This was our splurge meal. It was also one of the best meals I had while in Wales…read more The food here is more about quality and less about quantity. If you are an American and reading this review, you will know what I'm talking about. We eat too much as a society. I'll admit it myself. I am used to getting and eating a lot of food. It is amazing I am not overweight. Anyway I went off on a tangent there. Sue and I read about this place in a travel book she had for Wales. We decided on the airplane that if we were going to have one really good meal while in Wales, it would be at the Walnut Tree. Not exactly around the corner from where we were staying in Barmouth, but we had plans to be down around this part of the country so it was a no brainer. We got here quite early on a weekday evening. The night was beautiful and we decided to secure a table outside. Before we left all of the tables were filled. Not sure if that was the case inside as well as the only time I was inside was when we initially walked in and asked if we could sit outside. Started out with a refreshing elderflower drink. We decided against alcoholic drinks as we were a distance away from our home base and had a long drive back to get there. The drink was the perfect drink for a warm summer night. After our drinks came, they also brought out a small fish cake to whet the whistle. A nice extra touch that was unexpected. Our food started out with a few appetizers. A Panzanella Salad along with monkfish with tomato, chilli and ginger. Good choices both on the starters. The monkfish (similar taste to lobster) was pretty damn amazing if I have to say so myself. I just did. For my main I had suckling pig, morcilla (blood sausage) and empanadilla. The suckling pig came bone in. It was fun getting every little piece of pig that I could get. Presentation was A+ and the quality was too. Nothing wrong with this meal at all. When it came time for dessert, our server (one of a few that took care of us on this night) asked if we had any room for "puddings". He pronounced it poo-dings. You have to love the Welsh accent. We did and made room for the orange and almond cake. A good palate cleanser. This was a 5 star meal if there ever was a 5 star meal. Again, you aren't going to get a ton of food here, but you will happily leave satisfied and you won't have a gut bomb to deal with. I highly recommend this restaurant.

I love everything about this restaurant. The food is amazing and doesn't cost the earth, but the…read moreprice does limit the amount of times I eat here. The service is great and the cocktails are outstanding. The dessert menu is wonderful and the flavour is always there. The restaurant is pretty small but that's not a complaint, it does make the noise level high. The toilets are outside but again that's not a problem. The location is out of the way but always worth the journey.

The other main store at Cribbs at the other end from John Lewis is a two-storey M&S with the food…read morehall, mens and xmas bumpf downstairs and the women's section upstairs. The selection is OK, but has dwindled in recent years from their more expensive or exclusive ranges back to their staple Per Una and cashmere jumpers choices. Their shoes remain, mystifyingly, some of the kinkiest in the Mall bar Kurt Geiger so even if thought of shopping in M&S makes you think of your grandmother's twin set and pearls then brave it and check out the shoes. Staff are always helpful in here, especially good as its such a big store, and will help you find things or fetch you different sizes of clothes whilst you stay in the changing room.

The M&S Deli serves reasonable food, largely because the cooking is automated. For instance, the…read moremanager explained to us that the pasta is cooked automatically by a special machine, so why we had undercooked pasta was inexplicable. Yet, it was undercooked. However, my penne and pesto was lovely and was just what I was looking for. We were told we would have to wait till 12 noon before ordering lunch (it was 11.55am), but it still arrived at about 12.25 anyway. This underlines the real reason we wouldn't return to M&S Deli: the food is reasonably tasty and reasonably priced, and the wine is good because it's straight off the M&S shelves, but the service is terrible! We were there for an hour, which was way longer than we expected. This was because of poor all-round service. While we were there, we heard at least three other complaints, with one couple actually leaving. I'm sure this isn't the sort of 'experience' M&S wants to encourage. Our waiter wasn't polite, wasn't attentive, was blasé and had dirty fingernails (yet still handled the raw Parmesan cheese). Get the staff sorted and the rest will follow.

What used to be a thriving country pub with a great atmosphere and family friendly vibe, has now…read moreturned into a quiet, clinical and disappointing restaurant. As a youngster I used to love going to The Golden Heart with my family. It felt really comfortable and had loads of room inside and amazing front and back gardens. Unfortunately that has long but disappeared and the bar now feels more like a waiting room and the restaurant has now soul. It is a real shame because the food is really good. It's a bit over price for the area, but good all the same. The drinks are crazy prices for this side of town: £4.80 for a pint of ale! This place has so much potential, but unfortunately doesn't deliver. Such a shame!

I went to The Golden Heart yesterday for a Christmas lunch with my Mum, Nan and sisters and was…read morereally disappointed! We were told that they had a lot of Christmas lunch bookings and so we'd have a wait for food, so we got there early.... And were the first table in there. Within half an hour there were a few largish tables in (4-8 people) but the restaurant was by no means full, in fact not even half full. The drink prices are high for the area, so I chose the cheapest Rose on the menu, which I assumed was the house wine at £5 for a large glass. Soda water was charged at £1 a glass, most places will include this free of charge especially if you are eating. Most of us chose to eat from the set price lunch menu at £11.95 for two or £13.95 for three courses... But this menu only included flatbreads and a small choice of mains dishes. They hadn't had their fish delivery so the fish dishes were unavailable, but they did have fish cakes which is what I chose. When the food finally arrived (after an hour of waiting) it did look reasonably nice, presentation wise, and my family liked their flatbreads but my fish cakes were horrible! They didn't taste much of fish, more like cheese - I honestly would have guessed baked Camembert or something and that's not what I was after at all as I'm not much of a cheese fan! So we did a bit of swapping around and I had some of the duck flatbread which as nice enough. We all chose a pudding, they took another 30 minutes to arrive and weren't warm as they should be... I had treacle tart with ginger cream - didn't taste a bit like ginger! When we got the bill I realised I'd been charged £7 for my wine, so I questioned it and apparently the house wine is not the cheap one, it's a few choices down on the menu and costs more???!! I don't know anywhere else I've been where the house wine is not the first listed and cheapest on the menu??! Very bizarre! There was no goodwill gesture either just a brief and miserable 'sorry' from what I assumed was the manager on the day. All in all it wasn't a pleasant experience, there was a frosty reception from most staff apart from a girl on the bar, who was very nice, a ridiculous wait in a restaurant no one would class as busy at all (who knows how they would cope on a busy Mothers Day!) food wasn't up to scratch, and drinks overpriced. I've been going to the Golden Heart since I was a kid and it used to be one of the best pubs in the area for families in the summer and it was relatively cheap and cheerful back then... Its transformation into a trendy country pub initially gave it a 'quality' status and we would go for special occasions for a nice meal, but since I feel it has gone downhill and as a result you are paying over the odds for nothing special and so I wouldn't recommend it, sadly!

This is a lovely, informal cafe in Agincourt Square behind the famous Shire Hall. With comfy sofas…read moreand things to entertain the kids, it's a great place to relax with a coffee or afternoon tea. The lunch menu is extensive, largely home cooked and great value. Afternoon tea is a treat. And the service is lovely.

If you're looking for a pretty basic meal, then this is the place for…read more The Inn promoted the fact that it was the oldest pub in Wales. If that was true, you'd have thought that the owner would have looked after it better. The food was OK.

Set in the village of Llanvihangel Crucomey (try saying that in one go), and just outside…read moreAbergavenny, this is reputed to be the oldest Inn in Wales! Now I'm not sure if this is entirely true, but I did find many of the reminders of its time, such as the old courtroom where capitol punishment was imposed, to be a bit spooky (yet fascinating)! Perhaps due to its creepy atmosphere, or more likely due to the fantastic weather on the day we visited, we decided to sit out in the pub courtyard, to enjoy our simply delicious ploughmans lunch. There is accommodation at the Inn, including two beautifully traditional rooms both with their own four poster beds. However given the Skirrid's reputation for ghostly happenings, I'm not sure I'll be braving a night their anytime soon!

A smaller store still in the Cribbs Mall that has relocated from the larger store downstairs to the…read moreMarks & Spencer's end of the mall. There's still a decent selection of CDs, DVDs and other merchandise. Staff are friendly and will do their best to help you find an item you're looking for. Having a much smaller footprint than the previous store, the actual selection on display is obviously less, but still sufficient for a browse. I've always found something new I've wanted in stock.

Although normally ambivalent to megastore music monster HmmmmmV, I always find myself sucked into…read morethis store at Cribbs like a vortex, coming out dazed and confused an hour later with several items that I had been meaning to buy for sometime. I think it being one floor it just has the space for you to drift from section to section and find yourself looking at areas you wouldn't normally rifle through, triggering that memory of the great night down the Hatchett when you find some Rammstein CDs in the metal section or pandering to your inner child with a copy of The Princess Bride. Several pay points make it easy to get in and out if you know what you are looking for, good deals most of the year round on all media.

Walking in here is like going into a time warp circa 1960,s its a greasy spoon cafe on the edge of…read moreFilton airfield frequented by workers in the nearby factory.My car blew a fuse just nearby so I waited for the repair operative to show up. Had a cup of tea and a belly buster breakfast it was ace and the tea kept comng. Not sure what hours this place keeps but it was open late lunch time The over all decor is definately dated but the food was good. Plastic tableclothes making a comeback here

Welshcake took me here on our way to Nanternis back in April 2008. It was--as he would…read moresay--stonking. The inn itself is cozy, but everything in the U.K. countryside seems cozy to me. I felt like I might see Bilbo Baggins at any moment, but if I did he'd be wearing Burberry. It's not a mid-grade pub by any means, though the front room is set up as such. We dined in the back room, which consisted of about six tables and a wee fireplace. The decor was rustic and the rooms were clean. Our meal began with a butternut-squash type amuse-bouche, which made our eyes pop in delight and set the tone for the rest of the meal. The soda bread was equally amazing. I ordered the scallops, which were divine and accompanied by a mushroom "marmalade," and Welshie had the local Welsh rib eye, (which I sampled--divine). He's always on about Welsh black beef--it's a delight any visitor to Wales should sink his or her teeth into. While I've categorized this as British, this is not standard, stodgy, British country fare. The chef is obviously French-trained (though maybe I'm wrong), inventive and experimental, serving up accessible, classy mainstay dishes alongside mind-bending and palate-pleasing "risks." I've been waiting for Yelp to go U.K.-side just so I could review the Griffin. We will always go back to this gorgeous little house of deliciousness when we are in Wales. Top notch!

After a beautiful day walking in the Brecon Beacons with people 30 years older than us but…read moreapproximately 30 times fitter, we decided to go all out and head for the Griffin, despite smelling and looking basically quite bad. The Inn is a cosy, well kept place with a nice bar and lounge as well as the restaurant which spills out into the tack room where we were seated. Like the other reviewers, I found the amuse-bouche of soup - broccoli this time - absolutely delicious (unlike the other reviewers, I had no idea what amuse-bouche was until I read this page). Squash soup to start was rich, spicy and creamy, the flavour of the vegetable only being strengthened by the other ingredients. The smoked salmon fish cakes were about as good as fish cakes can be - all about the fish and lightly crunchy. Main courses were also fantastic - pork belly was sweet and juicy, served with pancetta and I think mash - the accompaniments were not as excellent. The other main, suckling pig, was a huge hit and came with a tasty selection of roasted vegetables. Dessert was lemon tart, for which I didn't have particularly high expectations, but it was about the best I have ever had and - bonus - came with delicious blackcurrent sorbet. The other one we tried was some kind of chocolate/banana confection which was intensely good. The barman was very helpful in suggesting sherry, wine for the main course and pudding wine, the last of which was particularly outstanding. Service otherwise was all right but not particularly attentive and complicated by the fact that three people were sharing service of our table. Also, they made a major mistake with the bill that had I not been paying attention would have cost us about £25. This was related to us ordering a starter from the set menu and a main from a la carte. We heard someone else doing the same and being assured it was fine but when we asked they said this was only for guests staying at the Inn. Quite the put down!