A Welsh restaurant has been named in the top 10 restaurants in the UK in a leading poll of diners released on Thurday, February 3.
Ynyshir near Machynlleth has been named the 7th best restaurant in the UK, and the clear winner in Wales, in the 2022 edition of Harden’s Best UK Restaurants, with The Whitebrook in Monmouth taking 53rd place.
But Cardiff and other Welsh cities and towns have no entries in the top 100 and Peter Harden, co-founder of Harden’s, had some harsh words to say about eating out in the country’s urban areas.
Read more: The 50 best restaurants in Wales in 2022
He said: “This highlights a perennial feature of dining out in Wales: for a gastronomic treat, head for the countryside. Ambitious city dining has never been a tradition here – partly because high-quality country-house alternatives are relatively close at hand. That said, there’s nothing to stop a really talented young chef making a go of it in Cardiff.”
In 2016, food critic Jay Rayner said the food choices in Cardiff were limited for a capital city and wrote about how he resorted to a Burger King on a Thursday night at 10.30pm in the city centre because “literally nothing else was open”.
But the Harden's food bible had plenty of praise for Ynyshir, which is arguably Wales’ most acclaimed restaurant, holding a Michelin star , five AA rosettes and the title of best restaurant in Wales in the 2021 National Restaurant Awards.
Located on the Dyfi Estuary in a country house that was once Queen Victoria's hidden retreat, chef-owner Gareth Ward’s cooking features lots of meat and huge Asian flavours, with many of the dishes cooked over fire.
The restaurant’s ethos is ingredient-led, flavour-driven, fat-fuelled and meat-obsessed.
Now in its 31st year, Harden’s Best UK Restaurants 2022 praises Ynyshir for the “incredible dining experience” provided by Gareth Ward, who has established it as “one of the UK’s main gastronomic players”.
The guide says: “The tasting menu is an eye-opening education in tastes and culinary skill, introduced by the chef himself, almost all sourced from the surrounding countryside: conversation-stopping food!”
Ratings and reviews in the guide are based on 30,000 reports from Harden's annual survey of 3,000 regular diners.
The Whitebrook, near Monmouth, is Wales’ second entry on the ‘Harden’s 100’ list of top UK establishments at number 53. Like Ynyshir, according to the guide it is “in the back of beyond”, while Wales’s other strong performers are also country establishments, such as the Walnut Tree at Llanddewi Skirrid in Monmouthshire, and Tyddn Llan in Denbighshire, run respectively by veteran chefs Shaun Hill and Bryan Webb.
In contrast, Harden’s top restaurant in the UK, Restaurant Sat Bains, is located underneath a busy flyover off the A52 in Nottingham. Opened by Sat Bains and his wife Amanda 20 years ago, the guide heaps praise upon the restaurant.
It says: “Just outstanding in every way. Once you find it, you will keep going back for more – superb cuisine and correspondingly varied wine list, full of surprises.”
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