WE'RE on the end of a food awards offensive.
What's so painfully boring about this list is that these seven North West restaurants are EXACTLY the same seven North West restaurants as last year. Nothing new for us to chew on.
If it isn't the AA lot, it's the Waitrose Good Food Guiders, or the Manchester Food and Drink Awards, or the Food and Travel Magazine Awards, or one of many others. So it's easy to get lost in all those ratings and rosettes, bibs and badges, commemorative plates and gold star stickers.
But when it comes to Manchester, all seem to agree on one thing: The French by Simon Rogan at the Midland Hotel is the dog's danglies (except Michelin, but what do they know, eh?).
And so we come to the latest round of plaudits, and unsurprisingly The French is the only Manchester restaurant - as it was last year - to make the cut in the annual Sunday Times Top 100 Restaurants in the UK.
Simon Rogan has a chat with a root
It's a hat-trick year for Rogan, who sees his Michelin-starred Lake District restaurant, L'Enclume, and newly starred London restaurant, Fera at Claridge's, also feature in this Top 100.
The Sunday Times Top 100, compiled in association with Harden's restaurant guides, features seven restaurants - as it did last year - from the North West. Here they are:
|
Fraiche |
Oxton, Merseyside |
|
Freemasons at Wiswell |
Wiswell, Lancashire |
|
Holbeck Ghyll |
Windermere, Cumbria |
|
L’Enclume |
Cartmel, Cumbria |
|
Northcote |
Langho, Lancashire |
|
Simon Radley, Chester Grosvenor |
Chester |
|
The French, Midland Hotel |
Manchester |
What's so painfully boring about this list is that these seven North West restaurants are EXACTLY the same seven North West restaurants as last year - see here.
Aside from a few jump-ups and drop-downs in terms of overall rankings (published in full on Sunday 19 October), there's absolutely nothing new for us to chew on in the North West. Not one new addition.
And for that very reason I'm going to stop writing about this list. We've nothing new to say about it. It's lazy.
Actually, one last thing, perhaps someone should let them know little 'ole Sticky Walnut in Hoole bagged AA Restaurant of the Year 2014/15 for the whole of England last month. Sticky that up your Top 100.
Jonathan Schofield wrote about the omissions in The Good Food Guide last month - here. He also revealed our list of top Manchester restaurants which is really how our readers should view things.
The full Top 100, including rankings and overall score, will be revealed in The Sunday Times 100 Top Restaurants on October 19.
