Birmingham has been voted as Britain’s “most exciting food destination” at a ceremony at The Groucho Club, in Soho. The Good Food Guide’s awards put the second city ahead of second-place London for best food venues.
Three restaurants in the city were ranked in its Top 20, with the highest ranked West Midlands restaurant being The Wilderness, in the Jewellery Quarter placed tenth. Michelin star, Carters of Moseley, finished 18th.
In its 70th year of publication, at The Good Food Guide: Top 20 Most Exciting Restaurants of 2022 the 20 most exciting restaurants in Britain saw L’Enclume in Cumbria take the top spot, followed by Ynyshir, in Ceredigion, mid Wales. Bronze was taken by Lancashire’s Moor Hall, Lancashire, while the Raby Hunt, in County Durham took fourth.
The Good Food Guide said: “No other English provincial city is as well served with such a range of unique and frequently exceptional restaurants right across the price range. At the top of the scale, three exceptional places from the Birmingham area feature in our 20 most exciting restaurants in Britain – an extraordinary feat.
“But getting the balance just right extends to others including Opheem, with its unmistakably curry-based but uniquely modern-British approach, and Harborne Kitchen, where Jamie Desogus pulls off a real coup, making the restaurant a bit of a holy grail in terms of packing mass-appeal into posh nosh. Nowhere but in Britain – and perhaps even more specifically in Birmingham - could this cooking occur”.
The top five was rounded out by the UK’s first-ever Michelin-starred pub, the Sportsman, which sits just outside of Whitstable. All five frequently appear in UK food and restaurant award lists; the three medallists all picked up the Good Food Guide’s “world class” title.
The highest performing London restauant was Jason Atherton’s Pollen Street Social at number eight, with Tom Sellers’ Restaurant Story (11), Da Terra (17), Kol (19) and Endo at the Rotunda 20th.
