W
L
YNYSHIR
by Carl Housbey
Chef Patron of Ynyshir, Gareth Ward, is very well known and respected
by his peers, and as such an awful lot of other Chefs want to visit his
restaurant to experience his style of cooking first hand. The big problem
is that Ynyshir is closed on Sunday, Monday and Tuesdays which are the
same days that his fellow Chefs have off, meaning that they can never
manage to meet up. However, Gareth decided as a one off that he would
open on a Sunday and only let this fact be known to other restaurants.
By now you must be wondering how I ended up getting to find out
about this special event – read on and I will tell you.
Several times a year I go on “Menu Development” trips with my good
friend Steven Smith, Chef Patron of Freemasons at Wiswell, although Mrs
GG refers to these trips as a “boys jolly” and thinks we only go to eat lots of
food and drink loads of beer, but she is only partly correct, as we also drink
loads of wine. Anyway, as it happens Steven and I had been discussing
venues for our next trip and had both decided that it needed to be Ynyshir
as soon as we had a space in our diaries. By pure coincidence a few days
later an email arrived containing information about the one-off Sunday
opening, and as you can imagine we wasted no time at all booking a table.
A few weeks later, we made the three-hour drive from Lancashire and
arrived in glorious sunshine to a fantastically warm welcome from Gareth’s
partner Amelia. We felt at home straight away and were soon enjoying a
couple of signature rum slushy’s whilst taking in the magnificent views of
the Snowdonia National Park beyond the several acres of grounds (just take
a look at the photos opposite) before checking into our very comfortable
room for the night to freshen up before dinner.
Gareth has an abundance of great produce on his doorstep which he
and his team then weave their magic over to create some absolutely
unforgettable dishes strongly influenced by Japanese seasonings such as
miso, dashi and soy. Our vegetarian readers should look away now, as the
menu is unashamedly meat based, and is a haven for lovers of wagyu beef
with its marbling of fat, succulent Welsh lamb, and duck all of which have
been dry aged in a Himalayan salt chamber resulting in the most flavour
packed melt in the mouth food you will ever have experienced.
48 wirrallife.com
I won’t give too much away as the menu is kept secret and I do not want
to ruin the surprise, but a few little snippets shouldn’t do any harm. Before
dinner we had a small dish of broth made from a stock of duck and chicken
carcasses finished off by a glistening drizzle of warm duck fat that glides
down the throat like a stream of silk. Dinner then began with NFOS or
Not French Onion Soup a combination of onion oil, miso, seaweed and
vegetables pickled in shiso, absolutely delicious and although not much
more than a couple of mouthfuls there were nineteen more courses to
come. One of these was a piece of duck breast which had been dry aged
resulting in a really intense flavour which was perfectly balanced by a
subtle hoisin sauce and pickled cucumber.
In the kitchen a clock ticks away indicting the number of days the wagyu
has been aging, on our visit it was at 179 days and was beefier than Gareth
himself, that is saying something when you see the size of him. Out the
back next to the meat aging room is a tank filled with live crabs and
lobsters that will be cooked to order to maintain maximum freshness, and
this is no more evident than in the sublime crab with katsu curry which I
could eat every single day for the rest of my life and still not be fed up with.
Course after course came and went, each one gobbled up in double quick
time as they tasted unbelievably good, but despite the amount of courses
I didn’t feel completely stuffed and bloated which is probably due to the
fact there is almost no carbs or dairy used, even the sourdough bread is
served with rendered wagyu fat and miso. The whole meal took about four
hours but felt like five minutes as we had been enjoying ourselves so much,
however the long journey and a fun packed night began to take its toll, so
we headed off to our very comfortable beds.
I can now see why so many Chefs want to visit Ynyshir as it is like no other
place I’ve experienced before, and I will definitely be returning with Mrs
GG as soon as we possibly can. If you also liked the sound of this then click
on www.ynyshir.co.uk or call 01654 781 209 for more details.
To see what else I get up to, why not follow me on Twitter @carlhousbey