Vetch Retains Two AA Rosettes For Third Year, As Restaurant Takes New Direction
Hope Street restaurant continues its run of culinary recognition as chef-owner Dan McGeorge tears up the tasting menu in favour of a more relaxed, ingredient-led style of dining.
Vetch, the Hope Street restaurant headed up by Liverpool-born chef-owner Dan McGeorge, has retained its coveted two AA Rosettes for a third consecutive year, recognising the restaurant’s continued commitment to high-quality ingredients, consistency and precision in its cooking.
The latest recognition comes at an exciting point in Vetch’s evolution, as McGeorge embarks on a bold new chapter for the restaurant, moving away from its established tasting menu format in favour of a more relaxed, generous and instinctive approach to dining.
From September, Vetch is trading the formality and choreography of fine dining for a menu designed around grazing, sharing and staying late. Inspired by the ingredient-first spirit of some of Europe’s leading bistros, the new format offers guests greater freedom to eat exactly as they want, with snacks, small plates, larger dishes and sides all sitting alongside one another on the menu, with no prescribed order.
The change in direction retains the restaurant’s focus on exceptional produce, but opens the kitchen up to a broader, more international range of influences. British ingredients now sit alongside flavours inspired by Japan, the Mediterranean and beyond.
Early dishes from the new menu include oysters with green strawberry and yuzu hot sauce; raw trout tostada with finger lime and togarashi; buffalo wing with ranch and caviar; salt-aged duck with blackberry kosho; and a 600g T-bone designed for sharing, served with chimichurri or sauce au poivre. Desserts include sticky toffee pudding with miso caramel sauce, alongside a dessert pour list.
Dan McGeorge said: “Retaining two AA Rosettes for a third year is something the whole team should be incredibly proud of, particularly because it comes at a time when we’re deliberately changing the way we do things at Vetch. We’ve spent the last few years building the restaurant around precision, seasonality and great ingredients, and that isn’t changing; but the way we want people to experience them is.
“We’ve decided on a change because we want Vetch to feel more generous and more fun. Guests can come in, order what they fancy, share dishes, have a few drinks and settle in for the evening. For us, this is the next stage of Vetch, and gives us a great platform to keep pushing ourselves.”
First introduced in 1956, the AA Rosette scheme is a nationwide programme assessing the quality of food served in restaurants and hotels. It celebrates successful cooking at different levels across the UK, recognising culinary excellence and a commitment to high-quality customer experience.
AA inspectors visit restaurants across the UK throughout the year, assessing the quality of cooking and awarding Rosettes to establishments demonstrating the required standards.
The two rosette award recognises restaurants achieving particularly high standards, with inspectors placing emphasis on the quality of ingredients, consistency and precision in cooking.
Vetch’s new direction extends beyond the food. The dining room has also been recalibrated for a more energetic and informal experience, with a new soundtrack, reworked drinks list, more relaxed service style and generous wine pours. The intention is to create an atmosphere that feels less formal and more reflective of how people actually want to eat and drink.
McGeorge added: “We’re not trying to make Vetch behave like a restaurant from somewhere else. It’s about taking brilliant local produce, putting our own international spin on it and creating the kind of room Liverpool people actually want to spend time in. The food is still serious, but the experience doesn’t need to be.”
The restaurant’s new menu and format launched earlier this month. To find out more or make a reservation, visit: vetchrestaurant.com.
