IT’S FINE dining at a Weymouth eatery named ‘Restaurant of the Year.’ The Dining Room beat stiff competition from Michelin-starred Sienna in Dorchester and Tierra Kitchen in Lyme Regis to win the accolade in the Dorset Magazine Food, Drink and Farming 2014 awards.

Dorset is well known for its excellent produce and the awards are designed to show-case the heroes in restaurants, pubs, hotels, farms, sho-ps and factories.

They were handed out in a glitzy ceremony at The Exchange, Sturminster Newton.

As reported in the Echo, The Dining Room was featured on BBC One show ‘A Taste of Britain’ in September, when chef and proprietor Taher Jibet gave a cooking lesson to presenters Brian Turner and Janet Street Porter.

Mr Turner liked the eatery so much he declared it ‘one of the county’s top restaurants’.

Speaking after winn-ing the Restaurant of the Year award, Taher said: “This year has just been fantastic for us. We have had the busiest summer yet, I was selected for the BBC1 show A Taste of Britain and now our amazing diners have voted for us as ‘Restaurant of the Year’.

“I couldn’t be happier. My team is just brilliant and none of this would happen without them. We had some really stiff competition from the only Michelin-starred restaurant in the county and a wonderful vegetarian restaurant in Lyme Regis, so this is pretty special.”

The family-run business will celebrate its third anniversary in December.

Since opening, it has scooped a number of awards, including the Best of Dorset Food and Drink category title in the Open 4 Business awards.

Taher, the son of a Moroccan chef, was born in Weymouth and returned to the town to launch the restaurant in between forging a career as a top chef in Spain and the UK. He was classically trained in French cuisine at the prestigious Les Roches catering school.

Taher worked at the Michelin- starred Mirabelle at Mayfair in London where he benefited from the tuition of Marco Pierre White. He was also head chef at the Gore Hotel in London.

He put contestants through their paces when he appeared as a guest chef in 2009 when the contestants visited the Gore Hotel to join in a breakfast service.