Fairyhill’s Ten Mile Gower Menu – A Panoply Of Local Produce

Paul Davies, chef/partner at Fairyhill in Gower, together with his enthusiastic young kitchen team have designed a specially focussed menu to highlight their use of ingredients that they have long sourced from within a ten mile radius of the hotel.

Fairyhill is in the centre of the Gower Peninsula. It is conveniently between the wind swept salt marshes of the Bury Estuary and the Bristol Channel and rocky headlands of Pwll Du, Oxwich, Port Eynon and Rhossili. It is surrounded by some of the most fertile farmland renowned for its mild climate and a bounty of livestock and vegetables.

The kitchen at Fairyhill has always used the fine produce close at hand from farmers and fishermen of Gower. It was dubbed ‘a champion of local produce’ in the Good Food Guide over a decade ago. Now even closer links with local producers provide a host of seasonal foods for the ever changing menu. It aims to reflect the best seasonal produce and has a surprisingly broad range of ingredients at any one time.

The well known Penclawdd butcher Howells supplies the renowned salt marsh lamb from the marshes of Llanrhidian; Welsh Black beef is from the nearby Penrice Estate; Beynon’s Nicholston Farm provides a host of vegetables, including asparagus, beans, peas and soft fruit; lobster, crab and freshest fish such as bass, mullet, mackerel and flatfish come directly from local fishermen who deliver them at the end of a day’s angling. Closer still are supplies of goose eggs and herbs from a smallholding in Broughton; greens and watercress from the neighbouring Tyle House farm; and an endless supply of herbs, salads and duck eggs comes from their own Victorian walled garden at Fairyhill.

The menu presents these fine local ingredients in a series of dishes that skilfully combine traditional cooking with innovative use of these ingredients. Diners are tempted by delights such as Gower bass with garden greens and laverbread sauce; salt marsh lamb might come as a plate of delicately pink loin accompanied by a savoury lamb faggot with wild garlic. Desserts might include berries suspended in a jelly together with an iced soufflé or an exotic cheesecake.

Few restaurants in Britain can boast such a bounty of local suppliers, and no kitchen has embraced the ethos of local food more enthusiastically than the team at Fairyhill. Accolades over the years endorse how they have led the field in their sourcing and skilful use of the produce of the Gower Peninsula, all from within ten miles of the hotel’s kitchen door.

Fairyhill, Reynoldson Gower, SA3 1BS

For more information, visit Fairyhill.net.