Often I pick restaurants due to a sort of stubborn mischief. Ynyshir is a country house set in 11 acres just south of the Snowdonia National Park, and outwardly it offers a cacophony of reasons to stay at home. It’s a Welsh/Japanese-influenced, Michelin-starred restaurant that focuses on fatty meat, fermentation and pickling. It required me to take a 400-mile round trip and offered only a 19-course tasting menu. Dinner, I was told, would last a minimum of four hours. No menu was available to preview; it would be a surprise. And only the unhinged enjoy surprises.
Now, I’m not saying that chef Gareth Ward is unhinged, but he’s certainly a one-off. His website gives a lacklustre nod to “dietary requirements”, but you need to telephone to ask. But I’d read an interview with Ward in which not only did he resemble a Game of Thrones-style titan who’d squeeze a rival’s eyes out of their head just for sport, but also had deeply non-PR-friendly opinions: “People say you should cook for your customers. I say fuck that. I cook for myself.” I decided against calling ahead to suggest my tips for braising tofu.
Ynyshir is a “restaurant with rooms”, and very beautiful ones they are, too, but it’s not a hotel (you may stay only one night), they don’t do room service, or burgers in the bar, or any bar menu at all, for that matter. Breakfast, rather heroically, is served at 9am the next morning, and not until 9am. Gareth will cook eggs and bacon at 9am, and you’re either in or you’re out.
The sheer obstreperousness of it all made me hellbent on visiting Planet Gareth, and I’m so very glad I did. Because there’s a good reason that, in just 18 months, Ynyshir has found a place on every restaurant list worth its salt.
Actually, salt is another tricky subject with Gareth Ward. He hasn’t spent all that time vibing on miso, wagyu, pickled elderflowers, pata negra or Welsh seaweed for you to start hurling about handfuls of Saxa. He has not shifted an entire kitchen away from traditional demi-glaces and stocks, and instead steamed full force into a culinary landscape flavoured with pickled leaves, rotting roots, fruit stocks or mackerel bones, only for you to show up asking for the big black pepper grinder.
Our opening course, named “Not French Onion Soup”, is a silken rabbit punch of miso, fermented fruit, seaweed and shiso-pickled vegetables. It’s sublime and unforgettable, albeit so rich, it couldn’t be consumed in a quantity larger than a child’s teacup.
It is very much a taste of things to come. Although, admittedly, by the time that soup was served, I’d already fallen madly in love with the place. It takes a brass neck to convert an ancient, remote country house into a stripped-back modern space that plays MC5 and Arctic Monkeys on vinyl and serves tiny mouthfuls of crab claw with katsu ketchup, followed by cured mackerel with eel on nori seaweed alongside rhubarb anointed with cultured butter. But there’s something so totally righteous about all this incongruousness.
Indeed, at times, this feels like a physical assault of a menu. Nothing over the first 14 or so courses is creamy or soothing: lamb saddle is flavoured with kombucha, while a riff on Welsh cawl features fermented mussels, raw asparagus and dashi. An Isle of Wight tomato salad offers no refuge: the fruits are dehydrated, then laced with rapeseed oil. A barbecued prawn is cooked three ways, then infused with wild garlic and yet more pickles. A slice of wagyu with fermented lettuce gives way to a plate of duck mousse with birch sap and smoked eel. Still, one feels like a bigger person afterwards for enduring all this boldness.
Ynyshir’s small team are a hugely lovable bunch, too: earnest, sparkly-eyed and clearly very excited to work here and talk animatedly about draining local birch trees of their sap, gathering nettles or the current age of the kitchen’s wagyu supply (a clock on the wall marks this to the nearest second). All wines are available by the glass, and there’s no sommelier at all, because every single one of the floor staff knows their stuff. A fire pit smoulders outside the front porch, and guests drift there from time to time to take stock of the madness.
Each of the six puddings was a triumph. A bedazzling take on tiramisu made of frozen mascarpone and marsala was simply glorious; a riff on sticky toffee pudding that featured medjool dates was even better. What Ward is doing down in the Dyfi Valley is unique. It will surprise me if he stays with only one star. Gareth Ward cooks for himself, not the customers, and long may his delicious pigheadedness continue.
Ynyshir Eglwys Fach, Machynlleth, Powys, 01654 781209. Open Tues-Sat, lunch and dinner. Set menus only: 11-course lunch £75, 19-course dinner £110-£125, both plus drinks and service
Food 9/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Service 10/10
Grace’s Instafeed
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