Good Food Guide to UK's Best Restaurants 2010
England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands Top Eats
Sep 18, 2009
The Good Food Guide is Britain's best-selling restaurant guide, and has been recommending the UK's top restaurants since 1951. Its appeal to many diners is that the reviews are compiled through reader feedback and by reviewing restaurants anonymously. No-one can pay to be in the guide, no free meals are accepted, and no famously recognisable faces are used which prevents preferential service. The Good Food Guide was using 'citizen journalism' almost 60 years before the phrase was invented.
Another appealing feature of the Good Food Guide is that each edition starts from scratch. Not even the best restaurants in London or anywhere else are automatically included, simply because they were in the previous edition. From the Scottish Highlands to the Channel Islands, each restaurant has to earn its entry each year on current merit.
Good Food Guide Restaurant Reviews
The Good Food Guide rates the best eating choices in England (naturally with a long section on London), Wales, Scotland, the Channel Islands, and Northern Ireland. Countries are divided up alphabetically by county, with the London pages being a simple A-Z of the best London restaurants divided into North, South, East and West London, and in Central London and Greater London too.
Each review provides a one-line summary of what to expect, full contact details, opening hours, service charges, precise prices of menus and dishes, several paragraphs of detailed review, and the all-important Cooking Score, rating the standards out of ten.
The Best Restaurant in Britain
Only one restaurant scores the maximum 10/10, making it the best restaurant in Britain as far as the Good Food Guide is concerned. That one is, not surprisingly, Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck at Bray in Berkshire.
Best London Restaurants
The Good Food Guide also has its Reader Awards, for which the criteria are that the restaurant must be independently owned and offer regional or local produce. According to Good Food Guide readers, the best London restaurant is L'Etranger in South Kensington. According to the overall assessments, though, the top London restaurant with a Cooking Score of 9/10 remains the unstoppable Gordon Ramsay.
Best Restaurants in Scotland
One notch behind Gordon Ramsay with 8/10, making it the best Scottish restaurant, is Edinburgh's Restaurant Martin Wishart. The Reader Award went to another long-standing top Scottish restaurant, the Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow.
Best Restaurant in Wales
The Reader Award for Wales was given to Tyddyn Llan in Llandrillo, which also picked up a Cooking Score of 7/10 making it arguably the best restaurant in Wales, although the Crown at Whitebrook was also given 7/10 for its cooking by the guide.
Best Restaurants in Channel Islands and South West England
For the Reader Awards the Channel Islands were included in South West England, and that award went to Ronnie's in Thornbury, north of Bristol, while the best in the Channel Islands for the Good Food Guide was Bohemia in St Helier on Jersey, with an impressive Cooking Score of 7/10.
Best Restaurants in Northern Ireland
Finally in Northern Ireland the Good Food Guide Readers Award went to Mourne Seafood in Belfast. although no Northern Ireland restaurant made it into the Good Food Guide Top 50 for 2010, which lists restaurants whose chefs score 6/10 or more for their cooking.
Improved Cooking Standards and Chef Interviews
In previous years the Good Food Guide has only listed its Top 40 choices, but in 2010 so many chefs were earning 6/10 and above that this has had to be expanded to the Top 50. Readers can learn their secrets and some of their own favourite eating places too as this dining guide includes interviews with 20 chefs including Marcus Wareing, Michel Roux Jnr, Tom Kitchin, and Shaun Rankin.
The Good Food Guide 2010
The Good Food Guide remains one of the most readable and enjoyable of restaurant guides and is published by Which? at £16.99. See the Which? website for more details.
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