I ate at the UK's best farm shop café to see how good it really was

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

When I think back to those long, worrying, boring months of captivity through successive lockdowns, the one thing that kept me going, and perhaps many of you too, was the thought of escaping for a bit of weekly excitement to do... the food shop. If you had a garden centre or farm shop nearby, well, heading out for your fix of consumer escapism couldn't have been more exciting than having a reservation at The Ritz could it?

Even now, with no restriction whatsoever on where we can go for entertainment, many of us are all still flocking to our local and regional farm shops for a little bit of extra retail thrill. That's certainly the case over at The Lambing Shed in Knutsford, where even on our mid-week early lunchtime visit, the place is packed.

This particular farm shop is also basking in its moment in the national spotlight having won the title of the " UK's Best Farm Shop Cafe/Restaurant " for 2022. Which is getting people flocking into its large and quite luxurious café space in what was once the farm's, yes, original lambing shed.

Read more : Major Cheshire farm shop launches champagne deli bar inside

What do you have to do to qualify for such an award? Well, in bestowing the honour on The Lambing Shed this year, the Farm Retail Association praised the establishment's high quality of food and service, while hailing it: "a superb example of a business which understands its customer profile and then delivers a range of food and service to meet their customer's needs".

We are in the midst of Cheshire 's Golden Triangle here, so when you talk about "customer profile" you are talking about some of the wealthiest farm shop customers in the north west. This is certainly no run-of-the-mill café either, tailored to a