When Gareth Ward of Ynyshir appointed Peter Sanchez-Iglesias to take over from Corrin Harrison as head chef of his second restaurant Gwen, he said, ‘I feel like I’ve signed Cristiano Ronaldo.’ If, like me, you’re not a football fan, then a more useful comparison might be Gordon Ramsay hiring Brett Graham. In short, it’s a big deal. Sanchez-Iglesias made his name, along with his late brother Jonray, at the family-owned restaurant Casamia in Bristol. The brothers made a splash in the Good Food Guide when they took over the restaurant from their parents in 2008, and were awarded ‘Best up-and-coming Chef(s)’. Then, in 2015, they were named Chef(s) of the Year. In 2017, the guide praised Sanchez-Iglesias for his ‘wonderfully light touch and meticulous craftsmanship’.
At one point, Sanchez-Iglesias was running three high-profile restaurants: Casa (the re-named, more casual version of Casamia) and Paco Tapas in Bristol, and Decimo in The Standard Hotel in London. But with the closure of both Casa and Paco Tapas and his contract at Decimo coming to an end, Sanchez-Iglesias found himself at a turning point in his career. In swooped Ward, and the rest is shaping up to be history.
Gwen is not a luxurious restaurant in the traditional sense. You’ll find it on a street in the historic Welsh market town of Machynlleth, on the site of what was a humble local bistro, set between an upmarket shoe shop and a barber shop. Ring the doorbell, and you’ll be warmly welcomed into the intimate space by one of the young, all-male front-of-house team. There’s a bar area and an adjoining dining room, both moodily decked out in black-painted walls (you’ll recognise the style if you’ve been to Ynyshir), where a maximum of eight people per night, with a maximum table size of four, pay £180 plus VAT for a tasting menu of up to 20 courses.
Despite the modest surroundings, Gwen delivers a luxury experience because Sanchez-Iglesias prepares every dish himself (with the help of a sous chef) and uses some of the finest ingredients on the planet. The evening begins for everyone at 6pm in the bar with a welcome cocktail. A clarified apricot yoghurt rum, apricot palinka, saliza, white soy and apricot vinegar concoction was strong and well-made, a welcome pick-me-up after a very long train journey to the restaurant.
The first five courses are served in the bar, where Sanchez-Iglesias works at a counter where a leg of Iberico ham is proudly displayed, a nod to his Spanish heritage. The ham turned up in the first bite, a refined take on a gilda with Gordal olive, guindilla, blue fin tuna, anchovy olive, and a cube of smoked butter for some decadent richness. Hokkaido scallop, marinated in mirin and served raw with N25 caviar, was a highlight of the first wave of dishes: the almost sweet, creamy texture of the prized Japanese shellfish contrasted beautifully with the saline caviar.
The scallops made a memorable re-appearance in the second phase of the meal, this time grilled over coals (a cooking method used in many of the courses) in the compact open kitchen in the dining room and served with a frothy and velvety caramelised milk dashi sauce fortified with rendered miso-cured duck liver fat (my notes say that it tasted like ‘a mad buerre blanc’). The accompanying glass of Solstice English sparkling wine from Danbury Ridge in Essex was a particularly successful match, although wines were expertly paired throughout the evening.
The extraordinary ingredients and combinations just kept coming, some of them delivered to the table by Sanchez-Iglesias himself: Carabineros prawn with a birria sauce; stunning Balfegó Otoro Blue Fin tuna with more N25 Caviar and ponzu; Dyfi lobster with Galician bone marrow, and an expertly grilled piece of Japanese A5 Wagyu, cooked rare with the fat just set, served with a punchy adobo sauce. The combination of a chalk stream trout, a silken chickpea puree and a chorizo and miso sauce was simply inspired.
A slightly undercooked (to my taste at least) piece of quail aside, the cooking never faltered, although the sweet courses, served back in the bar, didn’t quite match up to the breathtaking impact of the savoury dishes. However, the desserts, which included a version of tres leche with rum, were still a delicious and satisfying way to end the meal.
Not everything about Gwen is perfect, yet. At five and a half hours, the night was simply too long. After a couple of hours, sitting on the hard wooden bench in the bar began to feel like punishment. To be fair, it was Sanchez-Iglesias’s first ever service at Gwen, and we understand that they are aiming for a usual night to be closer to four hours. Nevertheless, there is an argument that the menu could be pared back. There is an awful lot of raw or lightly cooked seafood, and many of the dishes follow a similar format, with a protein and a sauce served in a bowl and eaten with a rustic wooden spoon or fork, and very little in the way of garnish. A meltingly tender Duroc rib al pastor (a nod to a dish served at Paco Tapas) and the A5 chilli con carne that served as the main course (all three spoons’ worth of it, we could have eaten much, much more) were welcome interruptions to the norm.
Unless you live in Wales, getting to Machynlleth is probably going to mean a bit of a journey. The comedy festival in May aside, there’s not much of note about the town, so realistically, a two-night stay at Ynyshir, a ten-minute taxi ride away from Gwen, dining one night at Gareth Ward’s iconic restaurant, and the next night at Gwen, might make the most sense for many foodie travellers. Sanchez-Iglesias’s singular vision would make such a pilgrimage worthwhile.
Read more from Andy Lynes via Smashed here.
