In the Top 50 Restaurants 2020, the Black Swan at Oldstead, North Yorkshire, was a new entry at number 34, with a cooking score of seven out of 10.
The current number one Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropub, the Sportsman in Seasalter, Kent, came in at number 37, also with a cooking score of seven – up from number 42 in last year’s edition of the guide.
Slavishly favourable
The guide also has a variety of awards and Restaurant of the Year was won by the Mash Inn, Radnage in Buckinghamshire.
The guide said: “This grown-up pub dishes up a daily four-course menu or 10-course taster where ‘pretty much everything is exposed to naked flames or burning charcoal’, resulting in dishes that feel fresh but not slavishly fashionable.
“Often using ingredients from the kitchen garden, highlights from the menu include darkly blistered chapa flatbread with clean, aerated Romanesco and green apple soup, simple just-pulled radishes with hay mayo and a memorable côte du boeuf, with silky, umami-rich sesame miso sauce.”
Flexible eating
The Good Food Guide editor Elizabeth Carter outlined how seven decades of the publication had given the directory a unique insight into eating out in Britain.
She added: “The more we conduct ourselves online, the more we look for care, provenance and thoughtfulness – especially when it comes to food.
“With diners increasingly looking for flexible eating options and value for money, there has been a surge in inexpensive cafés and restaurants that rank quality of ingredients above all else.
“Small, owner-run dining rooms across the country provide clear examples of how they can and do work in direct opposition to the pizza-burger overload on the British high street.”
The Good Food Guide Top 50 Restaurants for 2020:
- L'Enclume, Cartmel, Cumbria
- Core by Clare Smyth, Notting Hill, west London
- Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, Port Isaac, Cornwall
- Ynyshir, Powys, west Wales
- Moor Hall, Aughton, Lancashire
- Claude Bosi at Bibendum, Chelsea, west London
- Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Chelsea, west London
- Restaurant Sat Bains, Nottingham
- Casamia, Bristol
- Pollen Street Social, Mayfair, central London
- Adam Reid at The French, Greater Manchester
- Restaurant Story, south London
- The Raby Hunt, near Darlington, County Durham
- Restaurant Andrew Fairlie, Perthshire & Kinross
- The Greenhouse, central London
- The Ledbury, west London
- Marcus, west London
- The Fat Duck, Bray, Berkshire
- Roganic, central London
- Fraiche, Birkenhead, Merseyside
- Bohemia, Saint Helier, Jersey
- Midsummer House, Cambridge
- The Peat Inn, Fife
- Le Champignon Sauvage, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
- The Kitchin, East Lothian
- Lake Road Kitchen, Ambleside, Cumbria
- Forest Side, Grasmere, Cumbria
- Orwells, Shiplake, Oxfordshire
- A. Wong, central London
- Whatley Manor, The Dining Room, Malmesbury, Wiltshire
- Trinity, south London
- Matt Worswick at the Latymer, Bagshot, Surrey
- Inver, Argyll & Bute
- The Black Swan, Oldstead, North Yorkshire
- Restaurant James Sommerin, Glamorgan
- Winteringham Fields, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire
- The Sportsman, Seasalter, Kent
- The Whitebrook, Monmouthshire
- The Man Behind The Curtain, Leeds, West Yorkshire
- Paul Ainsworth at No. 6, Padstow, Cornwall
- Alchemilla, Nottingham
- Wilks, Bristol
- Cail Bruich, Strathclyde
- Where The Light Gets In, Greater Manchester
- Sosban & The Old Butcher's, Isle of Anglesey
- Restaurant Martin Wishart, Lothians
- Le Gavroche, central London
- Artichoke, Amersham, Buckinghamshire
- Adam's, Birmingham, West Midlands
- Castle Terrace, Edinburgh
