However, the entrance to the restaurant is adorned with dozens of other accolades and honours.

Best restaurant, best service, best chef, best wine list. . . and then the plaques just seem to start repeating themselves.

There's not much time to take it all in, as co-owner Martin Corbett appears in the hallway, a carefully muted excitement evident in every quick step he takes.

"We are just shocked, I have to tell you, " he says, gliding towards the lounge. "Champagne? You'll have some." He takes a breath, gives a nod, and a free couch seems to materialise from the corner.

"It just came as a bolt out of the blue. We've been pinching ourselves since it happened. I've always tried to make people feel welcome, and I tell the staff that everyone who comes here is here for an occasion that is special to them."

A glass of champagne appears on the table. A group of customers appear at the door. Corbett swims across the thick blue carpet to meet them, and the mid-level chatter of happy people fills the silence.

On the mantelpiece, there are cards of congratulations; on the windowsills, big bouquets of flowers.

But even without these clues, it is obvious that something big has happened here. There is a tense, electric happiness about the staff.

And a certain giddiness about the customers.

"We're all over the moon, " says a man at the next table, who has obviously noticed the presence of a notebook and pen. He raises his glass of champagne, a delighted grin splitting his face. "Congratulations to us." A regular, evidently.

Corbett returns, having seated the new arrivals, taken their coats, and served them drinks in what seems to be one fluid movement.

"We're conducting an orchestra here, " he says, as if the brief interruption never happened. "Everything has to work in tandem - the meeting, the greeting, the ambience, the service, the food."

On cue, Ross Lewis, head chef and co-owner of the restaurant, appears and leads the way to the kitchen. Through one swinging door, the calm, controlled atmosphere of the dining area accelerates to the calm, controlled and rather noisier atmosphere of the galley.

About a dozen men and one woman are cutting and chopping and frying and spraying and stirring and wiping and washing. The chefs are speaking to each other in voices just loud enough to be heard over the din of serious cooking activity.

One man hurries past with a basket full of piping hot prawns. "Excuse me, " he says politely. Gordon Ramsay wouldn't know where to look.

"We work hard to draw out the flavours of the food, " says Lewis.

He points to a vat of bubbling chicken wings. "That's our chicken stock.

After we're finished with those wings, we'll put in another batch. It's a double stock. It's work, but it's worth it."

The stock is just the beginning.

Lewis flips through a folder of each carefully constructed meal. Every starter course, he says, requires about four different recipes. He's not joking. A quick glance at the pages reveals instructions on how to make the croutons - just so.

"It would be a grave mistake to start changing what we're doing now, " he says. "It has taken us 15 years to get here, and we have a restaurant that actually couldn't get any busier. We're getting celebrities now like Al Pacino and Christina Aguilera. But that's not even what we're about. It's about the food. People like the food."