Friday Five: the week's top news

- Gareth Ward’s Ynyshir restaurant in Wales has been named the best restaurant in the UK for the second year in a row at The Estrella Damm National Restaurant Awards 2023​​. The restaurant with rooms on the west coast of Wales claimed the title at this week's awards ceremony, held by Restaurant​ magazine, in a gathering of the UK’s best chefs and restaurateurs. As in 2022, second place goes to Mark Birchall’s Moor Hall in Lancashire, which took home the title of the Best Restaurant in England, while third place was awarded to Rafael Cagali’s Da Terra in east London, with a climb of 18 places. This year’s list shows the return of the capital’s dominance in the restaurant scene, with 66 restaurants from London in the top 100 list and only three in the top 10 located outside of London. The highest new entry at number five and the winner of the Opening of the Year award, sponsored by Tripleseat, was awarded to Henry Harris’ Bouchon Racine, which opened in a small dining room above a pub in Clerkenwell earlier this year. Other award winners were The Ledbury, which won the Service Award, sponsored by Liberty Wines and Rathfinny Wine Estate. The restaurant’s 29-year-old sous chef April Lily Partridge was named this year’s Chef to Watch, sponsored by Belazu Ingredient Co. Kenny Atkinson, chef-patron at Newcastle’s House of Tides and newly-opened Solstice, was named this year’s Chef of the Year. To see the list of the UK’s Top 100 Restaurants, plus all of the individual award winners, visit the National Restaurant Awards website​​.

- After 15 years of operating mainly in the UK, The Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) has launched a globally-accessible platform to allow hospitality businesses across the world to sign up to its new Food Made Good Sustainability Standard​​. The organisation says that the initiative levels the playing field by supplying businesses with trustworthy, expert-led and up-todate accreditation, as well as providing guidance on the next steps of their commitment to sustainability. Developed with input from international experts, including the Ellen McArthur Foundation, WRAP and the Ethical Trade Initiative, as well as leading food businesses, the SRA says its newly global Standard is the only certification specifically designed to measure a restaurant’s social and environmental impact, wherever they are in the world.

- Brasserie Bar Co is rebranding as the Heartwood Collection​​ as it shifts focus into becoming a freehold pub company with a premium brasserie division. The group’s ambition is to become a leading operator of freehold premium pubs and pubs-with-rooms in the UK – a market which it sees significant opportunity for growth, but which it believes is significantly under served. Heartwood Collection currently operates 20 premium pubs and 14 Brasserie Blanc restaurants across the UK and plans to grow significantly as a freehold business in the years ahead. As a result of this move, White Brasserie Company will become Heartwood Inns next month.

- Husband and wife Steve and Jules Horrell will open their first solo venture together next month in Somerset​​. The eponymously named Horrell & Horrell is described as a ‘micro’ dining experience and will be located in an open-fronted barn with outdoor kitchen at the couple’s Somerset home. Open only for dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings from 1 July, the space will serve a four-course menu and have a long sharing table that can seat up to 20 guests. The menu will centre on the week’s harvest with as much as possible sourced from the couple’s six-and-a-half acre plot that encompasses a kitchen garden, fruit and nut trees, edible hedging and a small flock of seven lambs.

- Year-on-year inflation in foodservice prices rose unexpectedly to 21.4% in April 2023​​, according to the new edition of the CGA Prestige Foodservice Price Index. Price increases had begun to slow in the first quarter of this year, and inflation dipped below 20% in March for the first time since mid-2022. However, the rebound in April underlines the severe cost pressures facing businesses throughout the foodservice sector at the moment.

For more of this week's headlines, click here​​.