CHERWELL Boathouse restaurant is celebrating a top food hygiene rating – and now has its fingers crossed for a successful Christmas.

The Bardwell Road business, which is also an events venue and punt hire, has scored a full five stars for its food hygiene rating.

It was inspected by Oxford City Council's environmental health team on October 20.

The family run business is currently closed due to the national second lockdown, but it is still offering a grocery delivery service.

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John Verdin helps run the business on behalf of the family and said he was very pleased with the new rating.

He said: "We have generally been around four stars. We have worked on various infrastructure projects that they wanted us to improve, such as our external waste area, we had that concreted over since the last visit.

"We put cladding on various store cupboards, so part of it was infrastructure work that they recommended which we accepted and got on and completed."

Although customers cannot visit the restaurant to enjoy a sit-down meal, they can order groceries from the restaurant twice a week using their online shop.

Mr Verdin said: "The restaurant is basically closed, we are doing a click and collect grocery service where people can order vegetables, meat and fish and we bundle up a package for them and they pick it up."

The restaurant is also preparing for the winter months in hope that it can reopen with a heated outside seating area for the colder nights and of course a Christmas menu.

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Mr Verdin said: "Hopefully we have some chance of Christmas festivity. We will have a Christmas menu and we will try and do a couple of tasting dinners."

He added: "If we are allowed to go out there will be a lot of people who will want to get out and enjoy themselves."

The Cherwell Boathouse Restaurant has special measures in place for coronavirus and will be continuing these restrictions when it can reopen.

It is operating at a reduced capacity to enable safe social distancing of tables with outdoor seating available which is also weather permitted.

Screens are available on request and customers are asked to pay using contactless where possible.

All staff have their temperature checked on arrival to work and wear visors during service and maintain a strict cleaning procedure before and after serving tables.