The best independent restaurants in Lincoln, with the owner named from Companies House
Every “best independent restaurants” list says independent and none of them says what it checked. This one names the company each restaurant trades through and the director on the register, with the company number, so you can look it up yourself in about thirty seconds. Seven restaurants, checked on 12 September 2026.
One of the seven is here because the register does not say what you would expect, and that is the most useful entry on the page. This is not a ranking and it is not a review round-up: it is an ownership check with enough about the food to tell them apart.
Named owner, company registered locally
For each of these the trading company is registered in Lincoln or the villages immediately around it, and at least one named director has been in place for years rather than months.
- The Bronze Pig, Restaurant6 Burton Road, up by the castle. Italian-influenced fine dining and the most ambitious kitchen in the city. Trades as THE BRONZE PIG LIMITED, company 08362619, registered at the restaurant’s own address. Pompeo Siracusa has been a director since the company was incorporated on 16 January 2013, which is as clean an ownership record as this page found: one person, one address, twelve years.
- The Jews House Restaurant, Restaurant15 The Strait, in a twelfth-century stone house that is one of the oldest domestic buildings still lived in anywhere in England. Trades as JEWS HOUSE RESTAURANT LIMITED, company 05884908, registered at the restaurant. Two directors are active on the register: Gavin Aitkenhead since the company was formed on 24 July 2006, and Samantha Tomkins since 1 June 2007, who is also company secretary.
- Reform Restaurant, RestaurantModern British cooking, and the restaurant most often named locally alongside The Bronze Pig. Trades as REFORM RESTAURANT LIMITED, company 07422060. Paul James Catlow and Saera Ahmad have both been directors since incorporation on 28 October 2010, with no resignations recorded against the company at all. The registered office is a village address at Ingham, north of the city, rather than the restaurant itself — normal for a small company, and still Lincolnshire.
- Olivares Tapas Bar, Restaurant3 Castle Hill, at the top of the Bailgate. Trades as OLIVARES LTD, company 08875341, registered at that same Castle Hill address. Nicusor Madalin Petre is the sole director and has been since the company was incorporated on 4 February 2014; the register records no other officer and no resignations.
- Ole Ole Tapas Bar, RestaurantThe Lawn, Union Road. Worth reading the register carefully on this one, because there are two companies at the address and only one of them trades. OLE OLE TAPAS BAR AND RESTAURANT LIMITED (08599498, formed 2013) is still on the register but files as a dormant company. The operating business is OLE OLE LINCOLN LIMITED, company 11119310, whose sole active director is Alison Theresa Mills, appointed 18 June 2018 on the same day the founding director resigned.
- Grillin 'N' Chillin, RestaurantGrilled food, and the newest business on this page by some distance. Trades as GRILLIN N CHILLIN LTD, company 15962719. Abdulkadir Nadir Hamad is the active director, appointed 2 June 2025. The register shows the directorship moving twice in the company’s first year, so this is a young business whose ownership has not yet settled into the multi-year pattern the others here show — worth knowing, not a mark against the food.
Named owner, but the register does not place the ownership here
Independent of any large chain is not the same claim as locally owned, and this is the distinction most lists quietly skip.
- Hobbsons Restaurant & Pie Shop, RestaurantTrades as HOBBSONS (LINCOLN) LTD, company 14674152, incorporated 18 February 2023, with Diane Susan Fuller as the sole active director. Two things are worth saying precisely. The registered office is in Halifax, not Lincoln, and a separate company called HOBBSONS (CAMBRIDGE) LTD was incorporated at that identical Halifax address in April 2024. A shared registered office is very often just a shared accountant and proves nothing on its own — so the honest reading is not that this is a chain, but that the register alone does not put the ownership in Lincoln the way it does for the six above. We would want more before calling it locally owned.
Where to go next
By cuisine rather than by owner: independent Italian restaurants, Indian restaurants with local ownership and independent brunch. Each of those carries its own venue list, which is why this page names owners instead of repeating them.
How this was checked
Every company number above was read from the Companies House register on 12 September 2026, by opening the company’s own officers page rather than searching by name. Each entry names the company, its number and the directors the register showed as active on that date, so you can check any of it yourself. Directors are public record; nothing here comes from a private source.
What this does not prove: a named director is not the same as a person of significant control, a registered office is an administrative address rather than evidence of where anyone lives, and none of it says anything about the cooking. The check answers one question — who is on the hook for this business — and stops there.
Three Lincoln restaurants that would otherwise belong here are deliberately left out because another page already does the same work properly. Laziza and MaCh both have ownership traced to an active company and a PSC record on the Lincoln Indian restaurants guide, and La Trattoria Da Vincenzo is covered on the independent Italian guide — that one is an interesting case in its own right, because it is independent with no limited company behind it at all. There is no date-night guide on the site yet; when there is, it will be linked here rather than summarised.
Names we looked for and could not settle are not listed as absences. A Companies House name search that returns nothing useful on its first page is not evidence that a company does not exist, so restaurants we could not match to a company with confidence were left off rather than recorded as unverified.