The Belvedere Arms

The Belvedere Arms sits in Virginia Water, and it is a gastropub in the fuller sense of that word, a bar and pub that takes its cooking seriously rather than a restaurant that has borrowed the word "pub" for warmth. The description it carries is of refined British cooking, a strong wine list and an atmosphere that aims at sophisticated without tipping into stiff. That is a reasonable summary of what the place is trying to be, and it is a useful one for anyone weighing up where to go.

The price band is £££. In practice that tells you two things. First, this is not the place you drop into for a quick pint and a burger without thinking about the bill. Second, it is not fine dining either, the money sits in the upper-middle bracket, where you are paying for better sourcing, a proper wine offering and the kind of room that takes a bit of maintaining. Go in expecting pub prices and you will be surprised. Go in expecting a tasting menu and you will be surprised the other way.

Virginia Water is a green, well-kept corner of Surrey, close to a great deal of walking country, and that shapes who the Belvedere Arms suits. A long lunch after a walk is the obvious case, and the existing description flags it as a post-walk treat, which feels right. It would also hold up for a Sunday that is allowed to run on, or a dinner where you want somewhere comfortable and grown-up without booking something formal. The wine list is the thing it is best known for, so it is a fair choice if the bottle matters as much as the plate.

Before you book, a few honest caveats. We have no menu detail here, so do not travel on the strength of a dish you think you remember, gastropubs of this kind tend to change what they offer with the seasons, and it is worth checking directly. The same applies to opening hours and to Sunday service, which pubs in this bracket often run differently from the rest of the week. If you are coming as a group, or with a dog after a walk, ring ahead rather than assume.

Where does it sit locally? Virginia Water is not short of money, and it is not short of places that know it. The Belvedere Arms occupies the position of the upmarket local, somewhere you can reasonably walk into as a regular, but which also works when you have someone to impress and do not want to drive to Windsor or into London. That is a genuinely useful slot for a town to have filled. If the wine list is as good as its reputation suggests, that alone justifies the trip for a certain kind of diner.