In centuries past, a coaching inn was a key part of English society. They provided a respite for travelers who were journeying across the country by horse and carriage, and offered food and drink for the weary. The 17th-century countryside building that now houses Michelin-starred restaurant Osip was once one of these inns.
The property sits on what was once one of the main roads to and from London. “People would stop on their way, stay the night, have a meal, drink a flask of ale and carry on the next day,” chef and owner Merlin Labron-Johnson tells Observer. He wanted to carry on that historical legacy, and in June, he debuted four bedrooms above Osip. “That’s the inspiration for what we’re doing now. The idea is that people will stay the night at Osip, have a nice dinner, have a nice breakfast, and they’ll continue on. The coaching inns didn’t really give you a choice of meal, and it feels like we’re continuing that tradition with our tasting menu.”
Labron-Johnson first opened Osip in a smaller space in Bruton in 2019. He had previously helmed two restaurants in London (the Michelin-starred Portland and its sister eatery, Clipstone), but wanted to move somewhere quieter where he could grow his own produce. “I had this vision to move to the countryside and open a restaurant,” he says. “It was important to me to do it in an agricultural area. I wanted to find a farm or a farmer who could grow specifically for me.”
Bruton, a picturesque town in Somerset not far from Bristol, seemed like the right place. It’s an upscale area that boasts several celebrity residents, including actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, fashion designer Alice Temperley and filmmaker Joe Wright, and an expansive outpost of art gallery Hauser & Wirth. It’s known for its apples and cider, as well as its dairy, including beloved cheese makers Westcombe Dairy. Somerset is not, however, known for its vegetables, and Labron-Johnson initially struggled to find a farmer with whom he could collaborate.
“It was really difficult to find a consistent supply of really beautiful, organic produce,” the chef says. “I realized I wasn’t going to find this person I’d imagined.” Luckily, a friend of the restaurant offered to loan him a piece of land to use. “I suddenly thought, ‘What if I just did it myself?’” he says.
At the time, Labron-Johnson didn’t have any farming experience. He had grown up in Devon, where his mom served a lot of vegetables, and he had an appreciation for sustainable produce from working under chef Kobe Desramaults at In de Wulf, a now-shuttered rural Belgian restaurant. “I had an understanding of some aspects of it,” he says as we visit one of Osip’s two nearby farms, called Dreamers, in early July. “But I had to teach myself. I spent six months watching YouTube videos and reading.” He was also able to “tap into local knowledge” with the help of a local farmer, another friend of Osip.
Dreamers is a five-minute drive down the road from Osip. It’s relatively small, but Labron-Johnson estimates that more than 100 different ingredients are grown between his two farms (the other is named Coombe). This one features a growing tunnel for warmer-weather plants like tomatoes and rows of beds for herbs and vegetables. Osip now has its own grower who maintains the gardens, but Labron-Johnson also encourages his staff to be part of the process. The gardens supply Osip and its more casual sister restaurant and wine bar The Old Pharmacy, which is also located in Bruton. Any surplus is sold to other nearby restaurants, including Margot Henderson’s The Three Horseshoes Batcombe, or given to those in need.
“From May to December, we’re self-sufficient and we overproduce,” Labron-Johnson says. “We just donated a load of vegetables to a local food bank. But from January to April, which we call the ‘hunger gap,’ is much harder. I’m working on making that gap smaller. A tasting menu is a really good way to not waste food. We do 250 people a week, and everyone has the same thing. And at The Old Pharmacy, we can do a blackboard special if we have anything ready to harvest.”
Many of the ingredients in the garden we visit appear on my table later that evening at Osip as part of the tasting menu, which is the sole way to experience a meal at the restaurant (lunch is £95 and dinner is £150). The meal begins with a plate of crudités, including small carrots, little gem lettuce and crisp radishes. The broad beans and monk’s beard appear on the monkfish dish, and the yellow zucchini is spotlighted in an elegantly rolled presentation of the summer vegetable. The menu evolves rather than changes suddenly, and Osip’s kitchen sticks to dishes they have perfected year after year.
“It shifts quite rapidly in the summer because there’s almost too much abundance of different things that it’s quite hard to keep up,” he says. “It can be overwhelming because you want to work with everything. And we’re not even in peak season yet this year.”
Having a first-hand connection to the produce has completely changed the way the chef cooks and approaches food. He emphasizes vegetables over proteins, although scallops, duck and monkfish all currently appear on the menu. The idea is to ensure that each vegetable tastes like the best version of itself. “It’s quite hard work to harvest them,” Labron-Johnson says. “So to be able to serve them that fresh, you want to present them in a way that has the least manipulation possible. Our cooking style has become a lot more natural and slightly more minimalist.”
Last fall, Labron-Johnson relocated Osip, which earned its Michelin star in 2021 and its Michelin green star in 2023, from its original space in the center of Bruton into the former historic inn. He renovated the lounge and dining room, and added two kitchens, one of which overlooks the tables and is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows. Upstairs, the seven existing bedrooms were converted into four larger rooms, two of which are duplexes. Osip reopened as a restaurant first, and Labron-Johnson spent this year finishing the rooms, which officially debuted in mid-June and begin at £240 per night.
“The space is starting to feel like a house, which is how I intended it,” he says. “Four rooms feels quite cozy. It doesn’t feel like a hotel and, therefore, people don’t have the sort of expectations that you might have if you’re going to a hotel, like room service. And everyone can have breakfast together in the morning.”
The rooms, named for rivers in Somerset, were designed by Johnny Smith and embrace a natural, pastoral color palette and aesthetic. The headboards and bedside tables are made of locally-felled oak, and the team tapped Bill Amberg Studio to create leather drawstring pouches for the keys. Osip partnered with Harvest to produce their own line of toiletries, Maison Osip, and guests get a bottle of the restaurant’s own cider upon arrival. Breakfast is included, and it was the highlight of my overnight stay, featuring honey from Osip’s bees, homemade granola and slices of Westcombe’s cheddar.
Labron-Johnson wants guests to feel immersed in the Somerset landscape, which is visible throughout the building’s many windows, but also in the area’s craftsmanship. “We wanted to include a lot of little details in the spaces,” he says. “We worked with some amazing artists, so there’s a story behind everything. Osip really is a celebration of craft, art and design, as well as food. It should be a holistic experience.”
Although Osip is the culmination of Labron-Johnson’s vision, the chef still feels it’s a work in progress. The outdoor space behind the restaurant is being developed—he recently added wildflowers and patio seating, and Osip has begun serving pre-dinner drinks outside when the weather is nice. He might add more rooms at some point.
“I feel like it’s the start of a journey,” Labron-Johnson says. “I’ve put a lot into this, and I need to make it work now, and it’s going to take a long time to do that. This restaurant is definitely the flagship for me. But at the same time, I can look at it and recognize that it might take another five to 10 years to get it to where I want it to be. I see this as a really great starting point.”
For now, Osip is an intimate destination that is rural enough to feel remote but is less than two hours by train from London. Soho House’s country estate Babington House is nearby, as is luxury spa hotel The Newt in Somerset. There are countryside walks, National Trust sites like Stourhead and, of course, Stonehenge, which is a short drive away. By tapping into the local history and farming culture, Osip has become an integral part of Somerset’s plentiful offerings.