AA Restaurant Guide 2024: 'Delightful' Merseyside restaurant handed coveted three AA rosettes

The UK’s top restaurants and hotels have been recognised at the highly anticipated AA Rosette Awards spring update, including one Merseyside venue.

The long-established AA Rosettes scheme celebrates successful cooking at different levels across the UK. Awarded by the AA’s team of inspectors, receiving this award is a significant achievement in the industry and rosettes range from one to five.

The latest awards ceremony, held in London, saw a number of eateries earn three AA Rosettes for outstanding quality and originality. London-based restaurant, La Dame de Pic London, was the sole restaurant achieving the prestigious award of four AA Rosettes, however, a Wirral restaurant also impressed inspectors.

The renowned Dining Room and Cellar at Hillbark Hotel & Spa in Frankby was Merseyside's only new multi-rosette-winning restaurant featured in the spring update, earning an incredible three Rosettes. Described by an AA inspector as, ' a very striking black-and-white-timbered building and fine modern British dishes,' the restaurant by Kevin Lynn offers fine dining with dishes made from locally sourced ingredients. The full AA description reads: "Originally built on Bidston Hill in 1891, the splendid Tudor Revival-style mansion of Hillbark was dismantled and moved to its current site in 1931. The house now sits in a 250-acre woodland estate and enjoys delightful views towards the River Dee and the north Wales hills.

"These days Hillbark is an all-mod-cons spa hotel, and there’s a tasting menu on offer in the Dining Room and downstairs in the cosy vaulted Cellar, where two glass walls show off the wine cellar. You might find a perfectly balanced dish of oyster, shallot, dill and elderflower – delicious enough to turn any oyster 'hater', while a blue Stilton fruit loaf with honey is an unusual treat."

Full list of new 2024 AA Rosette winners

New four AA Rosettes:  

• La Dame de Pic London, Four Seasons at Ten Trinity Square | London

New three AA Rosettes:  

• Social Eating House | London
• Pavyllon London, Four Seasons Hotel at Park Lane | London
• Claridge's Restaurant | London
• The Silver Birch | London
• Studio Frantzén | London
• Fallowfields, Housel Bay | Cornwall
• Summer Lodge Country House Hotel | Dorset
• Toffs by Rob Palmer | West Midlands
• The Gin Trap Inn | Norfolk
• The Dining Room and Cellar, Hillbark Hotel & Spa | Merseyside
• The Little Chartroom | Edinburgh
• Mingary Castle | Highlands
• Thomas by Tom Simmons | Cardiff
• The Tasting Room, The Vineyard | Berkshire
• The Angel Inn | Suffolk
• Kintsu | Essex