A Cheshire chef is celebrating a ‘massive’ achievement after his restaurant was awarded three AA rosettes. The Vines at Carden Park Hotel is one of just four restaurants in the county to receive the rating. Just over 200 restaurants in the country have been awarded three rosettes by the AA.
Graham Tinsley MBE, Executive Chef at The Vines, has worked in some of the finest kitchens in the world, and now his own restaurant is firmly established amongst the top restaurants in the country. Graham began his culinary career aged 16 at Manchester’s Midland Hotel, before working at the five-star Atlantis Hotel in Switzerland in his early twenties and then the world-renowned Dorchester under Anton Mosimann before opening the Vines 26 years ago. He said: “It took a bit of time, but it’s a massive jump from two to three rosettes.
“For the first it’s pretty straightforward, just serve good food, for two rosettes you start to look at seasonality and where you’re getting your produce from, but for three, getting over that threshold is massive.” Graham returned to the restaurant 15 years ago after a stint at the Castle Hotel in Conwy. He said: “We knew in our minds, because myself and my head chef have two-rosette backgrounds, that the Vines was going to be something special.
“From day one we were inviting the AA in; we had a few inspections and they said we needed to tweak this or tweak that. We kept on at it and kept the standard there all the time, not just for my bo.