First six restaurants longlisted for 2025 Menu of the Year Catey

The first six restaurants to make the longlist for the Menu of the Year Catey award 2025 have been revealed.

Those longlisted so far have been selected by a panel of industry judges from Menuwatch articles which ran from May to October 2024.

They will form part of the longlist presented to the Cateys judges in April, who will then select their shortlist for the awards ceremony taking place in July at Grosvenor House in London. 

The restaurants that go through to the judging will be Lir in Coleraine, Northern Ireland (pictured), which impressed the judges with dishes including KFC monkfish and seafood charcuterie; Half Cut Market, a London wine bar that has built a cult following with intense homemade sauces and fermented flavours; and Cornus, the second London site from the owners of Medlar in Chelsea which is headed up by chef Gary Foulkes.

They were featured between August 2024 and October 2024.

The restaurants join those that ran on The Caterer between May 2024 and July 2024. They are two-Michelin-starred A Wong and its carefully constructed homage to a Chinese banquet, Simon Rogan’s celebrated London outpost Aulis and chef Luke Ahearne’s Lita, in London’s Marylebone.

All six restaurants will be considered alongside a further six selected by the judges from those featured in The Caterer’s menuwatch column between November 2024 and April 2025. 

The menus are judged on innovation within the price bracket of that particular establishment or contract; good use of seasonal produce on the menu; creativity of the dishes being served; careful marrying of textures and flavours of the component ingredients; value for money; and whether the judges would be tempted to eat there.

Last year Lark in Bury St Edmunds took home the Menu of the Year Catey, having impressed the judges with its “mature and confident cooking” and “unfussy but inventive” dishes. It beat competition from Adelina Yard in Bristol, London’s Kolae, Osma in Manchester and Sargasso in Margate.