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/