Mr & Mrs Smith

The Pig in the Forest

Hampshire, United Kingdom

The Pig in the Forest hotel in Hampshire has upped the bar on the country-house hotel: gone are the stuffy uniforms, paisley carpets and mismatched furniture, in is incredible local food, a relaxed, laid-back feel and effortless grandeur.

Need to know

• Rooms 26.
• Rates Double rooms from $233.22 (£149), excluding tax at 20 per cent.
  The price shown represents the lowest nightly rate for a double room available at this hotel over the next 21 days. Any price conversions from the hotel's local currency (£149) have been conducted using today's exchange rates from xe.com.
• More details Breakfast is extra (£10 for Continental; £15 for cooked).
• Facilities Free WiFi throughout, treatment rooms, gardens, billiards table, tennis courts, bikes to borrow and a library of books and DVDs. In rooms: flatscreen TV, DVD player, mini larder with old-fashioned sweets and local snacks, and Sprout Out by Gilchrist & Soames products.
• Check-out 11am. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
• Children Cots and extra beds cost £15. A local nanny can be arranged with a week’s notice (£28 for four hours minimum). The restaurant serves smaller options for kids.
• Also There’s one room suited to wheelchair users. Pets are welcome in the stable yard. The restaurant at the the Pig is extremely popular, so be sure to make dinner reservations when you book or you might not get a table

Food and drink at The Pig in the Forest

• Hotel restaurant

  The Pig’s restaurant is the feather in its hat, a glorious garden-y place with a conservatory feel – old wooden school chairs, plant pots on every table, foliage-covered trellises and a colourful mosaic floor. The menu changes suddenly, based on what the forager returns with each day, and much of the food comes from the on-site walled garden, smoke house and within the New Forest’s boundary lines. Everything's perfectly porcine, including a selection of ‘piggy bits’ (scratchings, chorizo and brawn) to start and a whole lot of other meat on offer. Outside, there’s a wood-fired oven cooking pizzas and flatbreads over the weekend. Breakfast is a banquet of boil-your-own eggs, delicious home-made granola and cakes, miniature pastries and hot food on order.

• Dress code Add some foliage to your ensemble to fit in with the ‘picked-this-morning’ theme.
• Top table By the window for a superior view of the grounds; those who like their tables a bit more curious will enjoy dining on the recycled mortuary slab out on the patio.
• Last orders Breakfast is served between 7am and 10am; lunch is noon to 2.30pm; dinner is available from 6.30pm until 9.30pm.
• Room service None, but there’s a well stocked larder in every room, with hearty snacks including tomato biscuits and salami sticks.
• Hotel bar

  Drinks can be taken in the Drawing Room and Library, as well as the bar next to the restaurant – each room has lots of squashy armchairs, battered leather seats, mounted boar heads and stately oil paintings. The bar itself is an ornate, carved wooden number stacked with spirits. Try a glass of champagne with home-made elderflower juice.

The Pig in the Forest Beaulieu Rd, Brockenhurst, the New Forest, Hampshire SO42 7QL