The North West’s best fine dining restaurants

Liverpool’s award-winning, fine-dining restaurant The Art School brings together inventive Modern British cooking and an impressive historic setting.

L’Enclume is Simon Rogan’s three Michelin-starred restaurant located in the Lake District village of Cartmel, which is widely regarded as one of the UK’s leading dining destinations. The restaurant is situated in a former 13th-century blacksmith’s workshop.

Situated in an atmospheric 14th-century building beside the pretty River Eea in Cartmel, Rogan & Co is the home of Simon Rogan’s Michelin-starred neighbourhood restaurant.

Skof is the first restaurant from chef Tom Barnes who, as head chef at Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume, helped it win its third Michelin star. 

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.

Culinary rock and roll from Simon Rogan’s protege, Adam Reid, and head chef Blaise Murphy, formerly of Mana. Enjoy fine-dining in Grade II Listed Victorian surrounds – with a side order of Mancunian attitude.

While there’s been a restaurant on this site for more than 50 years, owner-proprietor team Simon and Rena Gueller keep things firmly up to date at Ilkley’s picture-perfect The Box Tree. Expect a contemporary take on classical French cooking at a restaurant which has seen famous chefs like Marco Pierre White behind the pass.

Michelin-starred restaurant and hotel The Forest Side, owned by Lakes hotelier Andrew Wildsmith, is built on the foundations of the cooking of former L’Enclume forager, Kevin Tickle.

Offering Nordic-inspired fine dining inside a shipping container, Jöro has secured accolades galore, including a clutch of AA Rosettes and Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A wild-maned toddler of a restaurant, bound for great things, Lake Road Kitchen is an exciting place to eat. Now the holder of Michelin Star, it’s the baby of former Samling chef James Cross and is one of the leading lights in the Lakes foraging trend.

Michelin-starred restaurant Mana is the brainchild of chef patron Simon Martin who mastered his trade at the renowned Noma in Copenhagen. At Mana, Martin has succeeded in carving his own path – one which confuses and delights people in equal measure.

Mark Birchall, ex-head chef at L’Enclume, is chef-patron of Moor Hall, an outstanding, two Michelin star, five AA Rosette restaurant with rooms.

Northcote is where chef-patron Nigel Haworth earned his stripes as an instigator of contemporary British fine dining. Today, Michelin star chef and one of BBC2’s Great British Menu winners, Lisa Goodwin-Allen, heads up the kitchen.

Head to Ambleside’s Old Stamp House for regional cooking in a heritage space by one of Cumbria’s most promising chefs.

Pentonbridge Inn is a former coaching inn in the rolling countryside of North Cumbria, near the Scottish Borders. If that sounds a bit remote for dinner, it is the perfect place for a weekend break with snug and stylish rooms to stay over and self-catering apartments at Netherby Hall just a few miles away.

Rocking up in the picturesque village of Aughton in West Lancashire, renowned chef Tim Allen (whose Flitch of Bacon bagged Essex’s only Michelin star in 25 years) loved the sandstone building and sunny terrace of the former Seafood Pub Company Wine Bar, and sō-lō was born.

With no menu and esoteric wines, Where the Light Gets In doesn’t adhere to the typical fine-dining formula. But it’s been a success for Stockport, thanks to chef-patron Sam Buckley’s belief in doing things his own way.

Some folk in the village still refer to The White Swan at Fence as The Mucky Duck and you can still order a pint of Timothy Taylor’s at its very pubby bar. But over recent years The Swan has established itself as a destination fine-dining spot thanks to young chef Tom Parker from up the road in Burnley.