly — and go hungry.
THE GORDON ARMS, Yarrow Valley, Selkirk TD7 5LE. Restaurant Bookings direct through gordonarmsyarrow.co.uk is preferred; you’re also welcome to telephone or email. 01750 82261.
From The Scullery
Letters from the Scullery is a bi-monthly publication from The Scullery, a boutique one-bedroom cottage at Ladhope in the Yarrow Valley, Scottish Borders. Join the Inner Circle at the-scullery.com for early access to dates and Inner Circle rates on midweek stays.