Last
Sunday, Mrs G and I caught the train to Barry. Unlike the hordes of families
and students in our carriage heading to the beach,
we were armed with neither bucket and spade nor a box of warm Carling.
We were equipped only with our appetites...
The Gallery is one of the most exciting new restaurants to open in South Wales in a good while. With a weekly changing menu packed with top quality seasonal Welsh produce and a number of interesting foraged ingredients thrown in for good measure, it's the kind of place you want to go back to again and
again.
We joined
some good friends for Sunday lunch. As they’re regulars, we were given some
extra freebies to sample in addition to the already excellent value for money 3
courses for £17.50.
We had
pre-lunch drinks in the downstairs bar. A bowl of vanilla salted popcorn was
washed down with a pint of light and summery Blorenge pale ale.
Mrs G, meanwhile,
set to work on a litre of the house red (£15), a seriously drinkable Shiraz supplied
by the barrel by Borough Wines and decanted into refillable bottles at the
restaurant.
As we made
our way upstairs, we passed a magnetic wall displaying the week’s menu, a lengthy list of the restaurant’s suppliers and the provenance of the restaurant's fish (the mackerel was sourced from a boat named Trust!)
Having
taken our seats taken in the airy and informal dining area and with a jug of
Pimm’s close to hand, I was ready for Sunday lunch.
I pay heed to the belief you can tell how good a restaurant is by the quality
of their bread. The Gallery’s was bloomin marvellous. Warm breadsticks
and toasted poppy seed and wholemeal breads (amongst others) were served with a
fragrant and punchy wild garlic yoghurt dip.
To start, I
ordered mackerel with beetroot and stilton. A huge meaty fillet of mackerel
was topped with oozy savoury blue cheese. Sweet beetroot puree with a touch
of vinegar cut through the richness of the fish and cheese whilst dressed
foraged leaves, including sea aster and sea plantain, added salt and pepper
notes to the dish.
Mrs G
ordered an unctuous ham hock terrine served with onion compote.
Our first bonus
dish was the kind of thing that could easily persuade me that vegetarianism isn’t a bad
idea after all. A galette stack filled with nettle cheese, hop shoots and
ratatouille was light, meaty and complex tasting.
Chicken
lollipops were the second freebie. Crisp crumbed meat was accompanied by
a wondrously fresh tasting nettle mayonnaise.
For main I
ordered the sea bream. The delicate tasting piece of fish worked exceptionally
well with a mound of earthy Trealy farm chorizo butterbean mash, buttered chard and a fragrant citrus and dill sauce.
Mrs G’s excellent
duo of lamb (a tender fillet and a yielding fattier cut) was accompanied by
crisp roasts and rich gravy.
Mixed
vegetables were all cooked as they should be – to the bite and well buttered.
However,
the star of the show was a stellar homemade mint jelly. Turbo charged with
mint, vinegary and sweet, it was easily the best I’ve ever tasted.
Horseradish
cream (literally whipped cream with horseradish) which accompanied a banging
rib of beef was equally stellar.
Dessert
drew my only point of criticism of the entire meal. A good, vanilla salt topped
treacle tart could have done with a slightly crisper base. It was served with
excellent vanilla ice cream.
Mrs G’s
traditional dessert, however, was on the nail. Gwent cream, a Chantilly
cream made lighter by the addition of yoghurt, was accompanied by textbook
shortbread and sweet and slightly sharp stewed gooseberries.
An digestif of white amaretto also deserves a mention. Combining the nutty sweetness of regular amaretto with cream and icing sugar notes, it had the
complexity of a cocktail.
The details:
Address - The Gallery, 2 Broad Street, Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
Telephone - 01446 735300
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