The approach to this, one of Wales’s most recently celebrated restaurants, does not whisper, “Here be fleshpots”: there’s rather a lot of grey pebbledash. The countryside is lovely, and if – as we do – you arrive via the Snowdonia national park, it’s all snow-sugared-top mountains and patchwork-quilt fields. The Isle of Anglesey is blessed with ravishing beaches and sunsets. But our destination? A caravan site off an undistinguished byroad.
My motto has always been “Will travel for food”, but the Marram Grass Cafe looks somewhat, um, unpolished – and I’ve chowed down in my fair share of tin-roofed shacks. It’s no looker. A cheery leaflet at the door says something like, “Why not make a night of it and book into one of the caravans?” Oh sure: and why not trepan my own head while I’m at it?
Once inside, with the tiny wood-burning stove burping out heat in a corner, the vases of jaunty daffodils and tubs of local Halen Môn salt on every table, the walls lined with colourful sacking, the place heaving with punters, it starts to look a whole lot more likely. It’s run by the twentysomething Liverpudlian Barrie brothers – Ellis in the kitchen, Liam out front – sons of the caravan site owners who took on the park’s all-day-breakfast caff and, against all odds, turned it into this place of culinary pilgrimage.
They’ve done all the homework. Check the heavy “artisanal” crockery, the daily changing menu featuring the likes of pigeon liver parfait crackers; the intricate and painstaking desserts – Seville orange marmalade cake with bitter orange variations and “burnt toast puree” is extraordinary. The superb produce is hyper-local: lamb from a farm up the road, lobster and mackerel, samphire and mussels from the sea at the bottom of the caravan field. They’re raising their own pigs and chickens, and have a nascent kitchen garden, too. What next? Bees?
So, the right noises are duly being made, but can they pull it off from a kitchen the size of a cubbyhole? They can. Oysters zhuzhed with bacon, leeks and cream are sheer hedonism: saline, milky juices to be slurped with the still-trembly shellfish straight from the shell. “Crab ravioli” brings a singular item the size of a small pie, the pasta tensile, elastic and bright yellow from their own eggs, and straining with fine, fresh crab and the odd frill of kale. There’s a whole jug of bisque to pour over, the pungent refrain of carcasses and heads, herbs and citrus. I love this so much, I want to wear it over my face like the Alien.
More of that pasta, this time rippling, hand-cut ribbons of pappardelle, comes with beef braised into a gorgeously savoury ragù: there’s loads of wine in here, and some anise. Then chowder, rammed with pearly fish and fat, Menai Straits mussels the colour of tangerines in a cream soup heady with dill. A lamb dish shows off Ellis’s confidence and ambition: satiny, fatless chunks of rosy meat, a mulch of pungent, slow-cooked shoulder, a just-pink slab of liver. On the side, almost caramelised salsify and pommes Anna, a cake of maris pipers, crisp and bronzed on top, buttery and melting inside: flawless.
It really is impossible to talk about Marram Grass Cafe without saying “eccentric”. Liam delivers our riesling and Orme beer with a jolly, “And now for the good stuff, eh?” Our server feels compelled to tell us his age and the fact that he doesn’t drink alcohol, so is “no bloody use” on the describing front. But you’d have to be stony of heart not to be seduced by the brothers’ charm. I’m unbothered by service longueurs (the little place is heaving, and even on a damp Welsh day, outdoor tables are full of keen diners insulated against the cold). Or their apparent allergy to spoons. Or having to beg for bread to soak up that blissful bisque. Would I be so forgiving in a designer joint in Mayfair? Of course not. But I also know where I’d rather be.
I hope the Barries never get too slick, too city. And I hope they maintain the brimming enthusiasm that colours everything they do, whether that’s dotting fronds of home-grown fennel on to local duck breasts or chasing pigs around fields. If this is what they’re doing in their 20s, I can only look into my crystal ball (well, we are among the caravans) and predict a genuinely stellar future.
• Marram Grass Cafe White Lodge, Newborough, Anglesey, 01248 440077. Open Thurs-Sun, noon-3pm, 6-9pm. About £25 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 8/10
