While I have avoided tasting menu meals, of course, there are exceptions
As my loved ones like to remind me, I’m a creature of simple tastes. While many of my ardent foodie friends dream of fancy tasting menus, my favourite meal is beans and little sausages on toast. The food of the gods.
The gastronomes I know and love speak reverently about “the journey” at these oft-acclaimed restaurants, whereas I dream of a large bowl of pasta with grated cheddar on top, just like the Italians do it. Ideally before 7pm.
I have an open mind about food, I really do, dear readers. But I have also endured enough snooty tasting menus, typically in expensive London gaffs, to know that somewhere around course eight, time loses all meaning, like a Vegas casino.
Days appear to pass between plates. Civilisations frankly rise and fall in less time. How long does a sliver of beetroot on foam and smoked hay take?!
After 117 courses you hand over enough money to fund a family holiday, despite ingesting the calorific equivalent of a cheese string, then find yourself standing outside half an hour later ordering a kebab.
I’m not against tasting menus. I’m simply searching for one that doesn’t last an entire lunar cycle and require consulting a financial adviser beforehand.
While I have largely avoided pricey tasting menu meals (my friends are obsessed with them), of course there are exceptions.
For me, one of them is The Jackdaw in Conwy, which fully exceeded my expectations. It proves that a tasting menu doesn’t have to be an endurance event. You don’t emerge blinking into daylight wondering what year it is, while absolutely ravenous, thank Thor.
Open since 2021, the Jackdaw is a cheeky nod to the local term for someone born within Conwy’s historic town walls.
My meticulous research (scrolling on Instagram) indicates that it’s an acclaimed, Michelin-recognised restaurant located on High Street. It won Restaurant of the Year – Wales at the AA Hospitality Awards in September 2023. The restaurant has also earned 3 AA Rosettes, promotion to “Exceptional” in The Good Food Guide, and a place among the UK’s top 100 restaurants.
The AA inspector said: “Service is attentive and seasonally evolving tasting menus focus on excellent ingredients.
Currently it costs £125pp for dinner, and you can also get a six-course lunch for £60pp, both typically rooted in Welsh culinary history and folklore.
OK, so not Tesco meal deal prices, but when chef’s table experiences regularly run £200 to £280+ per person, it seems like a reasonable amount for food-loving patrons with a healthy budget.
Visiting for the first time, I admittedly got lost as the entrance is about as obvious as platform 9¾ (I do love a Harry Potter reference pals).
Google Maps will direct you to the neighbouring pub (yay pre-gaming), but what you’re actually looking for is an unassuming doorway marked with a jackdaw motif. Head upstairs and you’ll find yourself on the first floor of what was once a bingo hall, now home to one of Wales’ most exciting restaurants.
Inside, it is all Scandi-cool whitewashed walls, exposed stone and sheepskin-draped chairs, with an atmosphere that feels modern yet medieval, which suits me, having long considered myself spiritually aligned with House Targaryen. Just hand me a goblet of wine already.
After settling in with the wine list, chatty staff inform me that Chef-owner Nick Rudge returned home to North Wales after rising through the ranks at Heston Blumenthal’s three Michelin-starred The Fat Duck, where he finished as Junior Sous Chef.
Nick speaks highly of working with Heston and previously told WalesOnline: “He is probably the closest I’ve ever come to meeting a genius.
“I’m not just saying that because it’s him and it’s his name. He just thinks about food and thinks about everything – life, I suppose as well – in a just totally different way. And he’s a lovely lovely man.”
While Heston is known for molecular gastronomy with ambitious (definitely not weird) creations like snail porridge, Nick has brought the technical precision with him but left any unnecessary fuss behind.
What you get instead is cooking that is technically brilliant yet unmistakably Welsh, rooted in the landscape, the seasons and the people who produce its ingredients.
Like many tasting menu restaurants, dishes rotate, so you never know what you might get, but you can expect dishes like Welsh beef sirloin, Barbecued Scallop & Seaweed, Butter Poached Turbot and Mefys Môn Iced Jasmine Tea.
The thoughtfully curated wine list has its own charming twist, with every bottle arranged according to how far it has travelled from Conwy, measured ‘as the jackdaw flies’. Finally, a wine list that answers the question nobody knew they had – how far has my Merlot travelled today?
There’s a range of international, European and Welsh wines on the list, including Gwinllan Conwy Solaris, Montgomery Vineyard, Sparkling Demi-Sec and Trimbach Riesling.
Beers, wines and spirits are also available for your imbibing pleasure, including several Welsh favourites like Aberfalls, Dà Mhìle and Penderyn.
While the drinks list is impressive, The Jackdaw’s tasting menu is the main reason to come. Each well-crafted course arrives in a decent amount of time rather than a runtime longer than Lord of the Rings.
Partnering with local fishmongers, butchers, wineries and more, the team has both seasonality and presentation nailed.
Nothing is oversized or fussily overworked. Instead, there is a satisfying rhythm to the tasting menu, and I’m even enjoying the origin story behind the dishes (I am a few glasses of vino in at this point).
Instead of becoming bored, like I usually do, I’m rather enjoying the wine-filled progression of plates that leaves you wondering how the next course could top the last, only for it to do exactly that.
Typical beautifully presented small courses include Lady Llanover’s “Welsh Salt Duck”, pulled from a 19th-century Welsh cookery book, Henryd Courgette, and succulent Dyffryn Conwy Lamb, which is soft as clouds.
One of my other favourites, Hafod and Conwy Sauce Rarebit, takes the humble Welsh rarebit and elevates it to top-tier comfort food. Toasted sourdough is spread with a rich mixture of stout, mustard and Welsh cheeses before being grilled until gloriously golden.
Over the top comes the restaurant’s own Conwy Sauce, an intricate take on Worcestershire sauce that spends two weeks infusing malt vinegar with spices, aromatics, shallots and garlic. A final snowfall of finely grated rich Hafod cheese melts gently into the warmth. I could easily eat 8 more.
The Lamb Cawl is another love letter to Welsh tradition, reimagining our best-known culinary offering. Instead of a rustic steaming bowlful, the dish arrives as a cubist, deconstructed collection of individual elements: meltingly tender lamb neck, braised for 17 hours, carrot and caraway salt-crust swede.
These are united by a crystal-clear broth created from both lamb stock and lamb dashi, blended and clarified to produce remarkable depth and clarity. It is unmistakably cawl, just delivered through a fine-dining lens. Anything deconstructed normally has me heading for the door, but this works, largely because of the extraordinary flavours.
Dessert features a playful note with Gynwys, named after the wonderfully improbable local legend that Guinness was actually a Welsh invention, spirited away from a tavern in nearby Llanfairfechan by Arthur Guinness, who stole the recipe for his famous stout in the 1750s, the rascal.
Whether you believe the story is beside the point. After all, food has survived centuries of myths, legends and questionable family recipes. One more Welsh claim on Guinness is hardly the strangest thing on the menu.
The dessert itself is superb, layering roasted barley cremeux, yeast caramel, malt ice cream, stout gastrique, Citra hop crumble and puffed barley into a dish that manages to be rich, bitter, sweet and deeply satisfying.
My only complaint is that I would have loved a chocolate-based dessert too. Perhaps a deconstructed Mars bar served with salted caramel foam and a single cacao nib harvested at dawn by a monk.
By this point of the night, I had consumed wine from many, many miles, and it was time to bid the lovely staff team a good night and begin my fruitless search for an Uber in North Wales.
As I resigned myself to sleeping outside Conwy Castle, I reflected with my long-suffering husband that I might have crossed a dangerous line. Had I finally become what my Gen Z colleagues might call a “tasting menu girlie”?
Suddenly, chef’s tables and private dining experiences didn’t seem quite so ridiculous. Who was this person? Thankfully, a cab finally arrived, and my relieved husband bundled me safely back towards the hotel before I booked a 27-course experience online.
It might be the Welsh vino talking, but I really did have a splendid meal here, and I didn’t have to have a late-night cheeseburger after due to rampant starvation. Look at me, a tasting menu convert, finally. My bank balance will be thrilled.
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