Emily in Wales 🇫🇷 Cheesy Trips & Fish and Chips
Bore da!
I’ve just returned from a short trip to North Wales, reporting on, among other things, cheese and the UK’s only residential library.
(Tough life.)
I had plotted out most of the trip ahead of time, but unlike on my Auvergne periple just before the pandemic, where my days were so intensely scheduled as to make me, frankly, a danger on the road, this time, I left more than enough time for surprises, which is how I ended up saying yes to quite a few unplanned stops.
I learned, for instance, that if the guy renting you a car asks about your destination and immediately draws you a quick-and-dirty map guiding you to his favorite chippy… that’s exactly where you should go. (It was called Fish Tram Chips and was in the Victorian seaside town of Llandudno. I had time to either eat fish or ride the hundred-year-old tram, and I opted for fish and I do not regret my decision, especially as I paid extra for the house-made fry seasoning, which tasted like Old Bay with a little bit of a kick.)
A planned stopover in the town of Mold (I mean, given the cheesy focus of my trip, how couldn't I?) led me to discover The Olive Tree, where owner Richard told me to keep an eye out for Black Sheep, a rare ewe’s milk cheddar he didn't have in stock on that particular day…
…but that I did find at Bodnant Welsh Foods, with its gorgeous views over the local estuary.
While staying at the gorgeous Gladstone's residential library (more on that forthcoming for the BBC), I had originally planned to keep mainly to myself: I had designs on assembling a picnic lunch from the nearby Hawarden Estate farm shop and working in the gorgeous reading rooms whenever I wasn't conducting interviews.
But after speaking with Warden Andrea Russell and Director of Collections and Research Louisa Yates, not only did I opt to join the Anglican service that takes place every weekday morning, which Russell concluded with a Pablo Neruda poem that tunneled straight into my soul, but I also opted to join for dinner in the dining room, after Russell and Yates described it as a steadfastly social affair that welcomed conversation (and frankly gave me major high-school-dining-hall vibes – and not in a bad way at all.)
I pulled up a chair and dug into a cheese plate featuring not only three local Welsh cheeses some of the most heavenly brown-sugar-walnuts I’ve ever tried…
…the leftovers of which I squirreled away au cas où, only to find they provided me with the backbone for my dinner when, the following night, the very-remote (and very-beautiful) youth hostel I’d booked in Snowdonia proved to leave much to be desired by way of self-catering. (The staff was bemused but totally game to sell me a side of microwaved peas to go with my painstakingly conserved leftovers.)
Carrie Rimes of Cosyn Cymru welcomed me for a tour and tasting, not to mention a long and eye-opening interview for an upcoming story for Culture. She also recommended I check out & Caws in picturesque Menai Bridge, where I stumbled upon what, since the onset of pasteurization chez Baron Bigod, is the only raw milk Brie-style cheese being made in Britain.
I sampled the fudgy, mushroomy Caws Abaty at South Stack, which my AirBnb host on Anglesey recommended for the sunset views over the lighthouse. I had no knife, so I had to rip it straight from the wedge.
No regrets.
I had always planned to go to Whistlestop on the Pier for what, I learned over the course of some pre-trip sleuthing, makes one of the best Welsh rarebits in all the land. Saturday, however, the weather proved grim, and the little pavilion on the Bangor pier was closed.
I took the time to circle back after leaving the Eisteddfod, a celebration of Welsh language and culture, on my last day, a sunny if cold Sunday. I was rewarded with perhaps the best iteration of this simple sandwich I've ever tried, rife with a hearty helping of English mustard.
And seeing as I’d given myself more than enough of a getting-lost buffer (about two hours – wholly reasonable given my lack of sense of direction), I felt safe veering 15 minutes off-course briefly to snag a photo of the Coop in the town with the longest, most unpronounceable name.
So what’s my takeaway from all this? What wisdom will I glean?
Plan well, that’s evident. Doing all the research in advance gave me a skeleton for my trip and guided me towards some spots I never would have discovered otherwise. But also – and just as importantly – leave time and space to veer off-course. You never know what you might discover when you leave things to chance.
Cheese of the Week
Caws Abaty is an organic, raw-milk Brie-style cheese is made by Roger Yorke in a microdairy near Aberystwyth, in mid-Wales. After working as a balloon pilot, an actor, and a property developer, Yorke has only recently made forays into the production of artisan cheese, and frankly, the fact that he's only got two years of experience is baffling. This cheese is delicate yet flavorsome, with loads of mushroomy notes and a dense, fudgy interior even locals of Brie wouldn't be able to turn up their noses at. I’m only sorry I didn't get more!
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.
What I'm Eating
Back in Paris, ACÀ Pigalle definitely scratches an itch, with a menu of tacos and quesadillas featuring both corn and flour tortillas and a house-made hot sauce that actually packs some heat. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france and on the blog.
What I'm Writing
1. Le cake is not what it sounds like – but this humble dish may be France's best-kept culinary secret for summertime picnics, apéros, and more. For Saveur.
2. Milk punch was one of Benjamin Franklin's favorite cocktails, and this silky, beautiful drink is turning up on menus at the Bay's best cocktail lounges. For InsideHook.
3. This shrimp burger recipe is for advanced burger-makers only – and it starts with about a pound of Key West shrimp. For InsideHook.
What I'm Saying
While English already boasts the word author, it has also borrowed the French term auteur, a word that evokes a certain artist-driven film genre. This week on Navigating the French, here to explore what that means about the French penchant for near-deification of artists is Dr. Gemma King, a professor at the Australia National University specializing in French and cinema.
What I'm Reading
1. I read Welsh (Plural) in the days leading up to my trip – not to mention each night before going to sleep and each morning before heading out on the day’s adventures. It was eye-opening to explore the ways in which Welsh identity has been so fractured through time. Essays approached the ways in which the very idea of Welsh identity is linked (or not) to language, to whiteness, to religion; different essayists explored untranslatable concepts like hiraeth and cynefin. Of course, in an anthology, there will always be essays that resonate more than others; I particularly loved Hanan Issa's “Have You Heard the One About the Niquabi on a Bus?” and Morgan Owen's “Ghost or Reflection? Merthyr, the Welsh Language and Identity.”
2. This lovely ode to the practice of going out to buy envelopes comes from none other than one of my literary idols, Kurt Vonnegut. (Anyone who knows me knows I do the same with citrus to keep my head from popping right off.) In InsideHook.
3. This oral history of Eli’s, which includes no apologies for the $29 ham-and-cheese sandwich but also includes the quote “because it’s a terrible cheese, and I refuse to sell it.” In Taste.
A bientôt !