It is quite a well known saying that your holiday begins as soon as you step foot inside the airport. All worries fly away and the diet is thrown in the air (puns intended), which means some people may want a preflight treat before heading for the skies.

Stansted Airport is one of Essex's marvellous airports - and it has been named as having one of the best in the world for its restaurant choices. The Windmill restaurant at the airport - which is a Wetherspoons - was named as joint fifth of the highest rated airport restaurants in the world, according to new research.

Joint alongside Harry and Izzy's at Indianapolis International Airport, Bamee at Munich Airport and All bar One at Birmingham - The Windmill has been named as one of the best. Just pipping these four to the top spots, One Flew South in Hartsfield-Jackson Airport was named as the best alongside Root Down in Denver, third was Sushi Kyotasu in Narita Airport, and fourth was La Carreta in Miami Airport.

The original Wetherspoon pub of this name - The Windmill - opened in the terminal, after the security gates, in 2003. The venue then relocated to this site in 2015. Its name recalls the windmills which were once a feature of the area.

The best-surviving example is the 18th-century windmill at nearby Stansted Mountfitchet. Stansted Airport began as an American Air Force Base, opening in 1942. Excavations on the site have revealed evidence of an Iron Age village, comprising round thatched-roof houses.

The pub itself is steeped in history - situated in Sir Norman Foster's prize-winning terminal, The Windmill is located on the former setting of a windmill and the ancient village of Cooper's End.

The research was conducted by travel experts at The Family Vacation Guide, who has analysed data found within different rating platforms - such as Google, Tripadvisor and Yelp - to reveal which airport restaurants have the highest food ratings in the world. They collated a list of highly rated, popular airport restaurants from sources such as Condé Nast Traveler, Airport Transfer, Telegraph, and The Points Guy.

They then searched each restaurant on Google, Tripadvisor, and Yelp to gather the review score from each site. Once all the scores had been gathered, they then took an average score for each restaurant in order to determine the overall score. In order to determine which airports have the most highly rated restaurants, they then counted how many times each airport appeared on the list.