More Awards For OX Belfast
OX adds more wins to the summer’s haul with prestigious Editors’ Award as Restaurant of the Year in the Good Food Guide and 3 major awards at Food & Wine Awards!
It has been a fantastic summer for the team at OX who won the Best Menu award at the 32nd Catey Awards in July, the hospitality industry’s answer to the Oscars. The team followed this with the prestigious Editors’ Award for Restaurant of the Year as decided by the editors of the 2016 Good Food Guide, annual UK awards which recognise restaurants and chefs who have shown excellence in their field.
Finally, last weekend at the Food & Wine Awards in Dublin, the awards came thick and fast, with Best Restaurant in Ulster for OX, and Stephen Toman winning Best Chef in Ulster as well as the overall award of Chef of the Year. The restaurant was also highly commended for Best Wine Experience and Restaurant of the Year.
“Winning Best Menu at the Cateys was fantastic,” said chef and co-owner Stephen Toman, “as everything at OX begins with the menu. Since opening in April 2013, taking a risk on a new kind of dining for Belfast has really paid off for us, and this kind of recognition for our menu, from our peers and colleagues in the industry, has been really rewarding.
Following this with the Editors’ Award for Restaurant of the Year 2016 from the Good Food Guide was a huge honour for our team and especially coming so quickly after winning the Best Menu at the Cateys. The competition in the UK for both is enormous so it’s a great win for Belfast and another nod to the great people and local producers we love to work with.
Finally winning the three awards at this year’s Food & Wine Awards at the weekend – Best Chef in Ulster, Best Restaurant in Ulster and Chef of the Year – as well as being highly commended in the other categories, just proves my point about OX being a team effort. An award for one of us is an award for all of us, and I couldn’t be more proud of all the hard work everyone has put in to make OX so well regarded.”
Organised by The Caterer magazine, the UK hospitality industry’s leading source of information for over 135 years, since their inception in 1984 the Cateys have become a byword for quality, class and achievement, the awards that everybody wants to win. This year’s Best Menu award-winner OX always has a fascinating menu, described by one of the judges, Clare Smyth MBE, Northern Ireland’s only 3-star Michelin chef and chef-patron of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay as “Very exciting!” going on to say “It’s fantastic to see a restaurant in Northern Ireland of this calibre. This is a young chef pushing the boundaries and using the wealth of produce the region has offer.”
The Good Food Guide celebrates Britain’s best restaurants and the top entries and award-winners in the 2016 Good Food Guide were announced at the launch of its 65th anniversary issue in August, with Belfast restaurant OX winning the prestigious Editors’ Award for Restaurant of the Year.
On the significant win, Alain Kerloc’h, co-owner of OX said “Our team is completely humbled by winning the Editors’ Award for Restaurant of the Year by the Good Food Guide this year. It is not just fantastic for OX but great for Belfast and Northern Ireland too.”
The Food & Wine Magazine Restaurant of the Year Awards, now in its 15th year, are considered the most prestigious and authoritative culinary awards in the Irish calendar. Recognising the best Irish restaurants and culinary talent, diners from all over Ireland were invited to nominate their favourite restaurants and chefs, with the top entries going forward for deliberation by a national culinary panel of judges, made up of industry experts and national food critics. This is the third year in a row that chef Stephen Toman has won Best Chef in Ulster at these awards, and the second year running that OX has taken the Best Restaurant in Ulster title. This is Stephen’s first time winning Chef of the Year.
Co-owners Stephen and Alain each have a background in formal dining, with complex and sophisticated menus and high levels of service. With OX (and their gorgeous, honey-toned wine bar right next door in OX Cave), their aim is to provide the same quality of food and attentive service, along with a focus on dining with seasonal creativity, but in a relaxed, simple and welcoming environment.
OX is enterprising, ambitious and inventive, and is now the winner of the Best Menu of the Year at the Cateys, Editors’ Award as Restaurant of the Year in the Good Food Guide in the UK, and Best Restaurant in Ulster, Best Chef in Ulster and Chef of the Year at the Food & Wine Awards!
