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accolades
I was on Cloud 9 at the 2008 Which? awards in the British Museum, when Heston Blumenthal announced that ramsons is to be the 'Good Food Guide' 2009 Restaurant of the Year...
Ros and I seem to have collected all sorts of accolades since we opened out little 'Village Restaurant' in 1985... starting in the autumn of 1986, when the 1987 edition of 'The Good Food Guide' named us as 'Lancashire Newcomer of the Year'.
This was followed by our first national press mention in the spring of 1987, when, writing in 'The Guardian', Drew Smith (the editor of 'The Good Food Guide') headlined the taste of a piece of rather mature Shorrocks Lancashire cheese, saying "The potency of such things does not translate well on to the page. It might make a hole in it".
During 1987 Ros shared a full page 'Sunday Telegraph' feature on "The changing flavour of British food" with Joyce Molyneux from the Carved Angel in Dartmouth; then in December was paired with John Tovey who ran the famous Miller Howe in Windermere, in a 'Daily Telegraph' article about "two apostles of natural flavour"...
Over the following four years Ros' daily changing dinner party menus attracted the attention of several of the national foodwriters. The late Jeremy Round who wrote for 'The Independent' particularly enjoyed a visit, and was most complementary about the provenance of our locally sourced organic produce.
At the same time I started getting recognition for my wine list; the 1989 'Egon Ronay Guide' rated it as one of the best in Britain but found my extensive tasting notes too pretentious!
The recession of the early 1990's hit our restaurant hard ~ at the same time as Ros began to suffer from back pain. We decided to diversify and offer our lovingly sourced ingredients for sale in a 'dinner party shop' which we built in our basement. Henrietta Green subsequently honoured us by naming Ramsbottom Victuallers as 'Britain's Best Food Shop' in her 1996 'Food Lovers' Guide to Britain', the same year as 'Lancashire Life' gave us their 'Wine Merchant of the Year' Award.
Ros' health continued to deteriorate; we had a couple of years in the wilderness without a proper chef until Naseem (Naz) joined us in 2001 and immediately earned us a 'Good Food Guide' regional award as Greater Manchester Restaurant of the Year - as well as a Michelin 'Bib Gourmand' - which we have subsequently lost as our current fine dining menu prices are deemed to be too high...
Naseem's skill has attracted a fair bit of attention in the past seven years; most recently (during 2007) we were named as 'Lancashire Life' Restaurant of the Year and 'The Good Food Guide' North West Readers Restaurant of the Year...
Of course high profile 'awards' can have a downside when people don't understand exactly what they are for...
Thus I received a personal award from two ex customers who very publicly nominated me 'Britain's Rudest Restaurateur' when I refused to provide them with table salt to ruin their meal...