Llangollen, French Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: “Marc Willkinson is a genius” and “never fails to impress” at his “compact” venue – an unexpected find “off the beaten track” out on The Wirral, in a conservation village bordering Birkenhead. It has, on several occasions, topped our diners’ poll as the UK’s No. 1 destination. With just a dozen covers, it’s very much one man’s labour of love with its “imaginative visuals and playlist”, not to mention his really “unusual” and distinctive cuisine, delivered as a six-course tasting menu. Save space for the end of the meal: chef really knows his way around pudding and chocolates. Early in 2022, there was news that the restaurant was to close, but this is not the case. Marc is hunting for new premises, though, and if he finds them change will be afoot.

2023 Review: Chef-patron Mark Sebastian & Michelle Fisher’s “newly decorated restaurant-with-rooms only gets better” – after more than three decades – “and is always full”, a tribute to the “high standard of its French-influenced food”. Set in three seventeenth-century cottages knocked together, it’s a “quiet place to satisfy the foodie in you”.