Driving to Aberystwyth with the radio on, the news is all doom and gloom - it's April 1 and fuel costs have jumped and the cost of living is spiralling upwards. I'm acutely aware I'm on my way to SY23 in Aberystywth - a restaurant that was awarded its first Michelin star this year and where lunch sets you back £110.
Is now a good time to be singing the praises of fancy pants dining? I wonder, and can food ever justify such an expensive performance? In fact, on that very day, the nine-course lunch menu went up from £95 to £110, so the pinch is clearly being felt everywhere.
A caveat to begin: bar one date with an ex-boyfriend, this would be only my second experience of Michelin-starred dining. With just seven restaurants in Wales with the coveted star, it's pretty hard to get a table at any of them. So I won't profess to be an expert when it comes to restaurant reviews. But what I will say is, as a dairy farmer's daughter brought up on home-reared meat, I know what quality produce tastes like. In fact, I'm loathe to remind you of that time I wrote about eating my very first Big Mac and fries- you can read that here.
