Friday Night at Tyddyn Llan

The 'Gourmet Friday' 7-Course Tasting Menu at a Michelin Starred Restaurant

Llandrillo and Tyddyn Llan

Wales

Denbighshire

Leaving Anglesey we headed south-east on the A5 through Snowdonia and Betws-y-Coed to Corwen, the fine weather hanging on despite the morning's ominous signs. Near Corwen we turned south on the B4401 to Llandrillo, a small village deep in the green Denbighshire countryside near the banks of the River Dee. Llandrillo is named for Saint Trillo, a 6th century abbot of renowned holiness and a serial church founder.

North Wales (copyright OneworldMaps.com)
I have added the approximated position of Llandrillo south-west of Corwen

Tyddyn Llan is a few hundred metres beyond the village. Set in extensive gardens, it was built in the 18th century as a shooting lodge for the Duke of Westminster. Much enlarged in the 19th century it became the home of Llandrillo’s vicar when perhaps it gained its name which roughly translates as ‘Glebe House.’ Despite further enlargements at both ends of the 20th century it is a Grade II Listed Building described as a fine gentry house with C18 origins and good early-C19 character. As we arrived the heat wave and drought unequivocally came to an end. With no intention of standing around in a torrential downpour, I have no picture of my own.

Tyddyn Llan, Llandrillo
The picture is by Bryan Webb and has been borrowed from the Tyddyn Llan website (with thanks and apologies)

After learning his craft at The Crown in Whitebrook and Drangway in Swansea, Crumlin-born Bryan Webb left Wales in 1983, to hone his skills in Scotland and then London. He returned in 2002 setting up Tyddyn Llan with his wife Susan – who works front of house – as a restaurant with rooms. In 2010 it was the fourth restaurant in Wales to gain a Michelin star (there are now seven) and has held it ever since.[Update: Tyddyn Llan lost its Michelin star in Oct 2019. No one knows why.]

Bryan Webb on the cover of his latest book

Checking in was complicated by the Welsh National Surname Shortage. Two other couples with our surname had booked for that evening, the two men had the same first name and one of them was married to another Lynne. The confusion resulted in an upgrade of our room, but such is life; we coped.

Friday Gourmet Night

We had booked the Friday Gourmet Night 7-course Tasting menu. I have shuddered at the word ‘gourmet’ since we lived in the US in the early 80s and were bombarded with television adverts by a certain Orville Redenbacher flogging his eponymous ‘Gourmet Popping Corn’. Gourmet - befitting a connoisseur of good food and wines - should descibe every dish served at a restaurant of this standard (whether the customers are gourmets or not), but never ever popcorn. I might wince at the wording but once we had settled in the lounge and were presented with the menu I found my lexical discomfort easy to ignore.

The day's 7-course tasting menu - the delights to come

Aperitif and Canapées

Our deal included a half bottle of champagne. Some places might fob you off with cava, I expected an anonymous champagne, we got Louis Roederer. It may not have been Louis Roederer Cristal, that would have been too much to hope for, but it was still a fine Champagne - a pleasurable wine, deliciously smooth and mature as the makers modestly describe it.

Louis Roederer Brut - good stuff!

‘Canapés’ appears on the menus, but not as one of the seven courses (I counted!). Generally, I think salmon is overrated, but this mouthful of soft salmon mousse wrapped in raw salmon was a delightful combination of textures and complimented the champagne like they were made for each other. A quail’s egg is just an egg, albeit a small one, top quality sausage meat is still just sausage meat, so the tiny scotch egg was just a scotch egg. The leek and laverbread tart – what else to eat in Wales - was a marvel, two potentially competing strong flavours in total harmony. I was less impressed with the fish cake, nicely crisp outside, luxuriously soft inside but just lacking in something, I would have liked a little more dill (or was it fennel?)

We moved through to the dining room.

Course 1: Gazpacho

Lynne is usually dismissive of Gazpacho – take it away and warm it up, being her usual unoriginal comment. This gazpacho was a game changer, almost. Thick and smooth yet with a crunch of cucumber and slight spiciness, the fresh Mediterranean flavours won me over completely, and I think Lynne was beginning to bend.

Course 2: Langoustine

The dish did not look special, hidden beneath fronds of rocket but the langoustines were perfectly cooked and so fresh they were sweet, the avocado was a richly smooth guacamole, the dressing set everything off perfectly and the fennel, a soft, folded strip of vegetable lying beneath the langoustine adding delicious aniseed notes. I have not eaten anything so good for ages - though I doubt I would have missed the slice of radish had it been absent.

Dressed Langoustine, Tyddyn Llan

The first of the matched wines was Domaine de Gerbeaux, Mâcon Soloutré. An unoaked chardonnay, refreshingly citrusy with ripeness balancing its bright acidity. It was a fine accompaniment.

Course 3: Stuffed Courgette Flower

After the delights of the langoustine this was a descent to earth. The big, bright yellow flower stuffed with mozzarella and deep fried in the lightest, crunchiest tempura batter lacked variety and juxtaposition of flavours and there was just too much of it. I would have liked less of the flower and more of the tomato and basil sauce.

The matching wine, Villa Huesgen’s ‘By the Glass’ Riesling, comes from an unspecified corner of Germany but works hard not to appear German. The wine list calls it a dry modern Riesling, immensely appealing and approachable. I suspect ‘approachable’ means ‘there is nothing here for anybody to dislike, because there is nothing.’ After trying to drown the world in third-rate Liebfraumilch in the 1970s German wine makers lost their confidence but this, with its awful name, is not the way back.

Course 4: Scallops

We disagreed about this one. This was a busy dish with cauliflower purée, little strips of pancetta cooked to crispness and an assertive caper and raisin dressing. Lynne, a scallop purist who holds that anything other than a light bouillon is a distraction, thought the scallop had been ‘mucked about.’ Being less inclined to regard the scallop as underwater royalty I thought the combinations had been well thought out and brilliantly executed. I liked it a lot.

The Verdejo/Sauvignon from Bodegas Naia in Rueda worked well enough with this. I am not a great Verdejo fan, but the 15% Sauvignon Blanc redeemed it with a becoming creaminess.

Course 5: Roast Plaice

Fish is not often roasted, and I suspect that roasting a thin, delicate fillet of plaice requires precisely judged temperature and timings. This was a triumph. Sprinkled with samphire it sat in a yin and yang of laverbread sauce and beurre blanc. The evening’s second appearance of laverbread was by no means unwelcome, and the beurre blanc sauce was so sumptuous I could have eaten a bowl of it with a spoon – though it would have done me no good.

Roast plaice with laverbread sauce, Tyddyn Llan

There is nothing a piece of plaice likes more than a good Muscadet, and Château de Poyet Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie is a good Muscadet.

Course 6: Lamb or Duck

The courses hitherto had been small, though not tiny and we thought we were pacing ourselves well until the meat course arrived. In a review earlier this year Wales Online observed if you think fine dining is about tiny portions in the middle of big plates, then you haven't eaten here yet. Thirty years ago the appearance of a full sized main course at this stage would have been fine but as we progress through our sixties….

The Gosnargh duck was as good as they come, the pink breast sliced almost as thinly as bacon, the faggot intensely offal-y. Confit worked its magic, turning a humble spud into something delightful, and the port and blackcurrant sauce was rich if hardly ground-breaking. I do not see the point of celeriac purée, but maybe that is my problem.

The Patagonian Pinot Noir, pale almost rosé, and more Alsace-like than Burgundian was short of varietal flavour. Although I welcome the celebration of the long-standing links between Wales and Patagonia, the wine was disappointing.

Lynne struggled with her lamb, finding the cutlets delicious but running out of steam on the slow-cooked breast. There was no doubting the quality, but the quantity was too daunting at this stage of the evening.

Lynne and her lamb. Tyddyn Llan - that is a substantial plateful for course 6 of 7

The accompanying Rioja from Bodegas LAN, was as enjoyable as always – though as this was the climax I felt a reserva would have been more appropriate than a crianza.

Course 7: Cherry Soup with Cinnamon Ice Cream

For dessert I chose cherry soup with cinnamon ice cream, not because I imagined cherry soup would be anything more than a bowl of cherries, but for the ice cream. I thought the cinnamon understated (I prefer it that way) but the texture was something else. Even the best commercial ice creams are miles away from the luxury of real ice cream made by real people in a kitchen not a factory.

Cherry soup and cinnamon ice cream, Tyddyn Llan

Ice cream and wine are reluctant companions and I would not normally drink Moscato d'Asti but it was a revelation. Low in alcohol and semi-sparkling it was a surprisingly complex fruit salad of a wine and a fine accompaniment. Lynne opted out of the dessert but drank her Recioto della Valpolicella. Valpolicella made from partially dried grapes is usual vinified dry and strong. The sweet version - intensely and lusciously sweet - was new to me.

A fine evening finished in the lounge with coffee, petit fours (I still had one a small corner unstuffed) and a glass of grappa.

In 2012 Bryan Webb toldWales OnLine I have a Michelin star but wouldn’t class myself as a Michelin star chef….it makes people expect really fancy and technical food but that’s not for me. I do good honest food on a plate and by luck….we got a Michelin star but I have been cooking the same food for 22 years. I haven’t really changed anything [though] the ingredients might have got better.”

I would quibble with ‘by luck’ I suspect it was more to do with skill and hard work and as for being ‘technical’, top-quality ingredients beautifully cooked are good enough for me (and the Michelin inspectors).

I was a little disappointed with the wines; highlights were the Roederer Champagne at the start and (to my surprise) the Moscato d’Asti with dessert, but there were few peaks between. And if matching wines are offered for each course I want to see them on the menu with full details; I like to know my Muscadet comes from Château de Poyet and that I should not have had to do the checking, it should have been on the menu.

Tyddyn Llan was the fourth of Wales’ seven Michelin starred restaurants we have eaten at. At this level all should have at least one stand-out dish but Tyddyn Llan impressed me by having three, the langoustine, the plaice and the scallops (though Lynne would disagree about the scallops). Highly recommended

'Fine Dining' posts

Abergavenny and the Walnut Tree (2010)
Ludlow and La Bécasse (2011) (restaurant closed, post withdrawn)
Ilkley and The Box Tree(2012)
Pateley Bridge and the Yorke Arms (2013) (No longer a restaurant, post renamed Parceval Gardens and Pateley Br)
The Harrow at Little Bedwyn (2014)
The Slaughters and the Lords of the Manor (2015)
Loam, Fine Dining in Galway (2016)
Penarth and Restaurant James Sommerin (2017) (restaurant closed, post withdrawn. JS has a new restaurant in Penarth)
The Checkers, Montgomery (2017) (no longer a restaurant, post withdrawn. Now re-opened under new management)
Tyddyn Llan, Llandrillo, Denbighshire (2018)
Fischer's at Baslow Hall, Derbyshire (2019)
Hambleton Hall, Rutland (2021)
The Olive Tree, Queensberry Hotel, Bath (2022)
Dinner at Pensons near Tenbury Wells (2023) (restaurant closed Dec 2023, post withdrawn)