About Us

Restaurant life

About Us

We are a Mediterranean style independent restaurant and bar within Chester City Centre. We are based in a historic Grade 2 listed building opposite the Storyhouse Theatre on Northgate Street. We strive for a relaxed atmosphere, offering Mediterranean food, together with beers, quality wines, and spirits.

We started life from humble beginnings, initially as a Mediterranean bar and café. Pursuing the café culture of Europe we strove to offer simple tasty fare, with quality drinks.

Picnic has also become known for it’s live music on Friday and Saturday nights, starting off slow but often getting customers up dancing and singing away.

After surviving our first year we are now moving to the next stage and want to offer high quality restaurant food and hired our new chef Danny to come on board. The Covid crises has allowed a period of time and reflection, to perfect and speed up our plans and push Picnic to where we want to be.

A lovely place to stop off!

Such a lovely place in the heart of Chester, the decor is lovely, the whole place was clean and welcoming. A very warm and friendly welcome with prompt service and lovely coffee, I could have easily spent hours in there! Love that they have such a variety of products on offer and will definitely be returning one weekend to see the live music they have on!

Everything spot on

Stopped (first time) for a quick coffee and croissant during a lovely day out in Chester. PicNic is just two minutes off the main high street, past the cathedral - being just a short way from the main hubbub, it felt relaxed and tranquil. Coffee tasted great and little touches like the biscotti, plus the friendly and welcoming staff, and a really clean/fresh bathroom gave me a very good impression. So much so that I returned later to treat my parents to lunch here. Between us we had the Tuscan bean stew, soup of the day (pea and parsnip) and a pecan/feta salad, all with fresh crusty bread. Again, little touches like the fresh pesto drizzled on the stew just finished off the dishes perfectly. The steaming coffee, warm food and warm welcome make this place a great little find. Thanks so much.

Great find

We visited last Sunday whilst on a weekend to Chester. The City is chock full of eateries, pubs, cafés, and so a bit of a lottery to find a good spot for lunch. Enter 'Picnic'. We had a super lunch, my gluten intolerant wife had a super sweet potato and coconut soup with GF crackers, and the rest of us opted for bacon sandwiches which were lovely. Nice ambience and very friendly staff, and also just a few metres from the shops and the Christmas market. A good find and highly recommended.