Markyate · food
Markyate is a linear A5 village: a short list of local places, and Hemel, Harpenden or Luton when you want a scene.
The Sun Inn and village takeaways do the honest work. Pretending otherwise is how guidebooks annoy people who live here.
Our listings will send you to Hemel or Harpenden where Markyate has no equivalent: and we will say so.
We rank cafes on coffee, welcome, whether a laptop is tolerated without colonising the room, and whether a school-run parent can still find a chair. Chains are listed when they are part of how a town actually works.
Markyate is small enough that an honest “best cafes” list should admit gaps. These are the nearest Dacorum options we would actually send you to.
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01
189 High Street, Berkhamsted · Berkhamsted
GAIL’s is a chain, and Berkhamsted treated it as a civic event anyway. The bakery is useful: proper bread, coffee, highchairs, a pavement that works in March. Independent cafes further along the street still make the better flat white for some regulars: which is as it should be.
02
125 High Street, Berkhamsted · Berkhamsted
Fred & Ginger is the High Street’s specialist coffee counter: small, serious about beans, good for a laptop if you are polite about it. Breakfast and cakes keep it from becoming a tasting-room cliché. If you care about the difference between a house espresso and a guest roast, start here.
03
223 High Street, Berkhamsted · Berkhamsted
Epicure opens at 07:30 on weekdays, which is the single most useful fact about a commuter-town cafe. Sourdough, matcha, gluten-free cakes and a pavement table if you time it. It is a local’s cafe that happens to look good on a phone.
04
23 High Street, Hemel Hempstead · Hemel Hempstead
No visit to the Old Town is complete without deciding whether you are a Tea Tree person. Vintage room, proper afternoon tea, High Street window. It is unashamedly pretty, which Hemel’s New Town centre is not, and that is the whole appeal.
05
Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead · Hemel Hempstead
Nashmills Cafe is the anti-lifestyle breakfast: thick bread, large portions, polite service, outdoor seats. If you want smashed avocado with a vocabulary, go to Berkhamsted. If you want to eat well before a shift or after the school run, come here.
06
Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, St Margarets, Great Gaddesden · Hemel Hempstead
Amaravati Buddhist Centre is on the Food Standards Agency register for Dacorum Borough Council. The latest published hygiene rating is 5 out of 5 (2026-06-10). That is an official inspection score, not a Dacorum Daily review.
More from the directory: Markyate Fish Bar & Kebab HouseMarkyate Grill at Fusion FoodsMarkyate Cricket & Football Club
Planning
Supplementary Planning Documents for the HGC area are now adopted. They will guide neighbourhoods, infrastructure and the long argument about how Hemel grows north.
25 June 2026