When Sam Lomas applied to run the restaurant, formerly Osip, at Number One Bruton, he wrote to the owners, Claudia and Aled Rees: "I opened my first restaurant, the Diced Carrot, when I was nine years old, in my bedroom. I'd love to open my second at Number One Bruton."
"The moment we read that," says Claudia, who brims with life and bonhomie, "the job was pretty much his." A good decision and a great break for Lomas, whom I met in 2021 at English agriturismo Glebe House in Devon, where he worked in the kitchen alongside chef patron Hugo Guest. His passion for farm-to-table cooking - using local, where possible foraged, produce - was evident then, and now he has his own canvas on which to create.
Sam's follow-up to the Diced Carrot is set not in a bedroom but a former ironmonger's shop. Its tiny open kitchen surveys a charming, informal dining room that has an air of the Rive Gauche - café curtains, pendant lights, tiled walls. He's called it Briar, a wild bramble native to England - just the right name for his earthy, daily-changing West Country menu of small plates, sharing dishes and proper puddings.
Highlights such as "cured brill, fresh curds, beef shin, grilled lamb, damsons" are chalked up on a blackboard. As we chatted while he prepped, a tray of hedgehog mushrooms arrived, picked by a local forager. It might have been Christmas Day for a nine-year-old, such was Sam's bright-eyed delight.
In a separate building next door, Claudia and Aled have just created a convivial and unpretentious pub, the Blue Ball, that looks as if it's been there for ever but is, in fact, new. At dinner in Briar, the zingy cured sea bream was the standout dish, but everything we ate was packed with flavour - so delectable that we tragically had no room for Sam's legendary apple cake. Sam is an alumnus of River Cottage, and it shows; the dishes in his new neighbourhood restaurant are inventive but always approachable and meant, above all, to be relished and enjoyed.
Quite how I've managed to spend nearly five years since it opened not going to Number One Bruton I really do not know, because it's the sort of place I truly love, and such one-off peaches are few and far between.
I think it's the dull name that put me off. In fact, the hotel is full of character, warmth, colour and interest, with eye-catching objects, paintings and photographs that tell of a love of travel. It's run by Claudia and Aled along with a team of locals, and oozes charm and individuality. "I love being a hotelier. Meeting so many different and interesting guests is the closest I can get to travelling without leaving the country," says Claudia.
Number One's warmth and its artistic, boho charm instantly reminds me of one of the first British hotels to capture my heart, now long gone. The Abbey in Penzance was owned and run by 1960s fashion icon Jean Shrimpton after she retired from modelling. Perhaps, it occurs to me now, she once worked with Claudia's mother, Brigid Keenan.
A Sunday Times fashion editor, Keenan married a diplomat, Claudia's father, and later wrote the bestselling book Diplomatic Baggage, about her adventures as a "trailing spouse". She and her husband moved constantly with their children, hence Claudia's love of foreign places. Now, they have all come to rest: Claudia and Aled and their two children live together with her parents nearby.
They bought the derelict site, originally a coaching inn, in 2016, two years after Hauser & Wirth had set up shop in Bruton and catapulted the Somerset town to the stratospheric popularity it now enjoys. It took four years to restore the Georgian townhouse, row of cottages, medieval forge and ironmonger's shop and convert them into a compact, stone-walled, 12-bedroom hotel and restaurant. In the large, south-facing courtyard, the garden designer Penelope Hobhouse has created a magical space by planting a lawn and trees that lend a delightfully rural, and also rather French, feel.
All the bedrooms are different. Mine, Townhouse One, is graced by a huge rug from Iran and a mother-of-pearl chest of drawers from Syria, both bought by Claudia's parents, as well as an Uzbek suzani wall hanging and a flower painting by William Dalrymple's wife, Olivia. The curtains are from Nicky Haslam, the bed is huge and comfortable, and the bathroom quirky and pretty with an armchair, a pink-tiled shower and claw-foot tub. It's as far from cookie-cutter hotel design as you can get and, basically, it's Fiona heaven.
1 High Street, Bruton BA10 0AB (01749 813030; numberonebruton.com). Doubles from £180, including breakfast.