Top 10s 4Food's top 10 foodie destinations in Britain

Date Published:

03/10/2008

To celebrate 4Food's first anniversary we've put together a list of our favourite foodie destinations in Britain as featured on the Big British Food Map Feast like a king from Cornwall to Kirkcudbright as we celebrate the best of British

When it comes to snacks the Handmade Scotch Egg Company has the competition beaten. Rolling up to 700 plump pork goodies a day, the husband and wife team set their sights higher than the humble pork, egg, breadcrumb combo, producing, among others, the mighty Black Watch – a classic Scotch egg with added black pudding. Who needs wasabi peanuts when you've got pork?

Tony Eades knows his greens – his family have been selling broccoli to Bath for four generations. The green-fingered granddad grows lots of his own produce, and as well as supplying locals with their weekly box of bananas, he provides a host of nearby restaurants with a menu full of goodies. With increasing competition from the supermarket big boys it's good to see a local trader thriving at the heart of the community. Every town needs a Tony.

Any walker hardy enough to scale Snowdon is going to need more than a watery cup of tea and a stale Eccles cake to greet them on way down. Enter Pete Norton and his legendary food mountains. With pint-sized mugs of tea and chip butties bigger than your face, Pete's Eats has been satisfying famished ramblers for 30 years. With a feast like Pete's at the bottom who wouldn't be tempted to reach for their cagoule?

Who better to provide ethically farmed venison than a trained vet? John Fletcher and his wife, Nichola, have been farming red deer on their 80 acre farm near Perth since the 1970s and have battled hard for the right to slaughter the animals in the field, the quickest route to a humane kill. Now, as well as a booming mail order business and a celebrated recipe collection the pair are proud parents to a host of four-legged film stars, who've appeared, among other roles, alongside Helen Mirren in The Queen.

The backyard of most pubs boasts little more than fag ends, fights and a hoard of grumpy smokers, but go round the back of the Lord Nelson and you're in for a big surprise. The pub car park was converted into a micro brewery in 2005 and owners, Bob Yates and Mike Walsh, have been turning out quality ales ever since. The backyard brewers supply everyone from Tesco to the local food fairs with a range of top notch brews and bitters and there's not a smooching couple in sight.

If you were asked to name a culinary hotspot, places like Paris, Naples or Tokyo might spring to mind. A small village in the heart of Cheshire? Less likely. But Alderley Edge boasts more foodie credentials than the whole of Italy put together. Well, maybe not, but it is home to some pretty tasty cupcakes. Horseshoe Farm is a culinary complex ran by Andy Morrisson who had his first foray into the food world selling eggs door to door. His site now includes a farm, farm shop, bakers and renowned cake company, Katja's cupcakes.

The far north of Scotland might not be your destination of choice when setting up a chocolate shop but as long as you've got a good postie anything is possible. James Findley and Paul Maden started Cocoa Mountain in 2006 and claim they can send their tasty truffles anywhere in the UK within 24 hours. They also make a mean hot chocolate, though we're not sure how that would fare in an envelope.

Cockles and whelks are regularly peddled on the promenades of Britain's seaside towns, but it's not often you find them in the petrol station. Rob Latimer used to be a fisherman in Scotland but when fish quotas started to shrink he returned to the North East and set up his fish deli on the site of an old petrol station built by his grandfather. These days you might be hard pushed to get your car washed but you'll definitely want to refuel with some of Rob's mouth-watering crab.

Andrew Young is a Yorkshire baker with a lot to be proud about, most notably his Cornish Pasties. That's right, despite a 250 mile gap between Andrew and the pasty's heritage he managed to bag the pasty crown back in 2001. But it's his pork pies with a crispy pastry crust that really made his name, along with his thoroughbred - the figit pie - pork pie meat topped with a layer of stuffing and apple sauce. He now sells around 3000 a week - just don't mention it to the Cornish.

Few foods feel more British than a nice slice of Stilton. But, thanks to a PDO ruling limiting the name only to cheese using pasturised milk, raw milk varieties are left out in the cold. The Stichelton Dairy, set up by Randolph Hodgson (from Neal's Yard) and Joe Schneider, got round this by reverting to the cheese's old Saxon name and are now producing a traditional raw-milk Stilton on the Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire. What was it Shakespeare said? "A cheese by any other name…"

Agree with our top 10 – or feel we’ve missed some? Let us know in the user comments below – or simply add your suggestions to the Big British Food Map

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