6 Best Restaurants in Manchester, Liverpool, and the Peak District, England

This charming restaurant with its riverside terrace serves top-notch Modern British food. The tasting menus (with or without a paired wine flight) take regional flavors and infuse them with contemporary flair.

Much-loved by food critics, this groundbreaking "New Northern" restaurant in a former coffee warehouse offers a no-choice tasting menu (£95) that depends on “the day’s catch, harvest, and slaughter.” Regular ingredients include Macclesfield trout, cured Middle White pork, and salt-baked beets in delicious combinations; much of the produce comes from the restaurant's own farm.

Part of the same crowd-funded group as Manchester’s Hispi Bistro and KALA Bistro, this hip spot serves up seriously good modern global cuisine from an open kitchen in a once derelict building in the Ropewalks district. As with its sister restaurants, think excellent local products taken to the next level through pairings with unusual vegetables including heritage tomatoes and hispi cabbage. Breakfast is great, while Sunday lunch can be as traditional or as inventive as you like.

This airy suburban dining room in a former bakery with polished concrete floors, grey walls, wooden benches, trailing foliage, and chalkboard menus is presided over by local chef Mary-Ellen McTague (who cooked under Heston Blumenthal at the legendary Fat Duck for many years). It offers southern European comfort food based on seasonal produce; think the likes of cucumber, fennel, tarragon, and ricotta salata or fazzoletti with walnut sauce.

Ambitious and groundbreaking, this restaurant was launched by two brothers who leapt to fame for their award-winning Marram Grass restaurant in the unlikely setting of a holiday park in Wales (the name means "Liverpool" in Welsh). Although you can dine a la carte here, the focus is really on the tasting menus (£90), which embrace sustainably sourced shellfish including Menai Strait oysters, homegrown aged pork from Anglesey, and other prime ingredients from small local producers. The atmosphere is very grown-up, with no children under 10 allowed.

The first opening by former MasterChef winner Simon Wood, this scene-setting restaurant in the pedestrianized First Street arts and leisure complex serves up high-end, creative British tasting menus from an open kitchen. Think adventurous ingredients such as red deer, Douglas fir, and crapaudine beetroot combined with modern takes on traditional dishes like neeps and tatties (Scottish mash).