A WIRRAL restaurant has been crowned the UK's number one in a leading diners poll.

Michelin-starred restaurant Fraiche, in Oxton Village, was placed at the top of Harden's Best UK Restaurants 2020 – published today.

The restaurant is owned by Marc Wilkinson who, at the start of this year, had planned to move to Liverpool and double in size.

He soon decided against becoming less hands-on,

He said recently: "For good or bad, you get 100% of me – the decor is me, the visuals are me, the music is me.

"I care, I guess – it’s a passion."

Harden's Best UK Restaurants 2020 – published today – is based on 50,000 reports from a survey of 7,500 diners.

Fraiche was amongst the North West’s tally of 10 entries in the Harden's 100: the highest of any region outside the South East and London, and with five of them in the Top 20 including Manchester Mana (3) and Adam Reid at The French (19); Aughton’s Moor Hall (5); and Cartmel's L’Enclume (12).

Manchester, having achieved no Harden’s 100 listings in the guide's 2019 edition improved its tally to three for the 2020 guide, with – in addition to Mana and The French – Restaurant MCR (73) completing a hat trick for the city. Edinburgh and Birmingham also achieved three Harden’s 100 listings apiece, but with rankings lower down the Harden’s 100 than Manchester.

But despite improvement in the list of the UK’s highest quality restaurants, it was just pipped at the post by Edinburgh this year in terms of the total number of listings in the guide.

Liverpool, with Roski (52) had one Harden's 100 representative and was ranked at 13th in terms of the number of total entries in the guide (compared with 11th in 2019).

Non-native, as well as British cuisine, is well-represented in the Harden’s 100, with 10 of the entries featuring Indian cuisine, 6 Japanese; and with Chinese and Scandinavian restaurants accounting for three apiece.

This is in stark contrast to the lists produced by many other UK guides: for example, The Good Food Guide’s Top 50 Restaurants which includes zero Indian or Japanese establishments and a single Chinese one; or Square Meal’s UK Top 100, which includes two Indian establishments, and zero Japanese or Chinese representatives.

London restaurants accounted for 41 of the Harden’s 100 with 59 entries outside the capital.

Co-founder Peter Harden said: "This was a good year for the North West’s restaurant scene which continues to consolidate its reputation for some of the highest quality restaurants in the country.

"Marc Wilkinson’s strong performance in our diner survey is emblematic of the skills of the current generation of northern chefs and restaurateurs who are settings trends not following them."