Great British Menu 2021: Wales preview

Returning to light up the Great British Menu kitchen is patriotic Welsh speaker Hywel who narrowly missed getting to the Banquet last year. Hywel grew up in North Wales and has been a chef since he was seventeen. He honed his craft at Coleg Menai in Bangor before graduating to the Lanesborough Hotel in London and The Chester Grosvenor before returning to Wales as sous chef at Ynyshir. During his time there the restaurant achieved three AA Rosettes and a Michelin star. He then opened his own restaurant Beach House in Oxwich Bay in 2016 which has won several awards including a Michelin star.

Hywel’s cooking style is modern Welsh and champions all Welsh produce. For his menu, he draws on bold inspirations linked to Wales from the discovery of our nearest galaxy, Andromeda, to Martha Hughes Cannon, a pioneer in medicine and sanitation.

30-year-old Welsh speaker Nathan has lived in Wales since he was six – his father and grandfather are Welsh Italians. Having worked at some of Wales’s finest restaurants, including with Steven Terry at The Hardwick in Abergavenny and as head chef at Ynyshir under Gareth Ward for four years, he has a huge amount of experience behind him.

In 2019 Nathan opened SY23 in Aberystwyth with an ethos of using the finest local and foraged produce cooked simply over a fire. Nathan takes regional produce very seriously, trying to source a lot of his ingredients from the SY23 postcode – from meat to flour to the wood he puts on the fire to cook with.

Nathan’s style of cooking takes inspiration from San Sebastian, Scandinavia and Japan. His menu for Great British Menu is inspired by Welsh pioneers linked to forestry and meteorology.

Originally from Anglesey in Wales, newcomer Ali believes Wales has the best larder in the world and is out to prove it in his menu. Ali has spent the last ten years in London working in some top kitchens with a range of cuisines including French restaurant Le Pont de la Tour, Anna Hansen’s The Modern Pantry, Jinjuu with its unique Korean dining, and as head chef and co-owner of Smoking Goat in Shoreditch. Ali is currently the head chef of Nutbourne Restaurant in Battersea, London, which is part of the Gladwin Brothers, and focuses on local and wild cookery. Ali’s food inspiration comes from his travels to Australia, South East Asia, and Malaysia. He is a firm believer in using the whole of the animal and likes to combine British ingredients with Thai flavours. His menu for the competition is eclectic with inspirations such as Enigma codebreaker Mair Russell Jones and the first suspension bridge which was in Anglesey.