Hotel Hit Squad: There’s more to Wright’s Food Emporium than the food – not least self-catering cottages perfect for families
It has been a long and arduous journey but, finally, we make it to the outskirts of Bethlehem and spot a stable. “Think the baby Jesus is in there?” I ask the kids. "Look, the three wise men," says my husband, pointing to a group of gentlemen bearing roll-ups and Walkers crisps.
We are driving through Bethlehem, Carmarthenshire (not Nazareth) – a pretty farming village whose 150 residents are put through the mill six weeks a year by hordes of grockles who have travelled (from afar but unwisely) to get a Bethlehem postmark on their festive missives.
Our own pilgrimage, however, ends at nearby Wright’s Food Emporium. We have been coming for a decade, re-routing trips to the Welsh family in order to bow down before the deli’s altars of smoked meats from Monmouthshire, its small estate and organic wines, its homemade chutneys… The café and restaurant’s Welsh rarebit with ’nduja is a religious experience. And it now has self-catering accommodation that is perfect for families too. It is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.
I love Wales. There is nowhere on earth so wet yet wonderful. No people who can drink or sing with equal fervour. But even I will admit that its dining options have, traditionally, been more reflective of the weather than the spirit of this great nation. Soggy. Grey. Reminiscent of Iceland.
However, this is changing, and Wright’s Food Emporium is leading the food revolution. Owners Simon and Maryann Wright celebrate their produce, creating dishes that are witty and wonderful without straying too far from the local soul – bubble and squeak with a poached egg and salumi; coppa with a celeriac remoulade.
The flavours are uncompromising, the atmosphere completely inclusive. Nothing costs much over a tenner. Farmers stomp in for a breakfast sarnie. Purple rinses natter around cake. It is, quite simply, heaven. Heroic, even, in a landscape whose beauty belies its poverty and whose farmers and producers truly deserve a champion. There should be a Wright’s Food Emporium in every rural county.
And, indeed, for every family. What do you want when you eat out with kids? Really, please get in touch and tell me. The subject fascinates me, since so many restaurants appear to have conflated the experience of “having had a baby” with “having had a lobotomy”.
Here’s my list. One: great wine (a must, when your companions are as still as squirrels) that doesn’t require me to remortgage (ditto). Wright’s comes up trumps here. Two: a menu that hasn’t confused the concept of “fun” with “fish fingers and finger food”. Wright’s downsizes adult dishes for children and encourages sharing. Three: an atmosphere that’s relaxed, while not appearing to have been modelled on a wipe-clean crèche.
Wright’s is carved out of the ground floor of a 19th-century coaching inn, though walking through its rooms is more like exploring a bohemian country house – one long dining table is found in a room lined with wines, fairy lights and vinyl records you can rifle through and play. Turn the corner and tiny tables huddle around a roaring fire. Around another corner you’ll find a bright front room with a red range cooker and cakes oozing.
And then there’s the accommodation. Three-bedroomed Wright’s Cottage is actually attached to the emporium, while two-bedroomed Buarth y Bragwr cottage sits in a courtyard behind. We stayed in the former – opening directly into a bright, modern sitting room, while the bedrooms (all double, one with a cot), two bathrooms and a big airy kitchen are all found upstairs.
Bedding is from cult clothing and homeware brand Toast (headquartered in Llandeilo, just up the road, where the permanent sale rails are worth a pilgrimage of their own). Vintage chairs and posters are sourced from the Wrights’s gastronomic adventures around Europe. The kitchen is professionally stocked with Opinel knives, home-made bread and jam, artisan coffee and teas, organic milk and butter, though you’d be mad not to have breakfast at the emporium.
There is only one downside. The emporium is perched directly on a relatively well-used road, with a smart but uninspiring modern housing development opposite. A wood burner and heavier curtains in the cottage would go a long way to cocooning you from both. Still, the wider position is perfect for families. Wales has more castles per square mile than any other country in Europe and a string of the finest are squeezed right here into the Tywi valley. Excellent for the aspiring sprite, fairy or knight in your life. Epicures and aesthetes, meanwhile, are unusually spoilt by nearby Llandeilo.
All this means that the cottage ranks as an eight; the emporium a 10. Which, given that the two are inexorably interlinked, leaves us with a nine. And very full stomachs.
Wright’s Cottage costs £120 a night during the week; £190 on weekends.
