Current owner(s) Michael Emmanuel City Reading | Head chef Josiane Diaga County Oxfordshire | |
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Food type [Classic French & British] Street address [Play Hatch Road, Sonning on Thames] | ||
The French Horn at Sonning is a luxury hotel and restaurant on the banks of the River Thames next to the Sonning Backwater Bridges, at Sonning Eye, Oxfordshire, England.
The speciality of the restaurant is duck, roasted on a spit in front of the fire, and the extensive wine list is one of the most acclaimed in Britain with exceptional vintages of 1st Growth Claret. The restaurant has a panoramic view of the gardens and river Thames beyond. The riverside trees are floodlit at night. It is possible for diners and other visitors to moor on the river in the hotel's garden. There is an old, rusty iron gate with the name of the hotel within the ironwork on the path by the river opposite Sonning Bridge. The hotel includes a number of riverside cottages that are now used as rooms for hotel clients.
Notable clientele included the film director and restaurant critic Michael Winner (died 2013), who has used the location as a film set, and members of the Royal Family. It has also featured in the books of Dick Francis.
Close by is The Mill at Sonning, now a dinner theatre. On the opposite Berkshire bank over the main historic Sonning Bridge is another riverside hotel and restaurant, the Great House at Sonning.