Wales is barely visible on the food-guide map, with just the one Michelin-starred restaurant to its name and very little that makes the list of heroes in other restaurant compendiums. For 25 years, the beacon was Franco and Ann Taruschio's Walnut Tree near Abergavenny, but then they didn't allow the Michelin men in anyway. Today's sprinkling of foodie destinations are usually in isolated spots and so largely underrated or ignored. There's also a feeling that the grimmer aspects of low church morality include reservations about such extravagances as fine wine and complicated sauces.
My own memories of holidays in Wales are centred on great scenery and friendly people, but not on food. Chips and pies, maybe, but little else. I always smile when I see people pack cornflakes to take to Spain or France, because it reminds me of packing a pepper mill, olive oil and good vinegar for a week's stay in Wales, not to mention driving from Snowdonia to Wrexham to get decent vegetables to go with the fine Welsh lamb and beef you can buy at even the smallest village butcher. Perhaps it's just that it's not a significant part of the culture, and that the more downhome virtues of wholesomeness and sobriety are central to the Welsh palate.
Little wonder that the restaurants that have built up a following in this environment, where unsalted butter is still a curiosity, major on the plus points of good Welsh ingredients, and leave the fancy footwork of foams and froths to more receptive audiences elsewhere. In fact, few restaurants are not part of some hotel. Hotels don't rely on local trade, of course; they're facilities for holidaymakers and businessmen, so the food is usually geared towards their needs and expectations.
The principality's sole bearer of a Michelin star is Plas Bodegroes, a restaurant with rooms a mile from Pwllheli, a town typical in that it comprises an assortment of dull-to-ugly buildings set in phenomenal countryside. The restaurant, though, is an attractive Georgian manor house that seems to face the wrong way, with fine back gardens opening on to a double line of mature beech trees. There's no chintz, and most available space is filled by striking modern paintings and friendly prints. None quite fits the expected mould.
Neither does the food. The appetiser of sea bream - crisp-grilled, then laced with spicy rouille - gives a good indication of the house style: sparkling-fresh fish, treated with flair yet respect, and true to the region in its integrity, but not tied to it through some bogus traditionality. That and half a bottle of riesling from Trimbach by way of aperitif struck me as good omens.
There were seven starters and six main courses to choose from. My choices coincided exactly with those of my wife, which happens worryingly often, so I had to pick again. She began with seared chicken livers with scrambled quails' eggs and chorizo dressing. The eggs were thick and creamy, the livers just pink and the dressing surprisingly subtle, sending a background flavour that worked well with the other components. My experience of chorizo is that it is overused and bullying, but here it was very well behaved and shifted the dish from fine to very fine indeed.
My starter of smoked haddock and courgette tart with fennel and parsley salad was a reminder why quiches were once so popular. Such a tart needs big flavours to cope with the egg and cream and come out winning. The fennel in the salad had been boiled before joining the other ingredients, and, like the chorizo, knew its place in the scheme of things.
My main course was a rosemary kebab of mountain lamb with a pea and mint torte and harissa jus. The rosemary was a device to justify the dish's name, and was threaded through the meat and liver. The harissa jus was spicy rather than ferocious. But the star was the torte: like so much of the meal, it read as if it were going to be overly muscular, but it was fragrant and delicate.
My wife's seared sea bass and scallop with salt cod mash and parsley sauce also hit the target. The trick with fish is to buy fresh, decent-sized specimens, and then cook them until they're just done but no more. Most everything else is window dressing.
With all this, we drank a South African pinot noir. Pinot noir is an ideal restaurant wine, because its sweetness happily partners game and red meat, while most lightly oaked specimens are fine with fish and white meat. In my own restaurant, it was always painful watching a customer trying to work out what to order for a table who had all chosen something different to eat. It is, of course, impossible - unless your guests are chefs, in which case a bottle each (and possibly one each with each course) is quite on the cards.
Puddings involved interesting twists on fairly standard repertoire dishes. Prune and armagnac came as parfait with pistachio praline, crème brûlée came with cardamom and local strawberries, and bread-and-butter pudding was made from bara brith and had whisky ice cream alongside. Nice ideas and, like everything else on offer, made glorious by virtue of skilled and sympathetic execution.
