Chef Simon Rogan’s Cumbrian restaurant L’Enclume achieved 10 out of 10 in The Good Food Guide 2013 — the second restaurant to do so — and placed at number two. Heston Blumenthal’s the Fat Duck, the first to achieve full marks, has retained its position at the top.
“As far as The Good Food Guide 2013’s top 10 restaurants list is concerned, we are living in a culinary golden age,” said consultant editor of The Good Food Guide.
“Times might be hard, but at the top end each restaurant is hitting great heights in terms of creativity, confidence and sheer flavour. Restlessly inventive — always guinea-pigging new ideas, tweaking others to invest them with more lightness or intensity — their menus are full of texture, colour, vividness, contrast, impact, surprise.
“Each place in our list is, without doubt, the most satisfying, spirit-lifting and downright pleasurable restaurant experience in Britain at the moment. If ever there were a blueprint for world-class restaurants, this top 10 is it, and they are all here for us to enjoy in the UK.”
The Good Food Guide's Top 10 Restaurants
1 L’Enclume, Cartmel, Cumbria
2 The Fat Duck, Bray, Berkshire
3 Restaurant Sat Bains, Lenton Lane, Nottingham
4 Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Royal Hospital Road, London
5 Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, Rock, Cornwall
6 Pollen Street Social, Pollen Street, London
7 Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Great Milton, Oxford
8 Hibiscus, Maddox Street, London
9 The Square, Mayfair, London
10 The Ledbury, Notting Hill, London