Today (March 13) Time Out published our list of the UK’s top food cities for 2025. We combined thousands of surveys of Brits up and down the land – quizzing them on everything from variety and quality to affordability – with local foodie expertise to reveal Britain’s gastronomic hotspots right now.
At the top of the list was a familiar name: Liverpool. The northwestern English city has placed top of Time Out’s foodie cities UK ranking for the second year in a row – which is mightily impressive, even if ’Pool didn’t quite make the global top 20 for 2025.
So, what’s Liverpool’s secret? Well, the trick was consistency. Liverpool scored highly across the board, with an impressive 84 percent speaking out in favour of the food scene in general. A whopping 72 percent of Liverpudlians described its culinary offerings as ‘welcoming and friendly’ (higher than anywhere else). Liverpool also had the third-highest number of responses deeming its food scene ‘exciting’.
The surveys also revealed Liverpool’s food scene to be the fourth-most gastronomically diverse in the UK and the joint-most ‘family-friendly’.
Crucially, the city was comparatively affordable across the board (over three categories: restaurants, bars and coffee), and was the second most affordable place to eat in a restaurant – Bristol was named the first.
And Time Out’s guide to the best restaurants in Liverpool certainly reflects the city’s diverse, thrilling foodie offerings. Alice Porter, Time Out’s go-to expert on Liverpool, described the city as ‘the most exciting city for food in the UK right now’.
She said of her restaurant curation: ‘But alongside the exciting newbies, old faves are as popular and delicious as ever; find Indian street food and old-school Italian joints, and on a sunny day in Liverpool, you’ll see the small plates spots overflowing with as many customers as the restaurants that have been around since the ’70s. Whatever your flavour, the best restaurants in Liverpool won’t disappoint.’
She continued: ‘But alongside the exciting newbies, old faves are as popular and delicious as ever; find Indian street food and old-school Italian joints, and on a sunny day in Liverpool, you’ll see the small plates spots overflowing with as many customers as the restaurants that have been around since the ’70s. Whatever your flavour, the best restaurants in Liverpool won’t disappoint.’
Time Out’s top spot in Liverpool is Middle Eastern-inspired small plates restaurant Maray, a ‘trendy and intimate restaurant [that] takes plant-based cooking to a whole new level’.
Liverpool was followed by Brighton and London in the full UK ranking. In the global list, New Orleans came out on top.
You can find the full list of Time Out’s top UK food cities for 2025 here.
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