The UK's Top New Restaurants of 2023

18.03.2024 - 20:05 / cntraveler.com

The perfect pint of Guinness. An ancient culinary tradition given its moment in the spotlight. A proper pie. A buzzy dining room where you might just as easily bump into an old colleague as a Haim sister. These are all answers to the question that kept coming up as we put together The UK’s Top New Restaurant Awards—what makes a restaurant one of the best?

Over 250 restaurants opened in London alone in 2023—the highest number of launches since 2019. But despite exciting restaurants opening all across the country (keep reading for proof), the hospitality landscape remains almost absurdly challenging. Opening the doors of a new restaurant is hard enough—keeping them open requires grit, talent, and a little magic. To be named on this list of the UK’s Top New Restaurants is about more than Michelin stars (although you’ll find a few here) and big-name chefs (ditto); it’s about experiencing exceptional service; an atmosphere you can truly unwind in; storytelling you wouldn’t find anywhere else; and food that opens up a little slice of the world for you—whether’s that’s the West Country or West Africa.

To create the inaugural list of The UK’s Top New Restaurants, we brought on board some of the most trusted foodies in the country to whittle down the vast swathes of excellent 2023 restaurant openings to an edit of only the most exceptional. During the process, chefs Angela Hartnett, Andi Oliver, Skye Gyngell, Gurdeep Loyal, Julie Lin, and James Cochran; food writers Gizzi Erskine and Tom Parker Bowles; Instagram sensation Notorious Foodie and Condé Nast Traveller’s global editorial director Divia Thani debated and considered that question time and time again—what makes a restaurant one of the best? The list below—23 restaurants scattered across the UK from Scotland’s Cairngorm Mountains to Cornwall by way of Yorkshire, Narbeth, Suffolk, Liverpool, and beyond—answers that question in 23 unique ways that make us more excited than ever about the future of the UK’s dining scene.

These are the winners of The UK’s Top New Restaurant Awards.

Dishes at 64 Goodge Street in Fitzrovia have a French twist.

The restaurant's team has been pulled from the Woodhead Restaurant Group's other esteemed properties.

The latest restaurant from the Woodhead Restaurant Group (also behind much-loved Portland and Clipstone) centers elegant, unfussy cooking in a handsome dining room in Fitzrovia that's embodying the vibe of a classic French bistro. A heavily French-accented à la carte menu (salad Lyonnaise; snails, bacon and garlic bon bons) is paired with a fastidious wine menu with an "unapologetic focus on Burgundy"—the team's words, not ours.

Puddings are a big deal here. All reliably lean on French dessert classics—arguably the best