THE North West is home to seven of Britain’s best restaurants according to The Sunday Times Food List. 

Fraiche on Merseyside is particularly interesting because it's run by Marc Wilkinson, a one man team. 

The list of the top 100 restaurants is compiled by The Sunday Times in association with Harden’s. Now in its fourth year, it is based on 80,000 reviews from 9,000 consumers, 2,000 of which are Sunday Times readers. 

Manchester has a restaurant in The Sunday Times Food List for the first time since its inception in 2010 with The French, at The Midland Hotel featuring in the top 100. It is the third of head chef Simon Rogan’s restaurants to have featured on The Food List, following London-based Roganic in 2012, and L’Enclume in Cumbria, a mainstay since 2010. 

Another new entry is The Freemason’s Arms, in Wiswell, Lancashire – one of the cheapest eateries on the list, at £54 per head. There are also two re-entries to the top 100: Holbeck Ghyll in Windermere, Cumbria, and Fraiche in Oxton, which ranked 46 in 2011, and has broken into the top ten on its return this year – by far the highest ranked of all the re-entries. 

Completing the list of the North West’s best restaurants are Simon Radley at The Chester Grosvenor, and Northcote in Langho, Lancashire.

Fraiche on Merseyside is particularly interesting because it's run by Marc Wilkinson, a one man team, with just three front of house staff. For him to be ahead of L'Enclume in the list is a massive achievement. 

North West restaurants in The Sunday Times Food List

The prices quoted below are for the typical cost, per person, of a three-course dinner with half a bottle of house wine, coffee, service and VAT. The number in brackets above is the position in the overall list.

Restaurant

Location

Cuisine

Price per head

The Freemason's Arms (83)

Wiswell, Lancashire

Modern British

£54

Northcote (44)

Langho, Lancashire

Modern British

£72

The French (68)

Manchester

Modern British

£72

Fraiche (6)

Oxton, Cheshire

Modern British

£84

Holbeck Ghyll (66)

Windermere, Cumbria

French

£91

Simon Radley at The Chester Grosvenor (27)

Chester

Modern British

£95

L'Enclume (9)

Cartmel, Cumbria

Modern British

£118

 

Numbers, Problems and Realities

A quick examination of this Sunday Times top 100 is instructive.

Or depressing.

Or representative of The Sunday Times core readership and even that of the remarkable Harden guides. 

According to the list London has 51 of the top 100 restaurants. Can a city region with around 13% of the UK population really have 51% of the best restaurants?

Maybe.

Or maybe there's something else going on.

Anybody who listens to Radio 5 Live or even Radio 4 can't help but notice the exponentially larger number of stories emanating from the North West now the BBC has so many people in MediaCity.

It's what people call in footy terms, 'home advantage'. Or in the BBC's case journalistic inertia, if a story can be represented by something you drive past every morning then why bother looking elsewhere? 

Both The Sunday Times and Harden's are based in London - I'm not saying that in a Northern chip on the shoulder way, just simply as fact.

It would be interesting for the organisers of this list to give a regional breakdown of their 9,000 reviewers. If the majority are based in London then we may have another reason for the disparity. 

For further comparison let's have a look at the distribution of the other restaurants on the list.

The largest number come from the South East with ten restaurants. Then it's the Midlands and the South West with eight each. Then the North West with seven. Then the whole of Scotland with six. The East of England has three mentions. Yorkshire and the North East is only represented by one restaurant out of 100 nationally. Really. One.

And finally there's poor old Wales represented in The Sunday Times List with nada, zilch, the big zero. Northern Ireland for reasons unknown is not included in this UK compilation.

Of course this breakdown might just, as stated, reflect the stark reality of the UK, how that famous money bias unbalances the country. That isn't going to change anytime soon, so the rest of us have to get on with it and work harder.

But with reference to home advantage, it is curious the further we get from the capital (with the exception of the East of England) the fewer restaurants are represented in the regions - as though the energy slackens the greater the distance from the gastronomic magnet of the south east.

Confidential isn't sure this is really the case.

There is one light at the end of the tunnel for the regions.

Out of the top ten restaurants on The Sunday Times list there is only one capital city venue.

Top spot is claimed by Gidleigh Park in Devon (Michael Caines' place with that happy connection to Manchester at Abode Hotel) and there are two North West representatives with L'Enclume and Fraiche. Over in Yorkshire, not too far away, is The Yorke Arms at Ramsgill in the Dales.

So the good news is we still have plenty to chew over up here. 

Jonathan Schofield

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