What Four AA Stars and a Dinner Award Mean

This autumn the AA gave us Four Stars as an Inn, and an AA Dinner Award for 2026. The Cornish & Devon Post has a piece about it, which you can read here. Here’s what the awards actually are.

How the AA inspects

The AA doesn’t tell you it’s coming. Its inspector stays as a paying guest, unannounced, and you only find out afterwards. Ours arrived on 22 September, had dinner, slept here, came down for breakfast and left. In between, he assessed us against forty-six separate standards, from the welcome at check-in to the shine on the bathroom surfaces.

Four Stars, as an Inn

The AA rates places to stay from one to five stars, and says what kind of place each one is: Inn, B&B, Guest House or Restaurant with Rooms. We’re an Inn, and four stars at Inn level means a high standard of quality and guest care in a pub with rooms. We scored four out of four for overall quality and met every one of the AA’s minimum requirements.

The Dinner Award

The Dinner Award is separate, and it’s for the evening meal. The same inspector judges it on the same visit, by eating dinner like everyone else. Ours had the Korean chicken tenders, the whole roasted flatfish with lemon and caper butter, and lemon posset with raspberry compote. He wrote:

“Simple dishes prepared with care and underpinned by good quality, locally sourced produce — a Dinner Award well deserved.”

Who earned it

In the Post, Karl, our General Manager, puts it down to the staff and to the Cornish producers and suppliers who make our seasonal menus possible.

Read more of what the inspector wrote, or see all our awards.