Trenchers Bowness opened in July 2026. We were in the Lake District in August 2026. And when the original Trenchers restaurant (which you’ll find in Whitby) was named Restaurant of the Year at the National Fish & Chip Awards in the same year, it would have been rude not to visit their latest opening, right?
Trenchers in Whitby also won the same award in 2019, so we had high expectations when we arrived at their Bowness restaurant. You’ll find Trenchers Bowness just a short walk from the main lakeside retail and dining areas, and by the time we arrived for an early 5pm dinner, the takeaway entrance was already bustling. There’s a separate entrance for dine-in customers, and we were able to snag a table with no problems.
As you’d expect from a brand new restaurant, everything at Trenchers Bowness looked very smart. It’s a beautifully decorated place, but with enough of a traditional fish and chip shop feel to stop it from feeling too overly polished.
Fish and chips is, of course, the main attraction, but the menu at Trenchers Bowness has plenty more to offer. You’ll find seafood boards, burgers, sausages and other chippy favourites, as well as plenty of vegetarian and vegan choices, including banana blossom “fish”, and the option to have chips cooked in vegetable oil rather than the standard beef dripping.
There’s also a kids’ menu for under 12s, with mains priced at £6.95 and desserts at £3.95.
Despite the opportunity to order fish and chips from a brand crowned the best in the country, our eight-year-old went for the chicken nuggets: a sizeable portion, and one he thoroughly enjoyed.
I knew I wanted to try the cod, but the question was, which size to go for? Trenchers Bowness offers both small and regular portions and when we asked our server, we were told the regular was pretty big. The small it was, for me, priced at £15.95.
It did feel expensive compared with some of the other fish and chip shop options in the area, but then, if you’ve just won a national award for your offering, I suppose that commands a bit of a premium…
The portion was certainly big enough for me, and the fish itself was beautiful. The batter was exactly what you’d want from a good fish and chip shop: crisp, golden and not overly thick, with the flaky cod inside fresh and moist.
The chips certainly looked the part – proper chippy chips, cooked, as I mentioned before, in beef dripping. Sadly, though, they didn’t quite live up to expectations. They weren’t bad, but they certainly weren’t the best I’ve ever eaten.
Had I gone in not knowing about the brand’s national acclaim, I probably wouldn’t have been disappointed. Knowing that we were visiting a brand of Britain’s best fish and chip restaurant, though, meant that we were expecting something exceptional, and while the cod delivered, the chips just didn’t quite hit the mark.
Would I go back? Probably. I’d like to give more of the menu a go, and see whether my experience with the chips was simply a one-off!