A restaurant in Wales is crowned best in the UK again

IF YOU want to eat in the best restaurant in the UK right now, you’ll have to travel to Wales.

For the second year in a row, Ynyshir has been named the best dining spot in the UK in the Estrella Damm National Restaurant Awards. The internationally influenced restaurant is a three-plus hour drive west of London. A few rooms are available for dinner guests to book for the night.

You might want to take that opportunity: Diners are advised that a meal at Chef Gareth Ward’s restaurant might last four to five hours. His dishes meander through a series of upscale ingredients like lobster tail served sashimi style, while the claw is cooked “Thaidoori” style and presented as a satay; meanwhile, a DJ is on hand to provide the soundtrack. The price starts at £375 ($S631); add a room, and it will cost at least £520.

Likewise, Londoners will have to travel outside the capital to eat at the No 2 restaurant, the grand country house hotel dining spot Moor Hall in Lancashire, overseen by head chef Mark Birchall that highlights purveyors, which held the same place last year. The Provenance dinner menu is £225. 

This is the 17th year for the awards, which rank 100 restaurants in the UK based on votes from 200-plus industry experts, including chefs and restaurateurs, food critics and writers and “gastronomes” based on meals eaten over the past 18 months. Besides the food, voters take into account service and hospitality, design and–surprisingly, given the emphasis on fine dining on this year’s list–price. 

Ultimately, restaurants in London took 33 of the top 50 spots on the list and represented almost 60 per cent of the overall list, which was announced at a ceremony at the Hurlingham Club in the Fulham area of London on Monday evening. 

Among them: Da Terra, the South American-accented tasting menu spot from Rafael Cagali, in Bethnal Green, the No 3 spot. Bouchon Racine, Henry Harris’s love letter to France, which was transplanted from Knightsbridge to Farringdon after being closed for seven years, landed at No 5 and was also awarded the title Opening of the Year.

It was also a very good year for tasting menus, a surprise amid the UK’s cost of living crisis and ongoing fretting about the death of fine dining. Only two places on the top 10 offer a la carte dishes that aren’t part of a set menu–Bouchon Racine at No 5 and the Ritz at No 7–down from four last year.

The Estrella Damm awards, named for the Spanish beer that are the event’s sponsor, are produced by the UK site Restaurant from Big Hospitality. Its owners, William Reed Business Media, assemble other notable food and drink lists, namely the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards.

SEE ALSO

Venezuela's 'daily bread', humble arepa conquers the world

One of the night’s big winners was the Ledbury in Notting Hill. Besides being No 4, the modern British spot scored the Service Award and sous chef April Lily Partridge was named Chef to Watch.

The news was not so good for the venerable River Cafe, which dropped 50 spots to 76, and Lyle’s, which is now No 86; last year it was No 24. To find North Ireland’s top spot, you will need to scroll down the list to No 79. Scotland fared much better; the recently opened Glenturret Lalique restaurant in a distillery, was No 36; the excellent Palmerston, in a former Bank of Scotland building in Edinburgh, jumped up more than 50 spots to No 41. 

But the best restaurant in Scotland, Timberyard, did not make the list. Also missing from the list are some highly regarded spots in London that are favourites of this writer. Once again, Asma Khan’s superb Indian restaurant Darjeeling Express is nowhere to be found, and neither is the dynamic new Michelin one star spot, Cycene, where diners move through rooms during dinner. Nor are some of the city’s excellent wine and food spots, like Cadet, Perilla and Planque. BLOOMBERG