Top Welsh chef, author and YouTuber Gaz Oakley has announced that he will be opening a travelling pop-up restaurant later this month, starting off at the bustling Neighbourhood Kitchen in his hometown of Cardiff.
Opening its doors for two weeks on Thursday, June 23, Nana O's, which was lovingly named after his paternal grandmother, will be serving "the most unbelievable comfort food" Thursday through to Sunday for lunch and dinner at the popular street food haunt on Tudor Street - and it's all going to be plant-based.
Inspired by his own Nana O, Gaz, who started his culinary career at the age of 15 working in hotel and restaurant kitchens around the Welsh capital and is fondly known by his following as the Avant Garde Vegan, says of naming the touring restaurant after her: "[It] does what it says on the tin. You know you're going get a comforting plate of food and it's just gonna be a cool concept. The food, I hope, will blow people away."
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He went on to say: "It's going to be the finest comfort food I could possibly make. I'm not going to be going back to my fine dining roots on this occasion. It's going to be real comfort food. Welcoming, warming, hearty, beautiful dishes using the finest organic produce. Lots of produce from my garden. My family are going to be working there too. I just want to do something amazing in Cardiff."
"I'm hoping that this pop-up brings people down from all over the UK to Cardiff because my audience has been waiting for this moment for a long, long time. Even though we're going to be doing this tour, this first one's in Cardiff and I know that people will want to travel for it. It'll bring people together and it'll just be an exciting time."
Announcing the news on social media over the weekend, Gaz, 29, told his 631,000 Instagram followers: "Since I was a young chef, I have always dreamed of having my own restaurant and back then I thought by now for sure I would have one..but life works in mysterious ways.
"Never in a million years would have imagined that I would have a cooking show, three cookbooks and collaborated with some of the most well-known restaurants & brands around the world."
He added: "But here we are 14 years after I first walked into a professional kitchen, announcing the start of my new pop-up restaurant tour concept, Nana O’s. It is only right that I start off in the city where I first started cooking, my home town Cardiff."
It comes after Gaz made a promise to himself and his loyal following upon starting his YouTube in 2016 - on which you can watch his latest travel and cooking series, Muy Rico - that once he made it to one million followers on his YouTube channel he would open his own restaurant.
Now he has acheived that incredible milestone, he is fulfilling that restaurant dream - though, he tells us, it's is a little different to what was initially envisioned all those years ago.
"I reached one million subscribers during the pandemic when all the restaurants were shut - the hospitality industry was on the ground and it was a really sad time for restaurant owners. As well as that, I couldn't do any sort of pop-ups or dinners and it was tough. But I loved being in the kitchen, I love showing my food to people," he says.
After moving to Wales last year - click here to read our chat with him about leaving London - he discovered a love for gardening and growing his own produce and, he explains: "It made me reassess my future. The idea of the restaurant was put back on hold a little bit because I've still got so much learning to do as a chef. Especially since growing my own food, if I am to have a restaurant, I need to have a kitchen garden next to the restaurant, there's no there's no two ways about it.
"That makes things even a bit more tricky because of the size of the restaurant, the land that it's on... it has to be a little bit different. In the meantime, I am deciding to do a travelling restaurant. It's going to be a pop up restaurant concept."
Having only opened the restaurant bookings for the pop-up on Sunday, Gaz reveals the response has been incredible, with tables for the event flying out and hundreds of bookings already in the diary.
And while the restaurant will be touring in future in various other locations (keep an eye on Gaz's social media for updates on that), if you're hoping to get a taste of the Avant Garde Vegan's epic comfort food in Cardiff, act now before it's too late.
Nana O's will be coming to Neighbourhood Kitchen 23rd June - 3rd July. To book a table, click here
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