My £380 meal is too cheap, says Michelin chef Gareth Ward
A chef who charges more than £380 per head for a 30-course tasting menu has said the dining experience should probably cost even more.
Gareth Ward’s two-Michelin star restaurant, Ynyshir, was crowned the UK’s best earlier in 2023.
The restaurant, in Eglwys Fach, Ceredigion, west Wales, offers a “succession of tiny plates cooked over fire”.
But despite the high price tag for an evening of dining, Mr Ward said: “I’m not sat here, like rolling in money – I’m not Scrooge McDuck. Not a penny comes out of this place.
“Anything we make, which is not a lot, goes straight back into improving Ynyshir because I want to hopefully push it to be one of the best restaurants in the world one day.
“It’s a passion project. It’s not a money-maker at all. I wish it was,” said Mr Ward: “To anyone who says the pricing of the restaurant is extreme, I would say you need to come and have a look at our figures.
“I don’t do a GP [gross profit] on it because I’m scared … we’re using the most ridiculously expensive ingredients in the world.”
Best meat and fish
Some of the ingredients include caviar, blue-fin tuna, and wagyu beef aged for 300 days in a Himalayan salt chamber.
Ynyshir’s website describes the food as “ingredient led”, “flavour driven”, “fat-fuelled” and “protein obsessed”, while diners are told to expect “fire, intense world flavours and the best meat and fish from around the globe”.
“I have 27 members of staff for a 20-cover restaurant – I have 14 acres of land that costs a lot of money to run. It’s my fault, I have made it the way it is,” Mr Ward added. “I have wanted to push and push, use better ingredients, have more staff, be more extravagant in the things we do to give the most incredible experience … but, unfortunately, that comes at a cost – someone needs to pay for it.”
The country house hotel, set in woodland near Machynlleth, is Wales’s first two-star Michelin restaurant. It is painted jet black and has a full-time DJ playing thumping techno music while customers sit on basic seating under murky nightclub lighting. The trendy venue was named Britain’s best restaurant this summer at the Estrella Damm National Restaurant Awards 2023.
Earlier in 2023 the restaurant began offering a £200 takeaway tasting menu, available on Uber Eats. This involves 10 courses which include hot and sour crab soup, BBQ lobster claw, A5 rib-eye steak as well as delicacies not normally associated with takeaways, such as caviar.
