Dinner At Sopwell House

Sopwell House Hotel in St Albans serves up a meal to remember for food and drink editor Richard Cawthorne

- Richard Cawthorne

WITH the festive season upon us, Sopwell House Hotel in St Albans has reason to celebrate a good year. From the foodie perspective, the crowning achievement was in July, when the four-star property’s The Restaurant was awarded a second AA Rosette. The AA states two Rosettes indicate ‘excellent restaurants that aim for and achieve higher standards and better consistency. A greater precision is apparent in the cooking, and there will be obvious attention to the selection of quality ingredients’.

In the crowded field of food accolades, the AA’s are better regarded than many. Only around 40 per cent of the venues in the AA Restaurant Guide have two Rosettes and fewer than 10 per cent have three. The system has contributed to the gradual change in attitude toward hotel restaurants, which have tended to have an image problem. It’s often related to the perceived price of the meals and sometimes the idea that chefs are catering to a captive audience (hotel guests). There is a way still to go, but the hotels themselves have been tackling the problem, with the result it is no longer considered strange to eat out in them.

Sopwell House won its second Rosette by accomplishing precision ‘throughout all its cooking’, while The Restaurant also received recognition for the high quality, seasonal produce on its menus. The AA inspector described his experience as ‘smart dining in Mountbatten’s former country home’.