The Independent’s Tracey MacLeod has been voted Restaurant Reviewer of the Year at the Guild of Food Writers’ Annual Awards.
Twelve writers and broadcasters were rewarded at the awards ceremony hosted by Prue Leith at Tamesa in London last week for displaying quality in food writing and broadcasting with the Lifetime Achievement Award going to cookery writer Katie Stewart.
The Derek Cooper Award for Campaigning and Investigative Food Writing went to Hattie Ellis whose book Planet Chicken has influenced recent TV campaigns on poultry production. Fellow poultry campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and co-writer Nick Fisher also picked up an award – The Michael Smith Award for Work on British Food – for their book The River Cottage Fish Book.
Cookery Book of the Year went to Sarah Raven for her Garden Cookbook which judges praised for addressing the issues of provenance and food miles and Food Book of the Year was awarded to Martin Jones for Feast: Why Humans Share Food.
Newcomer Marwood Yeatman won the Jeremy Round Award for Best First Book for The Last Food of England and Jill Dupleix was given the Miriam Polunin Award for Work on Healthy Eating for Lighten Up: A New Healthier Way to Cook.
Journalists awarded for their work were the Sunday Telegraph’s Bee Wilson who won Food Journalist of the Year and Country Living’s Shona Crawford Poole who won the Evelyn Rose Award for Cookery Journalist of the Year.
The BBC website’s food section won the New Media Award and BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme: China Tea beat UKTV Food’s Local Food Heroes for The Food Broadcast Award.
Guild Chair Gilli Cliff said: “These awards provide an important opportunity to highlight the valuable role of the Guild in promoting excellence in food writing and broadcasting. The range of topics and issues covered by the entries was extensive and the quality high. My congratulations to all winners, and thanks to all those who entered – it is vital to the future of British food writing that the Guild continues to set the standard.”
Glenfiddich Food & Drink Award winners