Manchester has a new restaurant that is world class

Restaurants are winning awards all the time these days. Or being voted best something by someone. It’s a bit exhausting and makes genuine achievements easier to pass over. Awards fatigue, it's probably called.

For example, this week Higher Ground, on the edge of Chinatown, was named in the top 50 restaurants in the whole of the UK. This wasn’t based on random data like social media hashtags, online reviews and number of mentions on Twitter, randomly crunched together by a random online betting company, but the National Restaurant Awards annual top 100.

It only opened in February, and already it’s leap-frogged Mana, the only restaurant in Manchester to have a Michelin star hanging by the front door, and the first place to land one in the city for decades. It’s a massive achievement, and one that could well be the first of many.

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Because by the evidence of a visit this week, this modern British bistro is probably the best restaurant in the city right now. And it's not just the food - let’s note a few other things it’s getting right first.

With glass wrapped around two sides of the room, the place is brilliantly light and thoughtfully designed. At the back, there’s the impressive wine selection on display, racked up in its own room and overseen by Higher Ground’s wine expert Daniel Craig Martin.

You can choose a glass for seven or eight quid, or a bottle for a few hundred, and there will be no snooty judgement over the former or fawning over the latter. You can either sit at a table, or choose a communal spot either at the bar - recommended, so that you can watch the processes chef Joe Otway and his team are using to bring your dinner together - or on high sharing