Celebrate your graduation at one of these Liverpool restaurants

Liverpool’s award-winning, fine-dining restaurant The Art School brings together inventive Modern British cooking and an impressive historic setting. It’s grand enough for a special graduation meal.

The name says it all: La Famiglia Bar & Restaurant is a family-run outfit serving fresh, traditional Italian cuisine rethought, using the finest ingredients. It’s also The Best Restaurant in the North West according to the 2024 Italian Awards.

Celebrate graduation in Liverpool with Frederiks. It’s in exactly the right location, in the shadow of the Anglican cathedral and bookings are now open for graduation dinners.

With its six foot chandelier and gold leaf ceiling Restaurant Bar & Grill Liverpool is one of the city’s most spectacular dining settings. A £500k refurbishment in 2021 brought to life the original features of this Grade II Listed heritage building. Now it’s one of the most photogenic backdrops in Liverpool, and the food’s not half bad too.

If you want to celebrate your graduation Texan-style with smoked hickory barbecue meats and bourbon on the rocks, this is the place.

There’s a bonhomie and a sense of welcome at Vetch, marking it out as a friendly neighbourhood restaurant and simultaneously one of the best fine dining establishments in Liverpool. A top pick for a high-end graduation celebration.

Voyagers in The Halyard Liverpool is in the league of hotel restaurants that become a destination in their own right. A sophisticated and well-travelled menu of small plates combined with inviting modern design make it a standout addition to the Ropewalks. Expect an individual take on cool, casual dining.

Al Dente is a great crowd-pleaser with a wide-ranging Mediterranean menu. After a recent refurbishment, it’s smart enough for special occasions and its terrace is ideal for summer celebrations. Perfect if you would rather stick to the Lark Lane end of Liverpool for your graduation meal.

Bread Street Kitchen & Bar serves classic Gordon Ramsay dishes, from beef wellington and traditional fish and chips to rare-breed steaks and seasonal salads.

At the point Lark Lane tips out onto busy Aigburth Road, you’ll find one of Liverpool’s best churrascaria, the cosy Churrasco Steakhouse, where top-notch British meat and homemade recipes are given the unique lava steak stone treatment, seeing you cook your own tea.

If you don’t like being told what to do, then Cowshed is probably not for you. The self-described beefhouse (as opposed to steakhouse) offers four types of steak, each served how they want to serve it, not how you ask them to serve it – “trust us”, they implore on the menu.

Hawksmoor Liverpool opened in the beautiful Grade II-listed India Buildings, to much excitement in late 2022. It’s a safe choice for a graduation celebration meal with a bit of grandeur.

Manifest is a restaurant serving up the cooler end of fine-dining. If you’ve always fancied dining out at one of Liverpool’s best restaurants, now’s your chance to get your folks to pay for it.

Nord is a real asset to Liverpool’s dining scene. Housed in a bit of an unlovely 1960s office block – the former HQ of Littlewoods – the building has had some serious TLC. Now the subtle décor has shades of Mad Men rather than The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin with pendant lights, earthy tones and a statement orange bar.

With simple, regularly changing menus to showcase the best seasonal ingredients available at market, you can expect carefully prepared plates of stylish food at this equally chic wine bar and bistro tucked away on a “secret” jigger just off bustling Castle Street. 

If you don’t want to join the crowds of graduates in the city centre, The Watering Can is a chilled out option for a celebration meal. It’s surrounded by parkland and has a real back-to-nature feel.

Wreck Bistro is a classic Liverpool restaurant where you can always expect good food and good service. It’s the sort of place your mum and dad will love and so will you.