Ynyshir Restaurant and Rooms

Ynyshir Restaurant and Rooms is a restaurant with bedrooms in Eglwys Fach, a village in Ceredigion near Machynlleth, Wales. Chef Gareth Ward owns it with his partner, the architect Amelia Eiriksson.

The house was once a country hotel called Ynyshir Hall. Its Michelin star had lapsed some years before Ward, who comes from County Durham, took over the kitchen, and it came back soon after his arrival. When the owner, Joan Reen, died in 2016, Ward and Eiriksson turned the hotel into a restaurant with rooms. The new name put the cooking first, with the bedrooms there mainly for those who travel to eat.

Dinner is the only meal: a tasting menu of around 30 courses for a small number of diners, unfolding over several hours. Japanese technique runs through it, with meat and sashimi at the core. Ward cooks over live birchwood fire, ages Welsh Wagyu beef for the best part of a year and keeps seafood in a chamber of Himalayan salt to mature. A5 Wagyu appears alongside shellfish caught locally, which ties a very international menu to the coast nearby.

Eiriksson leads front of house, and each table gets its own drinks pairing in place of a fixed wine flight. Loud music from a DJ is part of the evening, and one review described the experience as a culinary house party. Lewis Welburn, who first cooked here under Ward, has come back as head chef after a spell at Forge at Middleton Lodge. In 2022 Ynyshir became the first restaurant in Wales to win two Michelin stars, and it was twice named Restaurant of the Year at the National Restaurant Awards.