3 of the best modern Welsh dishes
From slow-cooked beef tacos to a laverbread special — some of Wales’s top chefs select their most treasured dishes.
1. Liquid pea ravioli with Serrano ham, crispy sage and parmesan emulsion
James Sommerin and his daughter Georgia have been working together in the kitchen for seven years, with Georgia rising from commis to sous chef at her father’s eponymous restaurant in Penarth. After the venue closed during the pandemic, the pair set up shop nearby in their now Michelin-starred restaurant, Home, where they work side by side at the stove. “Half the time, we don’t need to say a word,” James says. “It’s like a dance — you know each other’s movements.”
Home’s menu is “dictated by where we are in the season and what’s at its best”. Ingredients are locally sourced as much as possible — their meat, vegetables, laverbread and cockles, for example, are all from Wales. “The quality has to be amazing,” says James.
Home’s signature dish — ravioli filled with liquid pea, topped with crispy sage, Serrano ham and a parmesan emulsion — was created by James for the TV series Great British Menu in 2009. The seed was sown during a visit to Alinea in Chicago, where he was served liquid truffle ravioli. “It blew my mind to have liquid in ravioli, so I designed my own style.”
James’s version for the show was inspired by pea and ham soup. “People saw it, and wanted to try it,” he explains. “It’s taken on a life of its own.” And while it may be her dad’s ‘big dish’, Georgia feels it represents their combined cooking styles and approach. “We want to keep our food recognisable,” James says. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. Flavour comes first.”
2. Birria queso tacos
While Leyli Homayoonfar returned to south Wales in 2019 to set up a Persian-influenced catering company, it was her next venture — a sister street food brand called Bab Haus — that really took flight, gaining a name for itself thanks to its DIY taco kits. Today, she’s the chef-owner of two Bab Haus Mex taco outlets, one in Barry, the other in Newport’s Victorian indoor market, and the Bab Haus HQ Smoke Shop in Caerphilly.
Inspired by the food she grew up with — she has a Welsh mum and Iranian dad — as well as her travels around North America, Leyli describes her menus as “modern barbecue with a big focus on Mexican food, with Middle Eastern elements and an LA street food influence”. Her best-known creations are birria queso tacos, which start with a Mexican braised meat stew. Leyli sources ex-dairy beef from a butcher in Gower who supplies Michelin-starred restaurants: “We’ve set ourselves apart from other street food brands — we offer premium food and focus on where we source our ingredients and the quality of the ingredients. We’re not just catering for the masses.”
Leyli describes how the beef is “first smoked in our wood-fired smoker, then braised in a rich chilli broth” — a process that takes 18 hours. It’s then shredded and stuffed into grilled cheese corn tacos — a nod to LA street food — and served with a sharp salsa rosa, chopped onions and coriander, plus a pot of the cooking liquid alongside for dipping. Everything is made in-house, from scratch. “We’re deeply serious about what we produce,” Leyli says, “but we just want to make really delicious food that’s accessible to everyone.”
3. Laverbread bread
On the golden sands of Oxwich beach, one-Michelin-star Beach House Restaurant couldn’t be in a more beautiful setting. The rough stone walls and cracked wooden pillars of the former coal store have been weathered by the sea air. “It gives it character, which runs through the whole place,” says head chef Hywel Griffith.
The Welsh chef isn’t a fan of gimmicks. His regularly changing multi-course menus focus on seasonal ingredients sourced “as locally as quality allows”. These include Gower salt marsh lamb, reared less than 10 miles away, and lobsters caught in Oxwich Bay. “As things come into season, I tweak previous dishes or come up with new ones.” Two dishes, however, have barely changed since the restaurant opened in 2016: Hywel’s warmly spiced bara brith souffle, served with tea ice cream, and his unwaveringly popular laverbread.
Hywel grew up in the rural quarry community of Bethesda, and, having left to work in restaurants such as The Lanesborough and Ynyshir, he returned and opened Beach House Restaurant in 2016, drawing inspiration for his laverbread from the miners. “They used to mix theirs with rolled oats and vinegar, form it into a cake and take it down the mines to eat with cheese, ham or whatever they had.” For his modern-day version, he folds the bread’s requisite coarse seaweed paste into “a very wet, loose, sticky dough”. The finished loaf, dipped in water and oats before baking, has a crusty golden exterior; sliced thickly, marbled with the black seaweed, it’s served with cultured Teifi butter. “It’s such a favourite,” Hywel says, “people come here just to eat it.”
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