The Alderley Edge Hotel’s prestige restaurant has joined the country’s top 10 per cent to be awarded a coveted three AA rosettes.
‘The Alderley Restaurant’ is the only new three-rosette eatery between Birmingham and Edinburgh in the latest round of newly announced top food accolades, placing head chef Chris Holland’s team alongside famous London restaurants like Marco Pierre White’s ‘L’Escargot’, Michele Roux’s ‘Le Gavroche’, and ‘Gordon Ramsay at Claridges’.
The AA's hotel services group area manager, Giovanna Grossi, praised Chris’s “innovative touches along with his creative use of flavours - resulting in top notch cuisine.” The restaurant was also commended for its “imaginative menus” and use of local produce.
The move from two to three rosettes is, said Chris, “a tremendous reward for a lot of hard work. I’m lucky to have a committed team of people who have all contributed to creating food that just doesn’t exist elsewhere.”
“Our main aim has always been to provide our customers with the most exciting food we can achieve but to be acknowledged by the hard-to-please AA judges really is the icing on a very nice cake.”
For the Alderley Edge Hotel’s general manager, Ahmet Kurcer, the rosettes are recognition for his policy of encouraging ‘home-grown’ staff. Chris Holland is a Greater Manchester-born chef and his team are drawn from the surrounding area.
“It’s not unusual for restaurants to grow their own ingredients – and we grow our own herbs in the gardens behind the hotel – but we also ‘grow’ our own staff,” he says. “We give them opportunities, nurture their professional growth and now we can harvest the fruits of their talent.”
“Chris has been with us for 12 years and was appointed head chef four years ago. In that time he has become an outstanding chef who has raised the bar for fine food menus. His signature dishes take traditional British classics and give them an often extravagant twist that uses textures and releases flavours to improve the original.”
AA rosettes are awarded twice a year in recognition of “exceptional standards of cuisine”. Three rosettes, says the AA, “takes a restaurant into the big league. Expectations of the kitchen are high, exact technique, flair and imagination must come through in every dish, and balance and depth of flavour are all-important.”
Giovanna Grossi added: "Restaurants serving food of a three-rosette standard are worthy of recognition from well beyond their local area.”
Picture caption: Head chef Chris Holland (front, right) and general manager Ahmet Kurcer toast the three AA rosettes with the Alderley Restaurant team.
