Glasgow has two restaurants in this year’s Top 100 listing.
Endo Kazutoshi’s 10-seater flagship, Endo at the Rotunda above the old Television Centre in London’s White City has been voted the UK’s best restaurant in the carefully curated annual Harden’s Top 100 Best UK Restaurants diners’ poll.
The lauded London dining destination run by Yokohama-born Endo Kazutoshi has found itself the nation’s top rated eatery after being closed for five months earlier this year for a refurbishment and ‘period of culinary reflection’ in order to create a more personal and immersive omakase experience. Feedback from diners hailed it as an “extraordinary gastronomic experience” where “the theatre of chef Endo’s entertaining presentation and explanations is a delight”. Since the Top 100 started 15 years ago, this is only the second time the number 1 has been neither modern British nor French.
Cail Bruich (40) is entering its fifth year of operation as one of the more renowned destinations in Scotland, with chef Lorna McNee overseeing the “wonderful” Scottish tasting menus. And “the revival of Glasgow’s hip West End continues apace” with Graeme Cheevers’s highly accomplished and accoladed three-year-old establishment Unalome (43) standing out “for the excellence of its cooking and the refinement of its service”, with a fair proportion of reports saying it provided the “gastronomic highlight of the year”.
The 34th edition of the Harden’s guide, published this week (ISBN: 978-1916076198, price £20: also available as apps for Apple or Android), is one of only two surviving established UK restaurant guides made available in print, and the only one based on feedback from normal diners rather than a group of professional inspectors. A total of 30,000 reports are submitted from a survey of 2,500 diners. Restaurants at all price levels are included: from street food vendors to the country’s most ambitious dining rooms, with 2,800 restaurants listed in total.
Peter Harden, co-founder of Harden’s, comments: “As one of our most consistently performing restaurants in the guide, it is fantastic to see Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles still placing highly alongside even more of Scotland’s culinary stars who are finding their way into the Top 100 and the guide as a whole.”
Harden’s Best UK Restaurants 2025, £20, is available in all good bookshops, including Waterstone’s and Amazon.com, and from www.hardens.com.
Author: Glasgow Foodie
Writes for here and Foodie Explorers website. Usually found napping.