Michelin Guide 2020: a look at every new Michelin-starred restaurant

Tiny Stark on the Kentish coast at Broadstairs couldn’t be further from the palatial grandiosity of London’s magnificent hotel restaurants. Ben and Sophie Crittenden run this little eatery – open Wednesday to Saturday – on their own. There are a handful of tables, no toilets and barely room to swing a cat in between, but the food that comes out of the kitchen is superb, and delivered with great love.

Another Cumbrian success story, The Old Stamp House is located in Ambleside, right in the heart of the Lake District. Chef Ryan Blackburn champions farmed and foraged local produce at The Old Stamp House, but he takes special pride in bringing Cumbria’s lesser-known specialities to the fore with his robust, homely cooking.

Bethnal Green Town Hall has a considerable pedigree when it comes to good food – both Nuno Mendes and Lee Westcott have presided over restaurants in this venerable East London hotel. Now Rafael Cagali and Paulo Airaudo can add their names to that list – Da Terra has wowed London’s discerning diners with intriguing flavour combinations, and won a star at the first time of asking.

The splendid oak-panelled dining room that sits at the heart of Adare Manor is now home to Limerick’s very first Michelin star. It’s a magnificent space full of rich wooden tones, magnificent chandeliers and old oil paintings, and thanks to chef Michael Tweedie and team, the food is more than a match for the opulence of the interior. The menu focuses on Limerick’s unheralded but outstanding local producers, delivering a stylish menu that evolves with the seasons.

Aston-born Aktar Islam has long deserved a place in the Michelin Guide; his old restaurant Lasan (also in Birmingham) was unquestionably one of the best Indian restaurants in the country. He left Lasan in 2017 to forge ahead with a new project – Opheem – which opened to much fanfare, and has quickly established itself as a trailblazer for modern Indian food.

Manchester’s forty-year wait for a Michelin star is over, thanks to chef Simon Martin and his restaurant Mana, which opened last October. For a chef that started as an intern at Noma in 2016, Simon is remarkably accomplished – the indelible marks of his time with Rene Redzepi are clear in his food philosophy and his menus, from the heavy use of preserves and pickles to unusual ingredients like beeswax, blackcurrant wood, roasted yeast and spruce.

A welcome return to the Michelin Guide for Michael Wignall, who left Gidleigh Park last year to move to Hetton with his wife and take over The Angel at Hetton – a beautiful restaurant with rooms in the heart of southern borders of the Yorkshire Dales. Michael started off serving burgers and chips when he first took over the pub, but he has since made his mark on the menu, turning The Angel at Hetton into a destination for superlative classical cookery.

For a chef with such a stellar reputation, Lee Westcott opened Pensons with relatively little fanfare at the beginning of this year. Slowly but surely, Lee and his team have made Pensons into a country retreat that matches anywhere else in the country. Lee’s food in particular is as good as it has ever been – elegant and precise, as it was at The Typing Room. With the bountiful 1,200-acre Netherwood Estate on his doorstep, perhaps that’s no surprise.

Nestled deep in the Gower Peninsula, Beach House celebrates its Welsh roots in many ways – not only are all the menus and signage in Welsh as well as English, but chef Hywel Griffiths takes great pride in supporting Welsh producers in the Gower National Park and beyond. The menu is small – just four starters and four mains – but the menu changes regularly to match the seasons

With just six tables available every night and a blind tasting menu that changes daily, Condita is about as intimate an experience as you’ll find anywhere in the country. South African-born Conney Toomey left Isle of Eriska in 2017 to start up Condita, and his intuitive cooking style has made this humble little restaurant the hot ticket in Edinburgh – a city that boasts one of the most exciting food scenes in the UK.

This intimate little wine bar-cum-bistro has captured the imagination in Cork, delivering playful modern dishes that make the most of local produce, particularly excellent Irish seafood. The excellent tasting menu and equally impressive vegetarian tasting menu shows off chef Paul McDonald’s superb touch and creative mind for flavours.

Chef Endo Kazutoshi was visibly emotional when he collected his star at this year’s award ceremony. This Michelin star is the culmination of a long journey – he has cooked all over the world, in Madrid, Bilbao, Hong Kong, New York, Istanbul, and Dubai, before opening his solo venture in the iconic old BBC Television Centre. His omakase-style dining experience has only been open since April of this year – to enter the guide in the space of just six months speaks to the quality of Endo’s cookery.

The Isle of Eriska – a brisk boat trip from Oban on Scotland’s west coast – may very well be one of the most beautiful parts of an exceedingly beautiful country, and now it boasts a restaurant that can also claim to be one of Scotland’s very best. Led by Graeme Cheevers – formerly head chef at Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond – the Isle of Eriska hotel delivers fantastic food that showcases the best of Scotland’s larder.

Ethical sourcing once again provides a foundation for superb cookery at The Royal Oak – a rural country pub in Warwickshire that has built a big reputation in a short amount of time. Chef Richard Craven puts his compact menus – just four mains, starters and desserts – together using whatever is bang in season at that moment.

Horsham clearly has a thing for avant-garde tasting journeys. Some years ago, Matt Gillan made a name for himself at The Pass nearby with some weird and wonderful cookery. At Interlude, Jean Delport and team guide their guests through either a fourteen or a nineteen-course blind tasting menu, taking inspiration from the surrounding Leonardslee Gardens and countryside beyond. One for adventurous diners.

The Muddlers Club joins Ox and Deanes Eipic as Northern Ireland’s third Michelin-starred restaurant. Chef Gareth McCaughey worked at Ox before leaving to start The Muddlers Club; there are parallels to draw between the two – a balance and attention to detail that serves them both extremely well – but The Muddlers Club delivers exceptional food in a relaxed, unfussy environment that has made it beloved in Belfast.

Alchemilla chef Alex Bond received his Michelin star a little earlier than the rest – it capped a fantastic year for the Nottingham restaurant, where they received three AA Rosettes and completed a new terrace area. With time spent at Auberge du Lac, Turners in Birmingham and nearby Restaurant Sat Bains, Alex has long been tipped to enter the guide. The future is bright for Alchemilla, and for Nottingham, which now boasts two Michelin-starred restaurants, more than both Manchester and Liverpool.

Nuno Mendes started his career with a supper club of sorts, called ‘The Loft Project’, based out of his own flat in Dalston. It has been many years since The Loft Project closed, but with Mãos, Nuno is going back to his roots with a private, intimate dining experience, situated in a loft above the Blue Mountain School in Shoreditch. Eduardo Pellicano leads a tight knit kitchen team in delivering a typically adventurous menu that draws on myriad European influences.

Everything is cooked over open fire at this Dublin favourite. The compact menu changes often with seasonal ingredients coming and going, and alongside a smattering of individual dishes, you can also order ‘family style’ feasts. Chef Keelan Higgs cut his teeth at the excellent (and now two-Michelin-starred) Greenhouse nearby before striking out on his own.