THE FINE DINING RESTAURANT

FERNERY, NARBERTH

I’m sitting in front of a roaring fire, surrounded by antique furniture and tapestries, a champagne cocktail in hand. A waitress lays down a plate of canapes before floating back into the kitchen. The Grove hotel’s AA Rosetteawarded restaurant, Fernery, serves some of the finest food in Pembrokeshire.

“Using ingredients from our kitchen garden is important, as it helps keep the dishes as fresh as possible,” executive head chef Dougie Balish tells me during the relative quiet between services. “I’m classically trained, but unusually my menu isn’t too rich.”

I sit down to the tasting menu, which starts with sourdough rolls that are so light and crispy they feel like Yorkshire puddings. They’re followed by a wafer-thin waffle of 36-month-aged parmesan. Each indentation of the waffle is filled with either parmesan cream, anchovies, Welsh air-dried ham or salsa verde. It’s a colourful chequerboard, with flavours of salty fish, cheese and fresh herbs from the garden.

The dishes all look like works of art and, although they’re petite (there are 10 courses to get through, after all), they pack a real punch. A single, hand-dived Scottish scallop sits on a bed of truffle and madeira sauce and comes topped with homegrown chives; Snowdonia venison is served with blueberries grown in the kitchen garden; and thyme has been crystallised by the chefs and carefully positioned atop honeycomb filled with sweet ice cream and earl grey parfait. These are all unusual — and delicious — flavour combinations, but it’s the use of ingredients from the grounds that imbues the menu with a very precise sense of place. thegrove-narberth.co.uk

From left: Snowdonia venison served with blueberries at the Grove hotel’s Fernery restaurant; exterior of the Grove hotel