Josh and Holly Eggleton’s Pony Chew Valley opens in former Pony & Trap site

Siblings Josh and Holly Eggleton have relaunched their former Michelin-starred restaurant, the Pony & Trap in Bristol, as the Pony Chew Valley after an extensive three-year refurbishment.

The pair of 2016 Acorn Award winners ran the original Pony & Trap gastropub in Chew Magna with their parents and brother Scott for 16 years. It received its Michelin star in 2011, which it held until its closure in 2021.

In 2022, the family launched a crowdfunding campaign with a £100,000 target to relaunch the Pony & Trap as a destination restaurant with a micro-farm and cookery school.

Two years after hitting its target, the Pony Chew Valley has finally opened its doors with a modern British menu showcasing ingredients from local farmers, producers and the restaurant’s own garden.

Dishes include a mix of gastropub favourites, such as ’proper Ploughman’s’, and ham, egg and chips, as well as a daily à la carte offering. A midweek set menu and a weekend chef’s tasting menu is also available, featuring dishes such as wild garlic spelt risotto with hazelnuts and Somerset pecorino; Cornish cod with pickled cockles, sea herbs and caramelised whey sauce; and vanilla set cream with Cheddar strawberry jelly and burnt meringue.

As well as serving meals, the restaurant will be used to host courses and volunteer programmes for charities, local primary schools and Team Canteen, a grassroots initiative supporting underrepresented communities in the city, which was founded by Josh.

Pony Chew Valley will also become the Pony Group’s flagship training hub for staff and the general public, to enhance their skills at the upstairs cookery school, which includes a demo kitchen and 10-station space.

Workshops and classes will be led by Josh and Rob Howell, chef patron of the Pony Group’s sister restaurant Root, a vegetable-led site in Wells, Bristol.

The Pony Group includes the Pony Chew Valley, fish and chip restaurants Salt & Malt in Whapping Wharf and Crew Valley, neighbourhood pub and chophouse the Kensington Arms in Bristol and Root.