Taunton cafe named among top 50 best museum cafes in the UK

Award-winning food writer for the Guardian, Felicity Cloake, wrote a top 50 list in full, which featured three cafes in Somerset, including the Courtyard Cafe in Taunton.

East Quay Kitchen, in Watchet, and the Garden Cafe, in Bath, were highlighted among the best museum cafes in the UK.

READ MORE: Somerset: Top ten cafes in and around Taunton in 2025

READ MORE: The Racehorse in Taunton to reopen under new management

Speaking about the Courtyard, the food writer said: "On a sunny day, it’s hard to beat this setting in the grounds of the 12th-century Taunton Castle, once at the heart of a great estate owned by the bishops of Winchester.

"The menu is basic but hearty, including pastries for breakfast and, for lunch, soups and sandwiches on bloomer bread (£10.50). There are tubs of Granny Gothards ice-cream from down the M5 in Devon and, of course, cider – this is Somerset, after all."

The 50 best museum cafés in the UK, in no particular order, include:

1. V&A Cafes, London
2. Garden Cafe, Garden Museum, London
3. South London Louie, South London Gallery
4. Corner, Tate Modern, London
5. Art Cafe, the Courtauld Gallery, London
6. Café Estorick, Estorick Collection, London
7. The Wallace Collection Restaurant, London
8. Crispin at Studio Voltaire, London
9. The Town Square Cafe, Young V&A, London
10. Waterside Cafe, Weald & Downland Living Museum, West Sussex
11. Louie on Sea, Turner Contemporary, Margate
12. Rooftop Restaurant, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
13. Pallant Cafe, Pallant Gallery, West Sussex
14. Cafe at the Museum of Rural Life, Reading
15. The Tea Room, Munnings Art Museum, Essex
16. Light, Towner Eastbourne
17. The Mansion House Tea Room, Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes
18. The Square and Compass, Worth Matravers, Dorset
19. The Arnolfini Cafe Bar, Bristol
20. Courtyard Cafe, Museum of Somerset, Taunton
21. East Quay Kitchen, Watchet, Somerset
22. Garden Cafe, the Holburne Museum, Bath
23. Macready's Restaurant, Sherbourne Museum, Dorset
24. Stonehenge, Wiltshire
25. Tremenheere Kitchen, Gulval, Penzance
26. Black Country Living Museum, Dudley
27. The Dining Room, Northampton
28. The River Kitchen, Museum of Making, Derby
29. Parker's Yard, Framework Knitters Museum, Notts
30. Sainsbury Centre cafes, Norwich
31. Garden Kitchen, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
32. The Watering Place Cafe, Sudbury, Suffolk
33. Salts Diner, Shipley, West Yorkshire
34. Lady Lever Art Gallery Cafe, Port Sunlight, Wirral
35. Cafe Laing, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
36. El Castillo, The Spanish Gallery, County Durham
37. Ambulo, Millenium Gallery, Sheffield
38. Bar & Kitchen, the Whitaker Museum, Lancashire
39. The Weston, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
40. Tiled Hall Cafe, Leeds Art Gallery
41. The Whitworth Cafe, Manchester
42. The Scottish Cafe and Restaurant, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
43. The Burrell Collection Restaurant, Glasgow
44. Fruitmarket Cafe, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
45. Stone Cafe, Perth Museum
46. Coliseum Coffee House, Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth
47. The Dylan Thomas Boathouse, Carmarthenshire
48. Miner's Canteen, Big Pit National Coal Museum, Pontypridd
49. Cafe Bar, Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast
50. Seamus Heaney HomePlace Cafe, County Derry 

Speaking about the Courtyard in Taunton, Felicity added: "If it’s rainy or cold, there is seating inside near the beam engine used at Pearsall’s silk factory in the town for a century.

"The museum includes the Low Ham mosaic, a wondrous survivor of Roman Britain, and an impressive fossilised skeleton of a plesiosaur found by a Somerset fisher in 2003 – the first complete one to be found for a century in the UK."