Ynyshir: Gareth Ward’s shrine to heavy metal cooking
Years ago, a spoonful of Gareth Ward’s blew her mind, now Carys Sharkey makes a pilgrimage to his two Michelin-starred restaurant Ynyshir
Many, many years ago, when I had just finished university and was listlessly waiting around to be headhunted, I supported myself by picking up the occasional hospitality odd job. This was normally hours of cutlery polishing in the subterranean cities underneath London hotels, or serving Aperol Spritzes to hen parties on the string of moored boats that buffer up against Victoria Embankment.
Every now and again something would pop up on the app that was genuinely cool and I was woefully unqualified for. One such event was Gareth Ward coming down to a west London restaurant which has since closed to cook a hypey collab meal. As someone who was ‘into’ food, I had heard of Gareth from mystic, stuff-of-legends mid-Walesian restaurant Ynyshir. So I applied for the gig, was hired and turned up to what would be one of the most stressful shifts of my life.
And I should stress, none of this was Ward’s fault – in fact it can’t really be pinned on anyone, but what unfolded was a Boiling Point-esque night comedy of errors of broken reservations and illicit boozing. It also turned out I was meant to be running the bar even though I could barely sling together a martini. So I spent the evening sweating, crouched in the corner manically looking at BBC Good Food cocktail recipes praying no one could see. At one point I sliced my finger open on the foil neck of a wine bottle and spent the rest of the shift with my hand behind my back serving tepid drinks like an obsequious sommelier.
Anyway, Gareth and his partner Amelia Eiriksson, who is also co-owner and creative director of Ynyshir (who spent most of the evening sitting with their baby at the end of the bar, front-row seats to the shitshow) couldn’t have been more professional. At the end of service, Gareth brought out one of his dishes for me and some of the other waitstaff to share – a scallop in a Thai green curry.
And it blew my mind. Like it totally rewired my brain. I had never eaten something so profoundly flavourful. I kept the menu and still have it to this day because it’s the best spoonful (and it was very much one scallop split four ways) of food I’d ever tasted. And ever since then, Ynyshir has been at the top of my restaurant bucket list because Gareth Ward is a goddamn alchemist.
So it would be a pretty massive understatement to say I was excited when I found myself on an unseasonably scorching day this spring on the final leg of my pilgrimage to Ynyshir. From Machynlleth station it’s a short drive in which I had time to compose myself. In the shadow of Eryri National Park (Snowdonia) to the north, this part of Mid-Wales is spectacular, traced along the River Dyfi to the coast with ancient woodlands and bruised moorland. But Ynyshir is a restaurant worthy of such a setting. Slunk back in black against a tangle of trees, it’s a sight to behold: Bond villain’s lair meets Scandi noir meets Eyes Wide Shut.
Ward is not from ‘round these parts, but he has singularly made it his home. Hailing from the North East and an avid Newcastle fan, Ward took the reins of Ynyshir in 2013. A few years later he pivoted from hotel restaurant to restaurant with rooms, and then over lockdown he created Ynyshir as we know it: a monument to heavy metal cooking. It was awarded two Michelin stars in 2022 – which it has held since – with another surely just around the corner.
He may be from County Durham and cook in Wales, but his unrestrained cooking is entirely global. When chefs say they are produce-led it’s because, unsurprisingly, they have good suppliers. But Ynyshir is produce-led in a way no other UK restaurant is at the moment. It’s hyper-local and hyper-global cooking. When the Welsh wagyu wasn’t good enough, Ward didn’t get misty eyed. He bought it from Japan instead. In an interview, Ward once said “If I’m not pushing, what’s the fucking point?”, and this dogma for the exceptional dictates his whole ethos. Over the 27 or so courses – don’t baulk, it’s much more manageable than it sounds – Ward globe-trots with searing intensity. Japan is the biggest influence on the menu because as a chef he shares that Japanese doggedness for craft, for making something exquisite from something exquisite.
That A5 Japanese wagyu first crops up draped over bluefin tuna from Spain like a fatty shawl. It turns up again later in the meal in a broth with shiitake and truffle. Oily flecks skim the surface as that deep organ-chord of umami rattles the bones.
Passion fruits from Vietnam, coffee from Ethiopia, white peaches from Yamanashi. Birch syrup from the grounds. Trees are tapped in February and the sap is reduced down by 99 per cent to create this resinous, piney syrup of maple sweetness. It’s served with caviar on a banana soft serve, naturally.
This syrup – this distillation into perfection – is a prime example of what Ward is the best at. Whether it’s dry ageing or sourcing or saucing, he will concentrate flavour until it’s bristling with energy. It’s culinary atom splitting. It’s flavourmaxxing.
An unbridled creativity with ingredients has much to thank Sat Bains for, in whose eponymous restaurant Ward cooked for three years before taking over Ynyshir. But it took many years for him to create the meal that the restaurant is now famous for: a progression of courses totally unbothered by narrative. It’s like, ‘Here are 28 mind-meltingly good pieces of food served at dizzying intensity, and if you don’t like it, you can fuck off’. (I’m paraphrasing Gareth at the end there).
A dish of tuna, olive oil, yoghurt and jalapeño is genius and eats a bit like the most brine-plumped olive at the end of a dirty martini. This was followed by what is described as Ward’s take on tinned tuna – two slices of tuna iridescent in a pool of olive oil. Later a scallop with duck liver is pure pleasure in ferric fat and waxiness honeyed by Tokaji, a sweet wine from Hungary. And then, just under the halfway mark, comes the most unassuming and one of my favourite dishes of the night: cod with smoked butter, aka the cod cappuccino. A little cup of throat-drying pleasure with the caramel sweetness of burnt milk, which, not to go all lactose Proust, took me right back to childhood.
I could go on. The mind-blowing tangle of shaved, frozen Iio-Jozo vinegar is the best palate cleanser I’ve ever had and will ever have, the squab was bouncy like a frankfurter because Ward can reduce flavours and textures down almost to artificiality: the ur-flavour.
I really could go on, but there’s too much to say.
At the end of the meal, the synth and falsetto of Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’ pulses through the speakers as light from a disco ball scatters the room. It’s like lights up at the end of the night, everyone a little stunned and wide-eyed ecstatic. Gareth is at the pass holding his kid, the baby, I assume, from years back. How time flies. Outside at the firepit we digest the meal as diners bond over memories of Joël Robuchon’s mashed potatoes and dissect each course we just experienced together, apart. It felt like being in a nightclub smoking area for fine dining fanatics, all brought together to have their minds altered by Gareth Ward.
And I got to try that Thai green curry again, this time with sweet, blue belly shrimp cut by a vegetal grassiness of raw peas. Yeah, he’s still got it.