Ynyshir’s Gareth Ward and Amelia Eiriksson on their new restaurant Gwen

Our sister title The Good Food Guide published on Monday a story about a new restaurant from Ynyshir’s Gareth Ward and Amelia Eiriksson.

Gwen – after Ward’s mother – will be an ‘intimate’ space comprising just eight covers, with Ynyshir head chef Corrin Harrison leading the kitchen. It will be the team’s second permanent restaurant and housed in the former Number Twenty One in Machynlleth, about six miles north of the flagship site.

Naturally, anything from Ward and his chefs is something of particular interest. We caught up with the chef and his partner and creative director Amelia Eiriksson to find out more.

Gareth and Amelia:

‘Gwen will be the second permanent restaurant by the team behind Ynyshir in Wales. The name comes from Gareth’s mum, and we all just fell in love with it.

We never really decided that we wanted to do a second venue but had always said that if we did it would be in this area. When we heard that Laura and Sam were planning to close Twenty One we just gave them a call out of interest, as we’d always loved their little restaurant and didn’t want it to be lost as a great venue for the town. This just planted a seed and we decided to go for it and make it ours.

The concept is for a wine bar at the front, run as a casual wine and coffee shop in the day, and a bar in the evening. We’ll just serve simple tasty food such as meat and cheese boards, paninis and soups, croissants and great bread.

All in a venue designed to match the main Ynyshir restaurant. The focus will be like our wine list here, based around sustainably sourced, tasty, natural, low intervention wines. It will be collated by Rory Eaton (Ynyshir’s wine and beverage director) and Amelia and overseen from here.

In the back, we are planning on having an intimate 8–10-seater restaurant, serving a tasting menu from the open kitchen, run by our current head chef Corrin Harrison. We feel he’s ready for his own kitchen and really want to be behind it.

He’ll serve a menu which he and Gareth will plan and design, using all the same ingredients as we use at Ynyshir but in different ways. It’s a chance to have a bit of fun with the dishes and make something of the same quality as Ynyshir, but able to be priced much more in line with a neighbourhood restaurant. We don’t have a set opening date yet, but watch this space!’

@gwenrestaurant