Wales Restaurant of the Year

Posted by Mike Gerrard Oct 2, 2006

The Drawing Room Restaurant with Rooms near Builth Wells in the wonderful Wye Valley in mid-Wales has scooped two major awards on the same day! It's been named as the Wales Restaurant of the Year by the AA, and has won a coveted César Award from the publishers of the new Good Hotel Guide.

What makes the achievement all the more remarkable is that the Drawing Room has been open for less than two years. That's a real tribute to the chef-proprietors, Colin and Melanie Dawson. In 2003 they went to France with the aim of opening an auberge, but they couldn't find a suitable property and after six months away, they were missing Wales. They came back and spotted a Georgian property near Builth Wells, and transformed it into the Drawing Room, a restaurant with rooms.

The AA only awards three Restaurant of the Year Awards, one each for England, Scotland and Wales. To get to the top spot in Wales in less than two years is quite an achievement, so Colin and Melanie Dawson will have to abandon their kitchen for a day while they go to collect their award at a lunchtime ceremony at one of my own favorite hotels in one of my favorite UK cities, the St David's Hotel in Cardiff.

As if that wasn't enough, they then have six hours to get to London to collect a César Award from the editors of the new Good Hotel Guide. The Drawing Room is a Restaurant with Rooms, and those rooms obviously impressed the Good Hotel Guide inspectors. So much so that they have given the Drawing Room one of only ten Césars that they hand out each year. Those awards are being presented at Daunt's Bookshop in London's Holland Park, a shop every traveler to London should head for. No, it isn't the one featured in the Notting Hill movie, but there's more than one travel bookshop in London!

So, next time I'm in mid-Wales I think I'll be doing my own inspection of the Drawing Room, but I guess after these two awards I'm going to have to book well ahead.

Click here for the Drawing Room website.