The AA has been back to Ennios, and the Rosette is staying on the wall.
That sentence is doing more work than it looks like it’s doing, to be honest. The AA Rosette scheme has been running since 1956, and the way it works is still fairly brutal. Inspectors don’t book under a company name, they don’t announce themselves, and they don’t accept a free lunch. They come in as ordinary paying diners, eat a full meal, pay the bill, and only then, sometimes, tell you who they are. Everything rides on what was actually on the plate that day. Not the room, not the view, not how charming anyone was at the door. The food.
A single Rosette, in the AA’s own words, marks a restaurant that stands out in its local area, cooking with care, sound technique and fresh ingredients. The scale runs all the way up to five, and fewer than twenty restaurants in the whole country hold that. So no, one Rosette isn’t the top of the mountain. But it’s a real, inspected, re-earned standard, and most restaurants never get one at all.
Ennios first won its Rosette in February 2023, and this autumn the inspectors came back and kept it in place for 2025 to 26. That second part actually matters more than the first. Anyone can have a good year. Holding the standard through every unannounced visit since, in a kitchen turning out fresh pasta on Town Quay in a building that’s been there since 1866, is the bit we’re genuinely proud of.
And if you’re wondering whether the rooms upstairs hold their own too, the AA gave the hotel side five stars and a Silver award back in 2020. The whole building is having a decent decade, really.
You’ll find Ennios on the AA’s RatedTrips directory, or better, on Town Quay Road with a table booked.