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100 best restaurants in the UK


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10 each in the following categories:

FABULOUS FISH

STYLISH HAUNTS

GREAT OUTDOORS

CLASSIC ACTS

TASTE OF ITALY

TAPAS BARS

CHEAP EATS

WINNING WINES

COUNTRY PUBS

VEGGIE TREATS

Details can be viewed here: http://www.independent.co.uk/living/food_a...icle2648340.ece

Should I trust a list that doesn't have French food as a category?

Or has Classic Acts (what?) and Winning Wines and Fabulous Fish and Annoying Alliteration.

Are you sure this is the Independent and not something Ainsley Harriot is doing on daytime TV?

S

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i have to agree, are those the defining categories of the british restaurant scene? if so i'm worried about the future. Also, a coupke of cliche choices i feel... but it has to be said, a whole section on italian, a whole section on tapas and not one on french?

my thoughts on their choices:

If Effings in Totnes is anything like Effings in Exeter, cheap it is not (although I was a student at Exeter Uni at the time)

I would have mentioned the Greyhound at Battersea in the wine section as they tried something different and very wine driven - and awarded for one of the best winelists in the world apparently.

can't comment on anything else much.

www.naturalfarms.co.uk ~ our wholesale butchery

www.sussexfarms.blogspot.com ~ our pie kitchen

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I would imagine there's no French catagory as whoever thought this up correctly anticipated that they'd get French restaurants popping up in the stylish haunts, class acts and wine sections. A more accurate title for this would be "a 100 of the best restaurants in Britain" but that woudn't be absolutist enough to grab the reader's attention.

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It reads to me like a list prepared by one person. You really have to wonder what the selection criteria are when you get comments such as:

Although I have not eaten here, it's top of my list to visit.

So I'm guessing this is just a list of places that Mitchell Tonks has visited or wants to visit and perhaps he prefers Italian cooking over French.

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Pah, pretty poor list really. Maybe if it was called a list of places to visit, i'd just about allow it. But the lack of french places does seem to challenge its claim to be the best in England. No LCS?...

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What. No curry houses??

Actually yes - Under 'Cheap Eats' the whole of Birmingham's Balti Triangle gets a name check (as if it's one homogeneous whole of equal quality throughout. It's not) with special mention for Al Frash and Zeb's. The sad thing is that Al Frash has been closed for a refurbishment for nearly a year and while the Independent do point out that Al Frash staff can be found at Zeb's during the refurbishment, It's still very much Zeb's food that is being served which does not stand recommendation. Could the Independent not have picked a restaurant from the Balti Triangle that people could visit on account of it actually being open (the consistently excellent Plaza for instance), or am I being too fussy? I'd agree with Duncan's comment - It does look like the workof one person but not a list of favourites or even a wish list as such, more the product of an afternoon trawling around on the net.

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It does look like the workof one person but not a list of favourites or even a wish list as such, more the product of an afternoon trawling around on the net.

I think that's probably an incorrect assumption. Each category has a name attached to it and they will have chosen the restaurants. It’s possible that one person will have written them all up, although I would think that writers like Tracey McLeod will have provided their own copy.

Edited by Andy Lynes (log)
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I think The Independent has realised that knocking out these lists and thereby providing otherwise quite modest establishments the opportunity to declare on all their promotional literature "one of the 100 best restaurants in the UK as chosen by The Independent" does no harm in getting the name of The Independent in front to a lot of eyeballs for a lot less than paying for ad space.

I think it's a practice with diminishing returns - the lack of rigor (no year is attached to the list so each time the exercise is carried out a few more establishments can swell the ranks of the "100 best" to the point where ultimately every restaurant in the country will be a celebrated centurion of excellence) and the bizarre list of categories mean that it can't be regarded as anything other than at best a bit of fun.

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I think The Independent has realised that knocking out these lists and thereby providing otherwise quite modest establishments the opportunity to declare on all their promotional literature "one of the 100 best restaurants in the UK as chosen by The Independent" does no harm in getting the name of The Independent in front to a lot of eyeballs for a lot less than paying for ad space.

Does all depend on whether the locals to the restaurant are Independent readers, or attach any weight to its culinary opinions. Some might see it as a negative.

I do see that '100 best restaurants in the UK as chosen by the Daily Sport' might not be a better advert for a place either, though.

To be serious, 100 best of anything is always a joke. Fills a bit of space though and gets a few names and addresses for the mailing data base. etc

S

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