THE Good Food Guide has recently announced its top restaurants and award winners, including a restaurant in Port Isaac, and an eating establishment in Lewannick.

Alongside the finest dining establishments in the country, the guide, owned by Waitrose, celebrates quality eateries and discoveries in local areas. For the South West, this includes the number one restaurant in the UK, seven restaurants in the top 50, with two of these in the top ten, and 15 new entries to the guide.

The Good Food Guide is compiled by combining reader feedback on restaurants up and down the country with anonymous inspections by a team of industry experts.

Restaurants from across the region that have made it into the UK’s top 50 restaurants have been unveiled, with the top-scoring eatery in the South West also being announced as the number one restaurant in the UK.

Restaurant Nathan Outlaw in Port Isaac has been awarded the top spot by the Good Food Guide, with a cooking score of ten. This is the second year in a row the restaurant has been given a ‘perfect ten’, with the restaurant reaching number two in last year’s guide.

The Good Food Guide has awarded the restaurant top billing thanks to its ‘air of individuality and modesty’ where ‘Cornish seafood remains paramount’. It notes that ‘Mr Outlaw’s food is characterised by absolute freshness of ingredients and by a clear sense of purpose — he follows no fads, copies no recipes, joins no schools’.

Nathan Outlaw said: “I’m absolutely over the moon to hear that Restaurant Nathan Outlaw has made it to the top spot in The Good Food Guide 2018. We’ve always been proud to have a place in the listings, but to hear that Restaurant Nathan Outlaw has made it to No 1 is phenomenal.

“I’d say the award has come due to the hard work and dedication of our team who have now been working together for a decade. It just goes to show that if you stay true to yourself, get your head down, look after your customers and use the very best ingredients available to you, you’ll make it to the top. It was great to be scored 10/10 for cooking, but now to be placed at the no.1 spot in the eyes of the Waitrose Good Food Guide and their readers makes me extremely proud.”

The Good Food Guide Editor Elizabeth Carter praised the restaurant, adding: “It may seem a little odd that Britain’s best restaurant is the most modest, with no car park, reception desk or bar it’s the antithesis of a grand restaurant. Yet it is, in fact, the whole package, from the cooking that seems like an essay on the sea’s varied yield, to the relaxed dining room and impeccable service.

“Nathan Outlaw has done an enormous amount to educate and encourage the public appetite for fish, driven by his supply of impeccably fine ingredients, and a special talent for creating unique and thrilling fish dishes. Moreover, nobody seems to leave Nathan Outlaw’s service – they just go and work in another one of his restaurants. They obviously think he’s a pretty good boss as well as a fine chef.”

Also mentioned for unusual eateries in the South West, is Coombeshead Farm, Lewannick. Part-owned by celebrity chef, April Bloomfield, this 18th century farmstead takes a farm-to-table, sustainable approach.

Diners share a communal table for 12 to dine on ‘waste’ ingredients — potato skin, lard, turnip tops, weeds, whey — all backed up by the in-house curing of pork and excellent, organically reared meats. Coombeshead Farm is also one of 15 new entries for the Good Food Guide.