The Manchester favourite has been recognised by the team behind The World’s 50 Best Restaurants...
Higher Ground has been named in this year’s 50 Best Discovery, joining a global collection of restaurants selected by the team behind The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
The New York Street bistro has been included among the dining destinations recommended by the 50 Best Academy, a network of more than 3,000 international hospitality experts.
It is the latest major recognition for Joe Otway, Richard Cossins and Daniel Craig Martin, whose restaurant has become one of the defining names in Manchester’s dining scene since opening in February 2023.
The entry in the 50 Best Discovery reads:
The team at this modern British bistro don’t believe in short cuts. Pasta is made fresh daily, whole carcasses are butchered on site, and vegetables come from their own market garden, farmed in Cheshire. It makes perfect sense, then, when you find out where its owners met: at New York’s seed-to-table trailblazer Blue Hill at Stone Barns. If the thinking here is similar, the prices are much more democratic, with a set menu at lunchtime, plus an easygoing a la carte. Menus move through the seasons, whether it’s new-season radishes in spring, served with smoked cod’s roe, or a winter salad of homegrown radicchio with brown crab and hot-smoked trout. The wine list focuses on low-intervention finds: a Georgian orange wine, say, aged in underground pots, or an unfiltered, old-vine riesling from a biodynamic French estate.
50 Best Discovery
Higher Ground already holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and has appeared in the National Restaurant Awards for four consecutive years, while its latest inclusion places it alongside restaurants from across the world considered worthy of wider attention.
For those familiar with Higher Ground, the reasons behind the recognition will come as little surprise.
Its menus change daily, shaped by the seasons and the produce available from Cinderwood, the team’s market garden in Cheshire. The kitchen works with whole animals from organic farms, hand-rolls pasta using British grain and cooks sustainably caught seafood over coal.
The restaurant’s story began with a Higher Ground pop-up in early 2020, before the team went on to establish Cinderwood and open Flawd in Ancoats the following year.
The permanent Higher Ground restaurant followed in 2023, bringing together ideas developed by Otway, Cossins and Craig Martin after they met while working at Dan Barber’s revered two star Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York.
Their Manchester presence has since grown again with the arrival of Bar Shrimp, the seafood-led cocktail bar located next door to Higher Ground.
Joe Otway, chef and co-owner of Higher Ground, said: “We feel grateful to be acknowledged in any of these listings and awards, it’s a testament to the work our incredible teams put into practice every single day. And of course it’s all due to the constant support of the amazing community of guests that keep our wheels moving each week.”
Higher Ground is open for dinner on Wednesdays and for lunch and dinner from Thursday to Saturday. Its seasonal menu is priced at £40 for lunch and £65 for dinner, alongside an à la carte menu.
The restaurant also continues its Cooking with Friends series on selected Sundays, with American chef Gregory Gourdet set to appear on Sunday 2 August.
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