Merseyside Dining

Select an article from the list below

Elude

In the dining world, the line between the art of wit and the pit of groaning cliché is particularly slender. Restaurant names that try to be humorous or offer a play on words can err dangerously close to the realms of naff and seal an establishment’s...
Read This Article

Pub Food On Merseyside

Gone are the days where pub food was no more creative than scampi and chips or chicken-in-a-basket. Today the scope of pub-served fodder is vast, ranging from poor-show ready style meals to traditional family Sunday lunches with all the trimmings and...
Read This Article

Mayur

After just a few months in business, Indian eatery Mayur on Duke Street has swiftly become one of the city’s premier dining venues as well as one of its largest. Nestling happily amongst some pretty fierce competition in the form of Sapporo, Il Forno...
Read This Article

Thai Food On Merseyside

Thai cuisine is the result of a gradual marriage of Eastern and Western influences that spans back hundreds of years. Harmony is key. In particular, a harmonious blending of the five principle tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and hot. Most Thai dis...
Read This Article

OSQA

Deli restaurants are conspicuous by their scarcity in Liverpool. Other UK cities have seen this genre of eatery flourish but here we can still count these gastronomic havens on one hand. The announcement of Read This Article

Where To Get A Good Stew

Authentic stews and casseroles have an anachronistic quality, stubbornly refusing to conform to our hectic pace of life today. Their earthy wholesome flavours and melt-in-your-mouth textures are only achieved after a very long and slow cooking proces...
Read This Article

Il Forno

Voted one of the top ten Italian restaurants in the country by The Times and by that godfather of Italian food, Antonio Carluccio, Il Forno is celebrating yet again as pizza chef Vito Rossi took first place at the world pizza-making championship rece...
Read This Article

Eating Out In Ormskirk

The lively market town of Ormskirk has a vivid history that proffers Romans, Vikings and William Shakespeare, who is said to have performed at a theatre here in the late 1500s. Half a millennium later, it’s a thriving hub of cobbled streets set in a ...
Read This Article

Blundell Street

Blundell Street has all the components of a unique and memorable night out. Located opposite the Kings Dock within walking distance of both the city centre and the waterfront, it delivers the full package: food, drinks and live music. It consists of ...
Read This Article

What’s New For Merseyside Diners

The rate at which new restaurants are opening up on Merseyside is almost absurd. Even those committed foodies who aim to sample each and every new dining opportunity on offer are finding it hard to keep up. Merseyside today provides an abundance of e...
Read This Article

Delifonseca

Merseyside’s been showing promise on the restaurant front but decent delicatessens? Quite another story. Here’s a test: try and find some top quality Italian salsiccia for a River Café style pasta ragu. Set aside a day of diligent searching for this ...
Read This Article

Sunday Lunch On Merseyside

Sundays are meant to be a day of rest so no slaving over a hot stove, people. Put on your Sunday best and get down to one of the many pubs, restaurants and other eateries serving top Sunday lunches, most at excellent value. The city centre is eager f...
Read This Article

Euro Istanbul

Turkish restaurants are unfortunately far and few between. A great shame, as Turkish food is a rare treat, the fruit of an intricate culinary history, profoundly shaped during the Ottoman era but embracing a range of influences and ingredients from i...
Read This Article

Seafood On Merseyside

As well as our five daily portions of fresh fruit and veg, the Food Standards Agency would like us all to be eating two portions of fresh fish a week. Whilst we’re familiar with the benefits of a marine-sourced diet (reduced risk of heart attack, str...
Read This Article

Meet

There’s an anonymous saying that goes something like “A vegetarian in Argentina is like a duck out of water”. Meet, which opened at the end of April, subscribes wholeheartedly to this carnivorous school of thought. Even the locale’s name is a play o...
Read This Article

Merseyside’s Just Desserts

Choosing a dessert at a favourite restaurant has become one of life’s true pleasures, thanks to the attention chefs have recently been giving to a hitherto overlooked section of the menu. This welcome trend means that these days you’re likely to be r...
Read This Article

Dining Al Fresco On Merseyside

A surprising number of Merseyside restaurants have invested in outdoor dining space. Considering northern British weather, their meteorological faith may be questionable but their efforts must be applauded. It means that on those few occasions when i...
Read This Article

Spire

“Fabulous”, “faultless” and “outstanding” is how customers are describing this promising new south Liverpool eatery, headed up by Matt Locke, former head chef at The London Carriage Works, and his brother Adam. Occupying the spec that many will reme...
Read This Article

Warehouse Brasserie

Southport boasts one of Merseyside’s best and most highly-awarded restaurants. Warehouse Brasserie, tucked away on West Street, has two AA rosettes to its name, as well as a Michelin Bib Gourmand and an annual placement in Harden’s listing. Virtually...
Read This Article

A Room With A View

Go anywhere on Merseyside and you’ll never be very far from water. And as you might expect, many restaurant owners have turned this to their advantage -- the pulling power of aquatic views speaks for itself when it comes to dining. Whether you seek u...
Read This Article

Ziba

There’s something inherently intriguing about a restaurant that refuses to sway to the marketing beat. Ziba is one of Liverpool’s most awarded and acclaimed eateries but paradoxically still one of its best kept secrets. A move from its original spec ...
Read This Article

Dining Out On A Tenner

Christmas is long gone but the dent in our wallets stands as stern testament to festive overspends and most of us, temporarily at least, have pulled in our belts and cut back on life’s little luxuries. The savvy all-season restaurant-goer knows howev...
Read This Article

Eating Chinese On Merseyside

There’s a muted Western consensus that suggests Chinese food and fine dining are worlds apart. The implication is that somehow the quality of cuisine decreases in direct proportion to the number of ingredients used in its recipes. Most gastronomes wo...
Read This Article

Alma de Cuba

Unsurprisingly, there’s been a scramble in local media circles to be the first to review the city’s newest restaurant, Alma de Cuba. Flick through any of the numerous glossy Liverpool lifestyle mags that seem to have invaded the planet in recent mont...
Read This Article

Eating Out On Lark Lane

If you’re “off down the lane” in Liverpool then there’s only one possible place you’re headed: Lark Lane, an atmospheric, bohemian oasis on the outskirts of Sefton Park. Trendy and idiosyncratic, it’s commonly referred to as “the Lane”, a colloquiali...
Read This Article

Merseyside’s Award-Winning Restaurants

Anyone who reads a newspaper, and has a vague interest in the world of gastronomy and its practitioners, cannot have failed to noticed that Alain Senderens, owner and chef of the hallowed three-star Lucas Carton on Paris’s Place de la Madeleine, rece...
Read This Article

The Breakfast Club (March 2005)

Breakfast, they tell us, is the most important meal of the day. Skipping it is apparently inextricably linked to obesity, fluctuating blood sugar levels, lack of concentration and irresistible sweet cravings. For the sake of your health, if you’re us...
Read This Article

Ark Restaurant (March 2005)

A popular choice for diners in South Liverpool and beyond, this venue is a real asset to the Liverpool dining scene. Situated within the imaginary boundaries of a small haven of eateries in the Penny Lane area that also includes Read This Article

Heart And Soul (January 2005)

Until recently, number 62 Mount Pleasant was a derelict crumbling edifice that seemed way beyond repair, its only visitors the city’s pigeons flying in through the missing roof, and the odd speculative developer. For all intents and purposes the fate...
Read This Article

Eating French On Merseyside (January 2005)

All sophisticated palates accept that French cuisine is unquestionably the finest in the world. Its contenders bow to the superiority of its ingredients (foie gras, truffles, Dijon mustard), classic dishes (boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, cassoulet), ...
Read This Article

The Gastrotourist (November 2004)

Manchester has undergone a real transformation in the last decade or so, accelerated by the IRA bomb which flattened part of the city and the Commonwealth Games giving the “dirty old town” international prestige. Before the boom it seemed inconceivab...
Read This Article

That's Entertainment (November 2004)

For those who enjoy eating out on a regular basis, sometimes the mood calls for a little something extra, particularly at the weekend or on a special occasion. We’re talking pleasant distractions, usually of the musical kind, to enjoy between courses...
Read This Article

Eating Indian on Merseyside (August 2004)

Broadly speaking, Indian cuisine can be split into two general styles of cooking – northern and southern. The southern diet has been significantly vegetarian for thousands of years. Typical southern meals consist of many small dishes of mixed vegetab...
Read This Article

Blackburne House Café Bar (August 2004)

In the increasingly competitive and cut-throat local dining market, it’s refreshing to find an eatery that prides itself on the fact that it manages to maintain a relatively low-key reputation. Even though The Café Bar in Blackburne House has been in...
Read This Article

The Courtyard (June 2004)

Spilling out onto a square tucked off busy Dale Street is The Courtyard, one of Liverpool’s newest restaurants, and thanks to a somewhat concealed location, one of its best-kept secrets. It is a veritable oasis in the heart of the city’s business dis...
Read This Article

Smoke-Free Dining In Liverpool (June 2004)

Just a couple of months ago Merseyside saw the launch of Smokefree Liverpool, after an official event at the city’s Empire Theatre to encourage the city’s population to sign up and show their support for the right to live and work free of tobacco smo...
Read This Article

Filini (April 2004)

It’s been a good few years since Liverpool has had the pleasure of a major new addition to its range of Italian restaurants, so the establishment of Filini at the newly built luxury Radisson SAS hotel has been welcomed with open arms by the city’s fo...
Read This Article

Eating Out On The Wirral (April 2004)

Laying claim to some of the North West’s most picturesque locations, the Wirral peninsula is a microcosm of urban and rural landscapes. It is surrounded by three bodies of water -- the River Mersey to the west, the River Dee to the east and the Irish...
Read This Article

London Carriage Works (March 2004)

This intriguingly named restaurant on Hope Street is the latest boost to Liverpool’s growing reputation as the North West’s finest dining haven. The London Carriage Works is the venture of chef patron Paul Askew, who is already renowned for his succe...
Read This Article

The Best Of British (March 2004)

It’s an undeniable food fact that good old-fashioned British dishes are being welcomed back with open arms, and nowhere is this more evident than in the restaurant industry. Just as we have got our heads round the fact that the Mediterranean diet has...
Read This Article

Sapporo (February 2004)

Sitting pretty on a quiet corner of Duke Street is Liverpool’s only official sushi and teppanyaki restaurant, Sapporo. It’s sister to two Japanese restaurants in Ayia Napa, Cyprus: Hokkaido and another Sapporo. Just a few months old, its stealthy arr...
Read This Article

Eating Out At The Albert Dock (February 2004)

The Albert Dock is one of Liverpool’s proudest landmarks, attracting visitors from all over the country and indeed the world. Located at the waterfront at the edge of the city centre, it first opened in 1846 when it was a hub of maritime activity, we...
Read This Article

The Monro (December 2003)

With the huge tidal wave of Mediterranean-style minimalism that has been sweeping the local dining scene, it’s refreshing to find someone swimming strongly against the tide. The Monro, Liverpool’s first gastropub, acknowledges the appeal of clean-lin...
Read This Article

It’s A Family Affair (December 2003)

Anyone who dines out on a regular basis may have noticed that Merseyside restaurants, like thousands of restaurants across the country, are slowly redefining the industry’s attitude to the younger diner. It has always been part of everyday life on th...
Read This Article

Crichtons (November 2003)

The most recent newcomer to the increasingly reputable gastronomic strip that is Allerton Road, is Crichton’s. This stylish, laid-back wine bar restaurant serves up a wide range of Mediterranean food and fine wines. Nestling comfortably amongst some ...
Read This Article

Eating Mexican On Merseyside (November 2003)

Mexican cuisine is one of the oldest in the world, combining the ancient traditions of the Aztecs with the cooking methods and ingredients introduced by Hernán Cortés and his Spanish conquistadors over 400 years ago. Many ingredients of modern Wester...
Read This Article

The Gastrotourist (September 2003)

If you love seafood, there exists a place of pilgrimage where you can truly indulge yourself – Padstein (or as it used to be known, Padstow). Lying on the Camel estuary, this Cornish town remains the perfect little fishing port and despite the influ...
Read This Article

Pizza Perfection (September 2003)

It's official. Overdosing on pizza is good for you! Recent research carried out by an Italian university claims that eating pizza regularly reduces the risk of certain types of cancer, in some cases by up to 60%. Not that you needed any reason to ind...
Read This Article

Colin's Bridewell (July 2003)

Seven months old and still something of a hidden treasure, Colin's Bridewell is tucked away on a modern, clean-lined piazza within the urban-village Rope Walks area. Housed in a c...
Read This Article

Where To Eat In St Helens (July 2003)

Dining out in St Helens has always been a somewhat restricted affair. Indeed, compared with Liverpool, Wirral and Southport which are positively flourishing with restaurants, cafes and bars, St Helens is more renowned for its pies than its penne. The...
Read This Article

Valparaiso (May 2003)

Liverpool’s only Chilean restaurant, Valparaiso is unique for more reasons that the nationality of its cuisine. With a proprietor driven more by passion for his country and traditional cooking methods than by profit, this restaurant serves up a slice...
Read This Article

Tantalizing Tapas (May 2003)

Summer has arrived, bringing with it idyllic images of lazy al fresco continental-style eating. Our widening embrace of European attitudes to life means that we are quite comfortable with practising a little of the mañana principle and how better to ...
Read This Article

Hotel Dining In Liverpool (April 2003)

Until a few years ago Liverpool suffered a real dearth of top-quality accommodation, particularly for the national and international business market. In recent years however, helped by the drive of agencies such as the Mersey Tourism Board and The Me...
Read This Article

Mustard (April 2003)

A relatively recent addition to south Liverpool's growing stable of classy dining clubs is Mustard, a restaurant with adjacent bar, offering impeccable fusion food and fine wine in fabulously cool surroundings. Situated in Holyoake Hall, a famous loc...
Read This Article

The Art Of The Matter (March 2003)

Appreciation of the arts and enjoyment of good cuisine are no longer mutually exclusive experiences. Liverpool has been short-listed for the title of European Capital of Culture 2008 so it's no surprise that it offers a veritable feast of museums, ga...
Read This Article

The Magnet (March 2003)

Clubbing and dining don't normally go hand-in-hand but The Magnet, one of Liverpool's funkiest clubs, has pulled it off. The original Magnet bar and club dates from 1999 and is located in the same venue that housed the famous Sink club in the 1960s. ...
Read This Article

Chung Ku (February 2003)

In the Chinese calendar, 2003 is the Year of the Ram. A supposedly gentle creature, the ram is the most balanced and tranquil of the horoscope animals and as such it’s particularly well suited to Chung Ku where an intrinsic sense of balance between t...
Read This Article

The Working Lunch (February 2003)

Liverpool's business district is home to a new generation of midday eateries -- trendy bars and cocktail lounges that double up as chic refreshment rooms by day, offering an outrageously impressive array of continental sandwiches, salads and light me...
Read This Article

Honey Harmony (January 2003)

As a rule of thumb, good bars don’t make for good restaurants – and vice versa. Things never quite seem to be in balance. Either the bar is serving food as an afterthought, an adjunct to the main business at hand of moving as many pints of Hoegaarden...
Read This Article

Going Greek On Merseyside (January 2003)

Greek food doesn’t quite have the culinary cachet of French; nor is it as popular here as the ubiquitous pizza and pasta of its Mediterranean neighbour, Italy. Nonetheless, Greek restaurants are a feature the length and breadth of the UK and Merseysi...
Read This Article

Dining Out In Southport (December 2002)

From the picturesque tree-lined streets of the town centre to the pavement cafes of the outskirts, Southport is a food town. For some, it’s the culinary capital of the northwest -- and with close to 200 restaurants and cafes to choose from offering a...
Read This Article

De Coubertin's (November 2002)

Named after Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the Modern Olympic Games, De Coubertin’s is Liverpool’s capital of celebritydom and only a step away from the famous Cavern Club. Over the years, it has played host to famous names ranging from Pau...
Read This Article

Eating Healthy: Vegetarian Food In Liverpool (November 2002)

For the finest in vegetarian food, you really don’t have to search too far on Merseyside. Many of the best vegetarian restaurants are practically next door to one another – ranging from the (not so) far reaches of ultra-trendy Albert Dock to the city...
Read This Article

The Lower Place (October 2002)

Strangely enough, Liverpool’s ‘ best-kept secret’ is housed in the city’s most recognisable music venue. Situated beneath the Philharmonic Hall (home to Liverpool's renowned Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), Read This Article

A Taste Of The Med: Liverpool's Cafe Culture (October 2002)

Summer may be well and truly buried under a thick layer of vests and jumpers, but the café bars of Liverpool stand as a reminder of the relaxed Mediterranean lifestyle. Café culture really began to take hold in the UK in the early 90s when greasy spo...
Read This Article

A Walk On The Wild Side (September 2002)

For those in search of food with a more unusual flavour, Liverpool's restaurant scene offers a cornucopia of hidden gems. From rustic Russian classics to the spicier Chilean and Mexican cuisine -- there’s something in this city to suit everyone’s tas...
Read This Article