An Italian restaurant in Cumbria is celebrating after reaching the finals of a prestigious business awards in a number of categories.
San Pietro Restaurant in Windermere is run by husband and wife duo Jason and Yui Turner - and is hugely popular with locals and visitors alike.
Its impressive reputation for serving top-quality food with an excellent atmosphere and attentive staff has seen it reach the finals of the Employee Excellence Award and Community Champion in the people's choice category at the Northwest Business Awards, which are to be held at the Bolton Wanderers stadium in early May.
It has also once again made the Italian Awards in three categories: Best Italian Restaurant, Best Wine List and Best Chef.
Jason was keen to pay tribute to his hard-working staff, and the local community, for all their support in making the restaurant such a success.
He said: "I'm chuffed to bits. It's amazing. The community champion award is all about what we are putting into the local community, which is awesome. After seven years of owning San Pietro, we have loads of regular locals.
"The support of the local community has been invaluable, it really has. But it's the same from the team as well, a lot of places struggle with staffing but we have had the same staff for between three and six years now. I'm hoping they stay for this season as well because we couldn't do it without them. Everyone is really passionate about the business and to get nominated for these awards, it's brilliant for us as owners, but it's also special for the staff. We're very proud."
Head chef Tyrone Blake is the man nominated for the Best Chef and Employee Excellence awards, which is testament to all his hard work at San Pietro.
After winning the restaurant of the year award at the England Business Awards in 2021 and 2022, it has been busy at San Pietro in recent years, something which Jason is hugely thankful for.
He added: "We are one of the lucky ones with such a big local following. We're full nearly every night."
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