Review: The Shed, Porthgain

The Shed

Porthgain is a tiny harbour village tucked into a little rocky cove on the north Pembrokeshire coast. It feels like the middle of nowhere on a wet weekday evening in March (Pembrokeshire is like the forgotten version of Cornwall) and so it’s odd to walk into through the battered little door of The Shed down on the quayside and find a bustling crowd in this little fish bistro, many of them seemingly locals.

I had local seabass fillets on a richly tomato-y stew of butterbeans and chorizo, with a handful of battered cockles scattered around. The fish was cooked a little more thoroughly than I prefer, the stew was very satisfying, rich and herby, and the cockles were kinda okay with the batter more fluffy than scrunchy.

Sea bass

Sea bass

Maureen sensibly went with the fish and chips, for which The Shed is renowned. This was a purely splendid piece of cod, cloud-like soft and flakey, in nicely brown scrunchy batter. The chips were splendid, the mushy peas absolutely traditional, while the curry sauce was a big step up from typical chip-shop curry sauce, very much its own thing, warmly spicy and brilliant with both chips and fish. Though to be fair, that cod needed absolutely nothing but a little salt and vinegar.

Their fish and chips was £19, the seabass more like £27, and I’d say the mark-up on a more basic fish-and-chip restaurant was well worth it for the quality and lovely location.

Fish n chips

Fish n chips

Review: Dexters at Brown’s Hotel, Laugharne

Souffle

Souffle

Brown’s Hotel is a lovely place, a cosy inn nestled in the estuary village of Laugharne on the coast of Carmarthenshire. Like the village, the pub is closely associated with Dylan Thomas, indeed it was basically his local. And I think the man liked a beer. They’ve modernised since then, with handsome wood furniture and dark painted walls, but I think they’ve kept the essence of the place very well. It felt like Mr Thomas could walk in for a pint any time.

We were there to stay (lovely room, but this isn’t a hotel blog!) and to eat dinner. Dexters specialise in steak, so I felt the need for a sirloin, while Maureen went for lamb cooked over the coals. Before that we started with a twice-baked Perl Las souffle and a braised beef arancini. The arancini was lovely, with gooey beef innards and a crisp shell. The souffle was splendid, lightly fluffy within and coated in some extra creamy cheese sauce. Perl Las is milder than a strong cheddar but worked perfectly for me.

Lamb

Lamb

My steak was a prime piece of beef, cooked somewhere on the rare side of medium-rare and glazed with pan juices, a nice touch. Full of flavour. The bearnaise sauce with it was a good, thick example but I’d have liked it a little tangier to cut the richness. Nevertheless, the chips dipped in it very well. Not epic chips, but plenty good enough. Maureen’s lamb was rather wonderful, of an incredibly soft texture that almost verged on livery, and packed with taste. I loved the generous amount of caramelised onion puree with it, and a bit of salsa verde to lift the rich fattiness of the lamb. The truffled dauphinoise potatoes on the side were impossible not to finish.

No room for pudding! Laugharne is lovely, and if you want to stay here I’d recommend Brown’s instantly and also a meal at Dexters. Jolly good, probably £40 for two courses and that’s fair value, albeit a bit dear for the wilds of west Wales.

Steak

Steak

Review: Annwn, Narberth

Annwn

Annwn

Annwn might be a bit of a marmite restaurant: some will love it, others will leave bemused. For the record, we loved it, but that’s because it ticks all our culinary buttons. Chef Matt Powell cares deeply about place and provenance, loves using obscure and unfamiliar local and foraged ingredients, isn’t scared of strong flavours, and doesn’t finesse the soul of the ingredients out of every dish with intricate technique and presentation.

The dining room feels a bit unsure of itself, if I’m honest. It’s a big, modern space with a modern, workmanlike open kitchen and stark while walls. Then the dining furniture and the scatter of decorative items are all natural, wooden, rustic and appealingly wabi-sabi. But they sit around the open, white space like folks at a party that’s not-really-our-kinda-thing. Still, ’twas warm and comfy on a filthy spring evening and chef Matt talked us through the menu with clear passion and lots of local detail.

Oyster

Oyster

We opened with a bread course that included splendid chunks of aged dry-cured mutton, wild garlic flowers, seedheads and leaves all individually pickled or fermented, wonderful fresh butter with mutton fat whipped through it and lovely little floury breads cooked on a stone “planc”. The first starter felt like a real statement of intent; oysters from the last remaining local oyster beds, turned into a creamy mousse that captured all the beautiful flavour. At least three different coastal vegetables and three different seaweeds served with it, all brightly fresh and meant for swiping through the mousse, along with a scrunchy little sea lettuce cracker. You can’t get much more Pembrokeshire than that.

The other two starters were a potato dish with celeriac cream, tasty and a nice use of local and seasonal veg, and then a very slow-cooked egg yolk in a wonderful and extremely intense fungi sauce with pickled chanterelles on top. Both starters were good without being great. Next up was the meat course, chunks of salt marsh mutton, slowly roasted to a beautiful softness inside with wickedly crisped edges packed with flavour. The seaweed-enhanced reduction was absolute glossy perfection and enriched the mutton even more. This was mighty meat with unashamedly powerful flavour.

Brill

Brill

The actual main course, then, was the locally caught brill. The fish itself was a beauty, so softly cooked that it swooned winsomely on the fork. The dark reduction with this one, rich from roast fish bones, was the same mirror-like glossiness as the mutton gravy, and so good with the fish. There was a great side-serving as well, of a brown crab mousse that was as powerful as any sea urchin dish I’ve ever tried, and also wonderful scoffed with the fish. Probably the star dish, appropriately.

Fermented crab apple sorbet was a lovely refresher, like a hit of excellent cider with both high tangy notes and a deeply funky barnyard bass. Then my favourite dessert; a simple scoop of meadowsweet curds, covered with about the same amount of a thick, local honey. I’ve never been given such a wonderfully powerful hit of meadowsweet, with plenty of the somewhat medicinal tang that it can have, warmed up and sweetened by the fragrant honey. The main dessert was both an extremely pretty plate and also very light and edible, just what’s needed after a big tasting menu. Malty little savory chocolate twigs, a lovely powdery birch sap meringue (?!?), and an eggshell filled with deliciously lush and slightly jammy rosehip custard. The little leaf was made from crab apple, the cherry from a sweet-tart berry jelly.

The tasting menu at Annwn was £150 each, and I enjoyed the evening immensely; a far more intimate experience than even most other small fine-dining restaurants. They’ve bravely gone with a wine list that is entirely British from top-to-bottom, but it was also revelatory with a superb glass of full-flavoured Welsh rose from Aberaeron and a couple of pinot noirs from an Essex winery that would have blind-tasted very well next to an awful lot of decent Burgundy.

You should go and visit Annwn, you’ll not have a meal like it any time soon.

Dessert

Dessert

Review: Barang, Borough Market

Tuna

Tuna

Barang is a Cambodian restaurant residency upstairs at the Globe in Borough Market, although apparently they’re hoping to be opening permanently – probably in Soho – later in 2026. There’s not a lot of Cambodian eateries in the UK, even though it shares a lot of ingredients, techniques and dishes with the surrounding SE Asian cuisines like Thai, Malay and Laotian. Barang could go a long way to fixing this, as their food is excellent.

As usual, the dishes are meant for sharing around a bowl of rice. We start with a brilliant and dressy starter; four generous slices of raw Cornish bluefin tuna, topped with slices of pressed yellow melon and dressed with a mix including coconut cream, lime and herb oil. The fragrant cream and the sweet melon were absolute magic with the tuna. Next up was a much more street-food-ish dish; a platter of raw veggies with a bowl of spiced-up pork mince cooked in coconut to dip them in. I never knew that I needed sturdy chunks of raw rainbow beetroot and turnip in my life, but they were surprisingly lovely to crunch, crunch, crunch through and paired up well with the fiery mince. That said, the very best crudite to bring out the complex fragrance in the mince was the slice of sweet apple. If you try Barang, order this dish.

Crispy quail

Crispy quail

With our rice we had three dishes more; a pork kampot curry, winter greens with pork jowl, and crispy fried quail. The kampot curry had a lovely deep and sour-earthy flavour, but although the pork had good flavour it was rather sturdy and had a bit much connective tissue to be a great pleasure to eat. The winter greens in black bean sauce were excellent, plenty of garlic and chilli flavour, and the smoked pork jowl added an extra peck of deliciousness to it. The crispy fried quail was absolutely gorgeous to eat, made properly tangy and sweet by the fish sauce caramel that it was bathed in. The shredded and pickled kohlrabi salad on the side also soaked up the caramel sauce very nicely!

We shared a dessert of char-grilled pineapple with its sorbet and candied pecans, nice and light to cleanse the palate after all the pleasant melange of spices. A good-sized meal is probably £40 each before drinks, and that feels about right. I’m already keen to return and try some other dishes, and they could easily become a regular haunt when they’re in Soho.

Crudites

Crudites

Review: The Three Oaks, Gerrard’s Cross

Crispy squid

Crispy squid

How have I never been to The Three Oaks before? Hmm. Perhaps because it’s in Gerrard’s Cross! Far enough out of town that I’d have no reason to come this far as a Londoner, but not far enough to be part of a weekend break. Well, the folks of Gerrard’s Cross and the Chalfonts have had this stunner of a gastropub to themselves for too long.

Gastropub is the right word here, I’d say; the ambition of the menu and cooking is a big notch higher than the vast majority of pubs (even some I love eating at) aspire to, without stepping right up to tasting menus and fine dining. The pub itself is very handsomely decorated inside, with a much more counties feel than the slightly suburban road it sits on would suggest. Anyway, seriously, the food…

Roast chicken

Roast chicken

I started with cod cheeks, so delicately steamed they were translucent, and broken up into a lovely tartare sauce. Thin slices of sweet pickled cucumber and gooey blobs of egg yolk “jam” paired just beautifully with it, along with crisped wafers to scoop it all up. Maureen’s salt and pepper squid was absolutely nothing like you’re picturing it. Perfect chunks of soft squid with an almost barbecue-y flavour, with sweetly sticky bits of red pepper, crisp shards of serrano ham and black squid ink aioli, the whole lot melded perfectly in the mouth and I wish I’d ordered it!

Anyway. My main made up for that. I went for chicken breast, unusually, because I loved the sound of the accompaniment: sweetcorn puree, chorizo, black onion ketchup, roast chicken salad cream. And fries. But the chicken breast was utterly perfect, firm, still bursting with juice, but with a nut brown and blackened skin full of harissa flavour. And the accompanying sauce and fripperies melted together into the most delicious relish you could imagine. Good fried, too. A side order of hispi cabbage was nicely charred on the edges with a lush mix of lime-chilli mayo and crispy crumb swiped over it.

STP

STP

After that, we couldn’t resist a bit of dessert. Sticky toffee pudding had a surprisingly light but delicious sponge, and just enough of the toffee sauce – a salty one rather than a bitter one – to go with it. Good honeycomb ice cream. And I just went with a scoop of caramelised milk ice cream and blackberry sorbet; both flavours were clear and full, and complemented each other nicely.

You’d be looking at £40 each before drinks for a three course meal, and I happen to think that’s brilliant value for the quality of the cooking here. I’m already casting around for excuses to be back in the Gerrard’s Cross area again!

Hispi cabbage

Hispi cabbage