A first look at Atlas
Published 12 October 2026

Atlas is one of the year's most anticipated openings. It’s been nearly three years since chefs James and Maria Close shut the 14-year-old Raby Hunt in Summerhouse, County Durham (rated Exceptional in the guide) and moved to the resplendent 375-acre surroundings of Rockcliffe Hall, a 43-room resort on the outskirts of Hurworth in Durham, complete with its own golf course and spa. As culinary director, James Close served his first menu in May 2024 at Café Terra, and now oversees five restaurants and a Japanese-inspired cocktail bar at the hotel. But all eyes are on the newly launched Atlas, the fine-dining restaurant that gives equal billing to Maria, who oversees pâtisserie, overall development, and the dining room’s 1980s pop-and-rock playlist.

The hotel advertises Atlas as a ‘world-class dining experience’, and that ambition is palpable from the moment you walk through an ivy-covered arch and see the dramatically lit purpose-built sandstone pavilion that houses the restaurant. The reception area has its own visual impact with a large circular ceiling feature made up of numerous gold discs, and a glowing, internally lit bar. A choice of five champagnes, served in beautifully crafted but ever-so-slightly ludicrous hand-blown flutes with elongated stems, accompanied the first generous and fun bite of the evening: a flaky croissant filled with Iberico ham, anchovy and butter.

The drama of the evening continues as you walk into the previously hidden and very spacious main dining room. A symphony in beige and white, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the grounds, the space evokes the sort of luxurious rooms overseen by chefs with surnames like Ducasse, Alleno and Colagreco. The open kitchen, with its expensive custom-built French islands and now de rigueur glass-fronted ageing fridges and hand-cranked open-fire grill (see also Gwen and Mor), provides plenty of visual interest, including the Closes at work, especially for the three tables with front-row seats. For a supplement (£60 on the £190 lunch menu and £75 on the £225 dinner menu), you can sit at the chef’s table, a dining counter with six stools overlooking the kitchen, although that only buys you interaction with the Closes and the kitchen team and no additional food or drink.

The 14-course Art of Discovery menu is revealed dish by dish, with a printed copy only presented at the end of the meal as you leave. It is a continuation of the wildly eclectic and globally inspired cooking the Closes practised at the Raby Hunt, and reflects inspiration from the couple’s world travels. The meal breaks down into three acts, beginning with seven smaller servings named after key dishes of a particular world cuisine (eg ‘pinxtos’ and ‘ceviche’) followed by a further four savoury dishes named after destinations including St Malo, and finally a trio of sweet treats.

Somehow, pinballing around the gastronomic world from Spain, Japan, Italy, France and South America then back to Japan again works. The uniting theme is intensity of flavour, from a luxurious gunkan maki of unagi eel and sautéed foie gras to slices of medium-fatty chutoro Spanish bluefin tuna served with a punchy puttanesca-inspired dressing and puréed burrata that provided some surprising but welcome richness that helped balance out the dish’s strong flavours. Sweets were as strong as the savouries. A pre-dessert of the Japanese citrus fruit sudachi, made into a crémeux and granita and served with sancho pepper and yuzu ice cream, was simply exquisite, as was a beautifully made caramel, vanilla and calvados mille feuille that would have made a Frenchman swoon. An elaborate chocolate cart included the signature skulls, but a chocolate scented with spices from French chef Olivier Rollinger almost stole the show.

We visited in the restaurant’s fourth week of operation, but even at such an early stage, service was seamless. From the greeting at the door to the presentation of menus at the end of the meal, every step of the way was faultless. Dressed in smart pinstripe beige or navy double-breasted suits for the men and elegant beige jacket and skirt outfits for the women, the front-of-house team were uniformly friendly and chatty and helped make the evening hugely enjoyable. The expert wine pairing by former Connaught head sommelier Manuel Ghezzi also elevated the experience.

While there is no doubting James and Maria Close’s abilities, the menu we ate would have benefitted from being edited in both length and portion size (was it really necessary to have two wagyu courses, and that croissant could have been half the size). The food was also very highly seasoned, and by the end of the meal we were suffering a little from salt overload. Doubtless, these are teething issues, and, setting them aside, there is no question that Atlas has the potential to meet its world-beating ambitions.