Bristol has been snubbed from a coveted list of the nation’s best pubs for 2025. The Good Food Guide’s 100 Best Pubs list features pubs in nearby Somerset, Gloucestershire, and further into Devon and Cornwall – but there isn’t a single Bristol pub in the list.

The Good Food Guide is dubbed ‘Britain’s authority on eating out’ and has been in publication since 1951. But this will be its inaugural list of 100 Best Pubs in Britain, in partnership with Timothy Taylor’s Landlord and supported by Tracklements and Koffmann’s Potatoes.

The Guide says: “Despite the doom and gloom picture of Britain’s pubs, with closures currently averaging one per day in 2025, The Good Food Guide is celebrating the nation’s thriving appetite for genuine pubs with proper food and proper beer – and the growing number of venues that are delivering it.”

Editor of The Good Food Guide, Chloë Hamilton, said: “We went searching for the pubs that nail the drinking and dining side of the equation. It turns out the harder you look the more you find, and they’re not all hidden away in the Cotswolds.”

A pub in Leeds topped the list for 2025, with the closest to our city in the top 10 only being a Wiltshire pub, The Beckford Arms. While our city, which is full of some incredible boozers renowned for their drinks selection, quirkiness, food offering and atmosphere (think waiting lists for roast dinners and a pub filled with cats to name but a few), didn’t make the top 100 this time, we did score big in another list this year.

Inside The Bag of Nails pub in Hotwells, Bristol

Inside The Bag of Nails pub in Hotwells, Bristol -Credit:Dan Regan/BristolLive

Back in July, 10 of Bristol’s pubs were listed among the best in the country according to The Telegraph’s guide to the ‘500 Best Pubs in England’. Written by the publication’s expert, Will Hawkes, who has been writing about pubs for decades, he tried and tested each one on the list and found the best in our city to be Highbury Vaults, The Kings Head (Redcliffe), The Barley Mow, The Orchard Inn (Harbourside), The Swan With Two Necks, The Avon Packet, The Green Man (Kingsdown), The Llandoger Trow, The Nova Scotia, and The Bag of Nails.

So we may not have made it onto The Good Food Guide’s pub list, but we still have plenty to drink to inside one of our beloved Bristol pubs.

Pubs in the South West that made The Good Food Guide’s list

  • The Barrington Boar, Somerset – number 12

  • Church House Inn, Devon – number 16

  • The Bath Arms at Longleat, Somerset – number 21

  • The Farmers Arms, Devon – number 27

  • Hop Pole Inn, Somerset – number 29

  • The Bull Inn, Totnes, Devon – number 38

  • The Woolpack Inn, Gloucestershire – number 40

  • The Grove Inn, Devon – number 52

  • The Queens Arms, Somerset – number 60

  • The Exmoor Forest Inn, Somerset – number 66

  • The Bell at Selsley, Gloucestershire – number 68

  • The Millbrook Inn, Devon – number 70

  • St Kew Inn, Cornwall – number 74

  • The Cotley Inn, Somerset – number 80

  • The Cornish Arms, Tavistock, Devon – number 81

  • The Halfway at Kineton, Gloucestershire – number 85

  • The Dartmoor Inn, Lydford, Devon – number 93

  • The Longs Arms, Wiltshire – number 94

  • The Duck at Yeoford, Devon – number 96

  • The Gurnard’s Head, Cornwall – number 98

  • The Manor House Inn, Somerset – number 99