The masses
He went on to work as a chef in France and lived and worked in Spain and Australia before deciding to return to Wales and “get a proper job”. He completed a master’s degree in renewable energy in Machynlleth, then took an office job in Swindon as a sustainability adviser – but Wales and the sea were calling.
“Within six months, I was missing home too much,” he says. “The old harbourmaster’s office came up for rent in Tenby. I wanted to take it on as a pintxo and tapas place with a focus on Welsh seafood. I put a lot of work into the proposal, but I didn’t get it, so I thought I’d put that work to good use.”
A friend of his had a farm shop so he started running an occasional seafood stall outside it, offering the kind of food he had envisaged for Tenby – all the time still travelling back to work his desk job in Swindon.
He called his food outlet Café Mor, using a logo that a housemate in Swindon had designed for him. It was a hit, so he broadened his reach, going to markets in St David’s, Newport and Tenby. After two years things were going so well he realised he could afford to quit the Swindon job and move back to Wales full time. To bolster his income, he started taking Café Mor on the road to festivals.
“My first big festival was Hay Festival, so I really went in at the deep end,” he says. “I started the first day with no money at all – it was all tied up in stock and pitch fees, but luckily it was a huge success, otherwise it could have been a short career.”
By now Café Mor was a reclaimed fishing boat on wheels and it spent the next few years doing the festival circuit, winning Best Street Food in the UK in 2011 – but by 2012 his first daughter had been born and his mind had turned to ways to make a living closer to home. A pitch was available at Freshwater West – usually the domain of ice cream vans – but he was awarded the spot and the choice couldn’t have been better.
“There’s an old seaweed hut down there which was part of the inspiration behind starting the whole thing – and it’s a spot where people pick laver seaweed, so Freshwater to me was the number one choice,” he says.
Café Mor became a destination in its own right, with Jonathan steadfastly pursuing his mission of converting people to the joys of seaweed. People started wanting to buy the seaweed sauces and seasonings he made for his food, so a deli range followed and after that came Barti Ddu spiced seaweed rum in 2017.
Over time he became bolder about encouraging people to try seaweed. He had initially offered a full list of well-known sauces with his breakfast baps and lobster buns, but he eventually decided to reduce the offering to just seaweed or chilli sauce.
“It’s quite nice changing people’s perceptions,” he smiles. “I like it when the kids are really reluctant to try something and then they come back and say, ‘That was amazing.’ I like pushing people out of their comfort zones and laverbread does that completely.”
With that in mind, Café Mor uses laverbread not only in sauces but also in cakes and brownies,