The Welsh restaurants pairing sustainability with high-end cooking
With sustainable eating being very much on the agenda, several acclaimed Welsh restaurants have already set out their stall.
For over 10 years, Matt Powell has run fishing and foraging experiences in his beloved Pembrokeshire. That emphasis on what’s nearby and in season is at the heart of Annwn (‘The Otherworld’ in Welsh), in the village of Kilgetty, which pays “homage to our surroundings and landscapes here in Wales”. Those foraging trips still run, but now he cooks a seasonally- changing menu, focused on the quality and diversity of local sustainable producers. You might find limpet mousse or lamb shoulder with homegrown onions and salted whimberries, or brill with laver and samphire. This isn’t your typical place to eat.
Wales’ hottest pop-up settles down: Matsudai Ramen to open its own restaurant this summer
After a series of successful pop-up events from 2019 onwards, Matsudai Ramen – Cardiff’s “no-corners-cut” ramen kit specialists – are finally setting up shop permanently on Clare Road in Grangetown.
Formerly a Natwest bank and, more recently, shared by co- working and coffee company Lufkin (who have graciously been allowed to remain there part-time when Matsudai moves in), the 1700-square-foot space will become known as Matusdai Ramen At The Bank when the restaurant opens in early summer.
Matsudai is the passion project of James Chant, a self-taught chef whose background is in the music industry. Despite his inexperience, career dissatisfaction led him to pursue more food- based dreams, even when COVID began to rear its ugly head in the UK. In fact, Matsudai’s DIY kits hit at just the right time, as the pandemic made many of us reconsider our health and wellbeing – which East Asian cuisine is often positively linked to – not to mention limit our supermarket trips. As a result, the demand for meal prep kits skyrocketed. When restrictions lifted, Matsudai capitalised by taking up residencies in kitchens in Manchester, Bristol, London and, of course, Cardiff.
But this was all apparently a taster course for the main event. “The plan was always to open the first permanent Matsudai Ramen shop in my home town of Cardiff,” James said. “It’s where everything began for us.” Wales’ capital is already home to many well-loved Japanese restaurants, including Yakatori #1 and Tenkaichi, but Matsudai claims to be the first establishment in the UK to specialise in a seasonally-changing ramen menu.
As far as authenticity goes, Matsudai also claims the relative modernity of the dish makes such a standard a “misnomer” and, indeed, ramen’s cultural origin and development are certainly hybridised. Wherever you side on the appropriation debate, Matsudai hopes to become a permanent fixture of Cardiff’s food scene.
matsudai.co.uk HANNAH COLLINS
41 Profile
Cardiff’s Ansh do remarkable things. Just burgers, you might suggest? Well, they cook the beef they raise at Llygadenwyn farm with their business partners, butchery Oriel Jones. Planting well over 6,000 native trees to date, they have also protected Cefn Blaenau, a Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1989. This area of rare biodiversity and wildlife is grazed with great care so the cattle control vegetation growth, which in turn preserves ideal conditions for ground-nesting birds. It’s a shining example of sustainable, regenerative practices working hand in hand with landscape.
Fine dining has never been better. Gareth Ward now has Wales’ first kitchen with two Michelin stars, making Ynyshir, near Machynlleth, a place of pilgrimage. His “Ingredient Led, Flavour Driven, Fat Fuelled, Protein Obsessed” cooking is simply extraordinary, an astonishing litany of flavours from a lavish five- hour, DJ-soundtracked, 30-course tasting menu.
In nearby Aberystwyth, ex-Ynyshir chef Nathan Davies recently won Wales’ newest Michelin star with his first restaurant, SY23. Sourcing as much as possible from that postcode, from meat to flour to firewood, Nathan cooks local and foraged produce over fire: expect scallop and seaweed, crab and preserved elder, and lamb with black garlic and mushroom. Wales is firmly on the map.
annwnrestaurant.co.uk ansh.cymru
ynyshir.co.uk
sy23restaurant.com JONATHAN SWAIN
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