Silures, Roath, Cardiff Sunday lunch review

On the Sunday after the onslaught of Storm Darragh, I thought it would be a fine opportunity to check out the Sunday lunch at Silures on Wellfield Road on my own.

Whilst this was partially under the guise of supporting local hospitality after taking yet another battering, it was primarily because I’m exceptionally greedy and Mrs G was busy working.

One of the few swanky restaurants on my side of Cardiff, Silures was beautifully decked out in its festive finery. Combined with the excellent front of house from familiar Cardiff hospitality faces Ollie and Andrew, a visit to Silures always feels a little bit special.  

Silures’ compact Sunday lunch menu offers a well-priced two courses for £30 or three courses for £35. There’s a choice of three starters, five mains (including roast pork, beef and chicken), and four desserts.

I’ve recently completed a wine course so in theory the quality of my wine tasting notes should move kick up a gear from abysmal to woeful. A large gluggable glass of Pays D’oc Merlot (£7) was packed with red fruit and had good acidity. Nope, same quality of commentary as usual then.

To start, silky smooth and thick chicken liver parfait was partnered with some excellent garnishes - sweet date chutney, crunchy candied walnuts and zippy pickled mushrooms.

It was cracking spread over a slice of lightly toasted brioche, which was served in a rather absurd bowl of grain. This was a classic dish executed with class.

A roast dinner is best judged in terms of its individual components and this basis, Silures’ pork belly and cauliflower cheese are two of the finest examples that I've eaten anywhere.

A plate length piece of pork was impeccably juicy and tender and topped with shatteringly light, thin and crisp crackling. Bag this crispy pork skin up and it would be the best pork scratching on offer in Cardiff. 

Silures have clearly taken all the key learnings from their excellent macaroni cheese and brought them to bear on the brassica. A bubbling cauldron of golden cheese was home to dinky cauliflower pieces that were well-coated in an ultra thick and cheesy sauce. 

I’ve never had a version like it, and it was far superior to other examples where massive bits of cauliflower are barely coated in an underpowered sauce.

A light and crisp Yorkshire pudding, roast heritage carrots, fruity braised red cabbage, and greens were all unfussy yet hit the mark. Tender roast potatoes could have been more assertively crisp, but really that’s my only criticism.

A jug of thick glossy gravy ensured that there was ample saucing on hand.

Stuffed, I thought I'd crack on with a light dessert, a whopping bowl of rice pudding. Thick and creamy with a warming winter spice of cinnamon and cardamom, it was adorned with toasty honeycomb pieces and a dollop of richness balancing dark berry compote.

I had a corker of a Sunday lunch at Silures and it’s definitely up there among the best I’ve eaten in Cardiff. Whichever part of the city you’re in, it’s worth a trip over to Wellfield Road for a little bit of luxury.

The Details:

Address - Silures, 55 Wellfield Road, Cardiff CF24 3PA
Web - https://www.silures-amh.com/
Telephone - 029 2280 6369

Hiraeth, Victoria Park, Cardiff restaurant review

“A blend of homesickness, nostalgia and longing, ‘hiraeth’ is a pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost.”

It’s also perhaps an inadvertently fitting name for Victoria Park’s newest restaurant.

Because Hiraeth, the restaurant that is, is currently on its third home in less than 2 years.

Having settled in at their initial home in a former pub near Cowbridge and gained listings in the Michelin and Good Food guides, they were turfed out just a year after opening when the building they rented was put up for sale at the end of 2023.

They then had a brief stint at Court Colman near Bridgend but from an outsider’s perspective it never seemed like a natural fit. Perhaps because a traditional country house hotel isn’t quite the right setting for modern and intimate Welsh dining.

So, now Hiraeth’s chef-owners Lewis Dwyer (who you might recognise from this year’s Great British Menu) and Andy Aston, have settled in Cardiff’s Victoria Park on the former site of Nook and Mangla’s Spice of Life. On a Wednesday lunchtime the cosy dining room was buzzing. It felt like a restaurant that had inhabited this space for years.

I’m always a sucker for a set lunch menu as it offers an affordable way to experience high end restaurants before committing to a full-blown tasting menu. At Hiraeth, £35 buys you bread, three courses and a glass of wine. It’s a bloody good deal and to be fair, their six-course tasting menu for £65 seems reasonable too.

Hiraeth’s weekly changing set lunch menu offers a choice of two starters, three mains and two desserts with a couple of additional snack and side options.

On the wine front, there was a choice of a Spanish white or Italian red but they kindly let Mrs G’s mum have a glass of Cava as she only drinks wine if it fizzes. A glass of floral white rioja and easy drinking Vilarnau Cava were both delicious. They also get extra swank marks for serving the bubbles in a coupe glass.

I’ve heard great things about Hiraeth’s bread and it most certainly lived up to expectations. A beautifully light, soft and sweet warm Japanese milk loaf glistened with herb butter and was served with a quenelle of savoury and meaty chicken skin butter that was flecked with the odd crispy bit of its headline ingredient. We’ve got plenty of top-drawer flavoured butters in Cardiff and this is deserving of its place in the A-list.

Roast cauliflower soup had huge boredom potential, but Hiraeth’s version was anything but dull. Thick and velvety, it tasted like it was made with as much butter and cream as cauliflower. It was zhushed up by a pretty garnish of crunchy crushed pistachios, caraway seeds, mouth warming pepper and I’m sure plenty of other spices too.

Mrs G really enjoyed a torched fillet of oily mackerel that was paired with the traditional accompaniment of roast and pickled beetroot as well as a grating of tangy goats curd and a salty and umami black olive tapenade.

It’s always great to see retro classics appearing on restaurant menus and a suet pudding is about as old skool as it gets. A golden, crisp and squidgy suet-crusted pudding was a handsome devil.

Its filling was a cracker too - long cooked shreds of beef shin and an ooze of pokey cheddar. On the side was a slab of earthy roast celeriac and a savoury and tangy puree, which I think must have been black garlic and mushroom based on the menu description.

Mrs G also highly rated a crisp-skinned fillet of grey mullet and plump briny cockles that were perched on top of comforting fregola pasta balls coated in a big-flavoured sauce with a good hit of seafood.

Sides were just as well considered as the main dishes themselves.

Sprouts (£6), with a good crisping and caramelisation, were flecked with fragrant sage leaves and loads of nuggets of salty pancetta. I’m all in favour of vegetable side dishes which are equal parts meat.

 

Sweet roasted carrots (£6) were covered with a flurry of crunchy and compellingly smoky almonds.

Desserts were both dinky but decadent. Considering how rich they were, it was all that was needed.

Silky smooth and creamy caramel ice cream was drizzled with caramel and served alongside pieces of warming ginger cake and a slab of crunchy almond brittle. An all-important scattering of sea salt brought balance to the dish.

Light and airy yet intense chocolate mousse was garnished with hunks of toasty cinder toffee and the boozy kick of rum soaked raisins.

I was really impressed by Hiraeth’s modern yet comforting cooking and it was lovely to engage with the chefs as they served food from the open kitchen.

Hiraeth certainly shouldn’t long for things it has lost - it belongs in Victoria Park.

The Details:

Address - Hiraeth, 587 Cowbridge Road East, Cardiff CF5 1BE

Web - https://www.hiraethkitchen.com/

Donia, Carnaby Street, London Filipino restaurant review

What can I tell you about Filipino cuisine?

Well, I guess I could do the usual blogger thing and look up Filipino Cuisine on Wikipedia, paraphrase some of it and pretend that I'm an expert.

Or I could come clean and tell you that I've been to Jollibee once (it was underwhelming), have had a corker of a lunch at Panadera Bakery in Camden Town, and I gather that roast pork is kind of a big deal.

Which brings me to Donia, a sister restaurant to Panadera, which is located on the top floor of Kingly Court near London's Carnaby Street. Since opening in late 2023, it’s been getting a lot of love. Jimi Famurewa called it “London’s best new restaurant” and Tim Hayward proclaimed it a “delightful revelation.”

Donia describes itself as serving contemporary Filipino cuisine that combines traditional flavours with seasonal British produce and different culinary techniques. So, chicken inasal, lechon, and adobo sit alongside choux buns, pithiviers and pomme Anna.

Dishes at Donia are designed to be shared, but I wouldn’t judge anyone for wanting to keep their food all to themselves. We were a group of four, so the friendly waiter kindly supplemented a couple of the dishes so that the portions were suitable for a quartet of mouthfuls.

We kicked things off with a light soft, salty and sweet pandesal bread roll (£4.50) that we thickly slathered with whipped chive butter.

Donia’s adobo takes the form of mushroom croquetas (£7.50). A coarse wild mushroom mix was spiked with the deep umami hit of soy and tanginess of vinegar and coated in the crispest of crumbs.

Plump prawn and pork dumplings (£15 + £5 supplement) were topped with sweet white crab meat and sat in a pool of luxurious brown butter and lime sauce with a thrum of chilli and pearls of salty fish roe. This was the first indication of just how good Donia is at saucing – each example was distinct yet brilliant.

A quartet of gigantic sweet-fleshed prawns (£28 + £3 supplement) were treated with the care they deserved. Kissed with smoke from the grill, they were served with their heads on to retain all that extra flavour and accompanied by a fermented plum broth that was addictively sweet, salty, fragrant and sour.

Lechon (£27) lived up to its fame. With hyper crisp and light crackling and juicy fat-rendered flesh, it was some of the best roast pork I've ever eaten. But the kicker was an immensely rich sauce which combined the decadence of chicken liver pate and the punch of peppercorn. Woof.

Chicken inasal (£28), marinated for 48 hours in coconut, vinegar, lemongrass and calamansi, before a good char on the grill was every bit as crisp and juicy as you could hope for. Topped with zingy pickles, it was accompanied by another corker of a rich, spicy and tangy sauce that was made with the butter enriched marinade.

Finally, a lamb shoulder caldereta pie (£35) was a pithivier-esque pastry palace that combined light golden pastry filled with shreds of tender meat, peppers and potatoes. I'm sounding like a broken record now but the accompanying sauce, enriched with tomato and chicken liver, was another bobby dazzler.

Bowls of jasmine rice (£5) were essential for mopping up all those sauces. A spoon also earned its keep that night, scraping up every last drop.

Dessert, so often an assembly of tasty things in even the best restaurants, took the form of a skilled piece of patisserie. A crisp and light craquelin coated choux bun (£14) was filled with vibrant purple ube ice cream, whose earthy vanilla and coconut flavour oddly reminds me of Nice biscuits. Whilst it’s a dessert which is probably designed to be shared, I’ll be ordering my own next time.

We had a belter of a meal at Donia with their whopping flavoured, technically accomplished and fairly priced cooking. Whilst I might be an ignoramus when it comes to Filipino cooking, our meal at Donia was an enlightening experience and I’ll be seeking out those rich, tangy and meaty flavours closer to home.

The Details:

Address - Donia, Top Floor Kingly Court, Carnaby Street, London W1B 5PW

Web - https://www.doniarestaurant.com/

Ichiban, Roath, Cardiff Japanese restaurant review

People are always drawn towards the shiny new thing.

It’s how this blogging schtick works and I’m no exception. A new restaurant opens and bloggers and influencers clamour to be the first to review it (or get a free meal). Everyone posts about it on social media. The next place opens and then the whole bandwagon moves along.

I last visited Ichiban over twelve years ago when I reviewed one of Cardiff’s oldest Japanese restaurants at its previous home on Albany Road in Roath.

Whilst we had a good meal, I always found the interior a bit dark and oppressive and the barred windows uninviting. So, despite walking past it at least a couple of times a week ever since, we never returned.

However, when we saw that they’d moved location along Albany Road to the former site of Zio Pin, I was of course drawn back towards the shiny new thing. What can I say, I’m a cliché.

The clincher was that they’ve done a beautiful job with the décor. Out is the dark wood and boxed in feeling. In is a calming palette of whites and light greys, light wood, fabric screens, and a rather cool display of daruma dolls. It's certainly one of the nicest looking Japanese restaurants in Cardiff.

Delicious ice-cold pints of Kirin lager got things underway before we were overwhelmed by Ichiban’s colossal menu. Featuring 171 dishes of sushi, tempura, teriyaki, poke bowls, yaki soba, salads, and ramen, it’s the kind of size which makes you wonder if everything can be rustled up with consistency time and time again.

Tuna and salmon sashimi (£12.90) was the first dish to arrive and it was prettily presented on a bed of crushed ice with shredded mooli and slices of cucumber. The salmon was beautifully pert and meaty and whilst the tuna slices were fresh and well-flavoured, they were marred slightly by a few bits of sinew that meant there was a bit more chew than I would have liked.

A top-drawer pile of vegetable tempura (£7.90) was the first highlight of the meal. An excellent mix of precisely cooked carrot, sweet potato, onion, pepper and aubergine were coated in a shatteringly light and grease-free batter. A bowl of hot, savoury and sweet tentsuyu sauce was a lovely dip and I must admit that I drank the leftovers.

The other standout was a pair of inari pockets, which are always one of our essential orders when we visit a Japanese restaurant. This time the sweet and soft tofu pockets were crammed with diced meaty salmon as well as the usual pile of well-seasoned rice. At £5.40, it was also the best value dish of the meal.

If you’re going to put your business’s name to a sushi roll then you’ve got to assume it’s worth an order. Ichiban special maki roll (£13) saw tender rice rolls filled with soft and fatty barbecued eel, crisp tempura prawn, and fresh cucumber that was glazed with a sticky teriyaki sauce. 

I’d completely forgotten that I’d ordered the chicken katsu don on our last visit to Ichiban and it’s a sign of the inflation that we’ve experienced over the last decade that its price has gone up from £7.50 to £15.20.

Hearty is the word that I’d definitely use to describe this dish. A whopping bowlful of savoury and sweet dressed sushi rice was topped with a crumbed chicken breast that was subsequently piled with fried egg, sweet onions, mushrooms and carrots. It was all very tasty and comforting but much like last time, the chicken’s crumb lacked crispness. Still, at least they were consistent.

We had good dinner at Ichiban and like our last visit, some of the dishes were more successful than others. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be back in less than 12 years’ time for another bite to eat and it’s that beautiful dining space that’ll draw me back in.

The Details:

Address - Ichiban, 74 Albany Road, Cardiff CF24 3RS

Web - https://ichibancardiff.co.uk/

Telephone - 02920 463 333

Crown Kitchen, Roath, Cardiff Chinese restaurant review

I’m a sucker for a superlative.

In fact, one of my mates takes the piss of out of my tendency to regularly declare something to be the “best” I’ve eaten in Cardiff. The best pizza. The best kebab. The best burger. The best ham in aspic. The best turducken.

What can I say, I’m in the hype game. And people don’t want to read about the seventh best birria tacos in Caerphilly or the fourth best pulled pork bun in Cardiff.

So, when an Instagram connection who knows a lot more about Chinese food than me declared Crown Kitchen on City Road to be the best Chinese restaurant in Cardiff, I promptly dug out my elasticated eating trousers and booked a table.

Crown Kitchen has only been open for four months and is owned by a wife and husband team who hail from Shanghai and south China respectively. One half runs front of house with fabulous warmth and enthusiasm whilst the other, who previously worked as a private chef at the Four Seasons hotel in London for over twenty years, runs the kitchen.

The bright and simple dining room was quiet when we first arrived at 7pm on a Saturday evening. But, it swiftly filled up with a massive group who spread themselves over three tables and tucked into a procession of excellent looking dishes.

As often seems to be the case, Crown Kitchen serves two different menus. One offers westernised Chinese cooking for diners looking for sweet and sour pork and chicken chow mein, the other features traditional Chinese food that draws influences from across the country.

Handily, all the dishes are photographed. So, if you’re as clueless as I am then it gives you a very good idea of what to expect.

I’ve eaten a lot of potatoes in my lifetime but none like the shredded potatoes in chilli sauce (£10.80) from Crown Kitchen. Finely shredded, slippery spuds with a lovely bite and no starchiness whatsoever were served as a warm salad lightly dressed with vinegar, oil, coriander and a potent kick of dried chilli. For such a simple dish, it delivered a huge amount of flavour.

Salt and chilli squid is one of my favourite Chinese restaurant dishes and here it took the form of crunchy tentacles (£16). The pile of tender Cthulhu-esque tendrils were coated in a super crisp and light batter that was aggressively seasoned with salt, chilli and garlic. It was seriously moreish stuff and perfect with an ice-cold beer.

Beef ho fun in black bean sauce (£13) was another belter of a dish. A mound of beautifully tender beef was bathed in deeply savoury black bean sauce and piled on top of thick ho fun noodles with a compellingly savoury wok smokiness.

A lightly dressed cucumber salad that was dotted with roasted peanuts brought some freshness and lightness to the meal. However, at £10.80, it was perhaps the only dish which was questionable value for money.

Crown Kitchen’s dry fried organic cauliflower with pork (£12) transformed an all too often dour vegetable into something exciting. Florets of cauliflower had just the right amount of bite and were stir fried with nuggets of tender pork belly, peppers and onion in a savoury and spicy sauce.

Sichuan spicy boiled fish (£22) lived up to its billing. A vast cauldron of intensely flavoured, spicy, lip-tingling broth was the home to plentiful meaty pieces of white fish and a heap of beansprouts. Autumn is my soup era and this hit the spot.  

A big slab of roasted lamb ribs (£22) was one of the dishes I was most looking forward to. And they very much delivered on their promise, with their combination of crisp skin, stupidly tender flesh and a liberal dusting of just the twenty different types of spice (I bet chilli and cumin were a big part of the mix). Unfortunately, the pretty platter they were served on was stone cold, meaning that within a few minutes they were tepid and had lost their mojo. I refried some of the leftovers the next day and can confirm they were just as good as the first mouthful.

The last dish of the night was Hainanese chicken curry (£18). With its plentiful chicken off the bone in a creamy and fragrant coconut sauce, it was very reminiscent of a Thai curry. Whilst it was very tasty, it was probably the only dish which I wouldn’t be in a rush to order again.

We had a superb meal at Crown Kitchen. With its immensely friendly front of house and deliciously big-flavoured cooking from a talented chef-owner, they serve some of the best Chinese food I’ve eaten in Cardiff. Oh look, there I go dishing out another superlative.

The Details:

Address - Crown Kitchen,120 City Rd, Cardiff CF24 3DQ 
Telephone - 07551 037509