Renowned Welsh chef Bryn Williams is a busy man with three restaurants - Odette's in London, Porth Eirias in Colwyn Bay and Bryn Williams and The Cambrian in Switzerland - three books and appearances on TV shows and at food fairs and festivals. Now, the 45-year-old cook from Denbigh is adding another business venture into the mix: his own condiment range, Bryn's Kitchen.
This particular avenue will see concoctions used in his restaurants - honey, tomato sauce (sos coch) and chutneys, for example - being made readily available to the public in a neat little pot.
"Bryn's Kitchen has been on the back burner for about five-six-seven years. So what happened was, in Odette's, everything that we used to do - jams, chutneys, pickles - people would always say: 'Can I buy it?' and we used to take it from the kitchen, stick it in a weird container, wrap it in cling film or tin foil and just give it to them. We never used to charge people for it," said Bryn.
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But with so many people asking for these ingredients from his kitchen, he realised he may have tapped into something special. It was only until during lockdown, when his restaurant was shut, that he decided to make it happen.
He makes honey from beehives that are dotted around an orchard that he and his wife - Texas singer Sharleen Spiteri - planted at their Welsh home after asking for trees instead of wedding presents when they married in 2018. "We've been together for about 13/14 years so we didn't need a toaster and the glasses we already had all that stuff... This kind of gift keeps on giving in fruit terms and grows with you."
Now that honey, as well as items like tomato ketchup (sos coch), lemon curd, raspberry and lime jam, pear chutney and salad dressing, go on sale as part of the Bryn’s Kitchen's range from Tuesday, September 6, which will be available at the Port Eirias restaurant to start with.
Bryn is passionate about knowing where the produce comes from and tries to use Welsh produce in his restaurants where he can - some including beef and vegetables reared and grown on his own land in north Wales, a self-sufficiency he no doubt got from his childhood, growing up around farmers.
"Being brought up in rural north Wales in Denbigh, coming from a farming background, I was always down my uncle's farm. We used to plant potatoes, pick potatoes, my uncle had a farm shop and we used to go shooting the game. But what really sparked my imagination was, in the last year of primary school, we went to a local bakery and made bread. And that's when something clicked. Something got me hooked on food production in that bakery at the age of nine or 10."
From there, he went to work at the bakery at the age of 12 on Saturdays and then in the summer holidays went full time. He said: "That was definitely the moment where the penny dropped with food... That I wanted to do it as a profession. But if you rewind from there, I was always surrounded by great ingredients. I was always around food. But the bakery was the spark that ended up chaining me to a kitchen stove for the last 25 years."
From the bakery, Bryn went on to work under great culinary teachers like Marco Pierre White and Michel Roux Junior at Le Gavroche, which he credits as being key cogs in his journey to opening his debut restaurant, Odette's, in 2008, which is listed in the Michelin Guide.
"Without the education and the knowledge that's been handed down in those kitchens, Odette's would not have been possible. When you run a business, it is not just about the food on the plate, it's everything else about it."
He says his biggest achievement is keeping a London restaurant open - and at a good standard - for the last 14 years. And Odette's also happens to be the place where he met his future wife.
“She was a customer, we got to know each other, we crossed paths in social spaces... and the thing just sparked from there really. I'd just bought the restaurant, so it was all a bit of a blur in a sense.”
And it sounds like Sharleen has learnt a few things from Bryn along the way, as she's the chef extraordinaire in the Williams household. "Sharleen cooks more than I do. I'd say she cooks the majority of the time - she would say all the time, but I got to give myself a few meals a year - and she's a great cook so I don't need to cook at home. I've got a fantastic wife that cooks great food."
Some of their staple home cooked meals include roast dinners, pasta dishes and a proper full breakfast. And with Sharleen taking the culinary wheel most of the time at home, he explains he's learnt to not get involved in the process - even though he's a professional chef.
"I think every husband will agree with this. I've learned to just say yes," he laughed. "I used to do it back in the day, but you just realise 'I don't like it when somebody tells me that' so if she wants to ask me a question, she will. And that's how we do it," added Bryn, who's a keen collector of classic minis.
This weekend Bryn will be appearing at The Welsh Game Fair, which is running from Friday, September 9 to Sunday, September 11 at The Vaynol Estate in Bangor and will see the chef devising a menu and host dinners at the White Park Restaurant on the estate's front lawn.
He added: "I will always bang a drum for Welsh farmers because that's where I come from. Without great farmers and great land, we don't have food. That's the bottom line. You can grow things in laboratories and all the rest of it, but I would rather a vegetable or a cow or sheep being raised in fields. Grass-fed and sustainably farmed.
“To get great ingredients, you need great land and I think that's what Welsh farmers really understand. They understand their land, they understand what grows best in each field and what grazes best. We can't afford to lose this experience and this knowledge that has been handed down for hundreds and hundreds of years through farming communities because without farmers we don't have food."
Bryn's Kitchen range is available from Porth Eirios from Tuesday, September 6. For updates regarding Bryn's Kitchen and his restaurants, visit his social media and website .
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