Welsh Food

Traditional Welsh cookery originates from the meal of the country's working peoples. Bread, meat and dairy products were common, with very few vegetables, other than leeks and cabbages, available. For this reason, the leek has now become a national symbol of Wales. If you are eager to try some traditional dishes when visiting Wales, contact us today and we will help you prepare the perfect food itinerary.

Cawl should be top of your list and is a stew made from bacon, Welsh lamb or beef, cabbage, and leeks. The Welsh Oggie is a pastry with a traditional filling is that of lamb, mint and vegetables or potatoes, onions, leeks and beef and these became popular as a miners lunch. The Glamorgan sausage, is sometimes made using pork, however, it is usually made as a vegetarian dish made of cheese, leeks and breadcrumbs. It became popular during World War 2 when meat was harder to come by.

Wales also has a strong tradition of fishing and a love for seafood, and another of it's popular, Laverbread, is made by boiling an edible seaweed for hours before pureeing it.

The importance of breads in Welsh culinary traditional can be seen by the fact that many of it's most famous traditional dishes are breads, or bread based. Welsh rarebit is a dish made with a savoury sauce of melted cheese, spices and various other ingredients poured over slices of toasted bread.

Bara brith is a yeast bread either enriched with dried fruit or made with self-raising flour. And one of the oldest recipes in Wales is for Crempog, a Welsh pancake made with flour, buttermilk, eggs, vinegar and salted butter, which are cooked on a griddle.

The best spot to find cawl is at Cafe Castan in Cardiff, and Madame Fromage's, in the same city, is renowned for it's Welsh Rarebit. If you're keen to try some of the other dishes, we'll be sure to point you in the right direction when preparing your itinerary.

A unique and unusual aspect of the culinary history of Wales, is the impact of the Italians who arrived to work in coal mines and brought with them Italian ice cream and cafes which have now become an important part of Welsh food culture.

While traditional dishes were relatively simple due to a lack of ingredients, since the 1990s there has been a massive improvement in the quality or the meat and vegetable produce which has coincided with an huge increase in the quantity and quality of great restaurants and gastropubs, and as of 2019 Wales has 7 Michelin star restaurants.

Get in touch today and we can create for you an itinerary of Wales which includes an exploration of best of Welsh cuisine, old and new.