By Lianne Kolirin, CNN
File photo. Photo: 123RF
A British restaurant with two Michelin stars has been given a one-star hygiene rating after food standards inspectors visited the premises in November.
Ynyshir, which offers a 30-course tasting menu, is the only restaurant in Wales with two Michelin stars. The price of the five-hour experience, which the prestigious Michelin guide describes as "truly unique," starts at £468 (NZ$1,090).
But now the restaurant has hit the headlines for less positive reasons. Inspectors from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which aims to protect the public by ensuring food safety, delivered a damning hygiene report after visiting the site on 5 November, giving it a one-star rating out of five.
The inspectors said "major improvement" was necessary in the management of food safety. The cleanliness and condition of the building and facilities were found to require improvement, while the hygiene of handling food was found to be "generally satisfactory."
The restaurant, which has rooms for guests to stay overnight, is in a remote location near Machynlleth in Ceredigion, just outside Snowdonia National Park.
According to the Michelin Guide, Ynyshir's tasting menu sees head chef and owner Gareth Ward "take diners on a playful culinary journey around the globe." The listing praises the restaurant for "using outstanding produce prepared with superb craft."
It says of Ward, who bought into the business three years after joining as head chef 13 years ago: "He has a particular reverence for Japanese cuisine, with sashimi and A5 Wagyu beef likely to appear on the surprise menu of around 30 vibrant servings, all using outstanding produce prepared with superb craft."
Ynyshir was named Britain's restaurant of the year in both 2022 and 2023. The website of the National Restaurant Awards describes the establishment, which has an in-house DJ, as "offering a tasting menu of in-your-face, Asian-influenced food and a rambunctious atmosphere."
The Food Hygiene Rating program, which the FSA runs in partnership with local authorities, is intended to give consumers "more informed choices about where to buy and eat food." It ranks establishments from zero ("urgent improvement is required") to five ("hygiene standards are very good").
In an interview with the BBC, Ward insisted he was "not embarrassed" by the rating and said that one of the things that the inspectors called into question was Ynyshir's use of raw ingredients.
"We buy in the best ingredients from around the world and a lot of it I serve raw," he told the BBC.
"I'm buying sashimi-grade fish from Japan and they're questioning, 'well, we don't know the water, so how do we know it's sashimi grade?'
"Well, it is sashimi grade, this stuff's eaten raw all over the world and, just because our rules don't fit their rules, they're questioning it."
Aged ingredients were also scrutinized, he said. "I've got a salt chamber for ageing fish but they obviously don't like the idea of ageing stuff."
He acknowledged that the restaurant's paperwork had not been up to the standard required and that he and his team have acted "immediately" to rectify this and other issues, the BBC reported.
"My standards never drop below 100 percent," he said.
"I'm not at all ashamed but I am disappointed. I'm not sat here thinking 'oh my god, I'm embarrassed, I've done something wrong', because we haven't. What we have done is something different."
CNN has contacted Ward and Ynyshir for comment.
-CNN
