Ultracomida - a Moor-ish (or more-ish) corner of Pembrokeshire

The skies took on that beautiful soft blue, the sun shone, the geese started massing on the banks of the River Teifi and September was here.

The hedgerows are heavy with sloes and blackberries and the house fell quiet as the slave labour children went back to school leaving me alone to harvest.

In a bit of a first for me, I engineered to have a day with each of Blue & Pink on their own before they went back to school. 'Quality time' if you can bear to call it that - although I'll come clean and admit to dressing up ' making sure both of them were in all respects complete kit-wise for the new term' as 'quality time'. I was particularly keen to spend some time with Blue who has been growing up at a frightening pace recently and (gasp) has just started secondary school. Good job I did the kit check though, as I had completely forgotten to get him rugby boots.

While Pink's outing of choice was a perfectly easy trip to the lovely Peapod Junction, a pottery painting cafe and shop stuffed with lovely things, situated north of us, and rather delightfully in the middle of nowhere between New Quay and Llangrannog,  Blue chose a slightly longer trip down to Pendine Sands, home of the Museum of Speed. Pendine Sands is, of course, at low tide, a vast expanse of flat beach on teh Carmarthenshire coast which gained notoriety for a short period in the 1920s as being the international home of the land speed record. This before speeds starting getting really silly - over 200mph for all you petrol heads that follow this blog - and the action moved to the States.

Anyway, to Pendine we went, Blue and I. A land of caravan parks, cafes and a huge MoD range. If you're in the area and have 15 minutes to kill, I thoroughly recommend the Museum of Speed. Marvellous value (it cost me £2 for both of us), and despite Blue's slightly bewildered pronouncement "Well, it's only got 1 car and 4 motorbikes", it did that car and those motorbikes very well. There's a good little film about the heyday of Pendine as the venue for record breaking, and just enough to occupy you (even someone like me who, let's be honest, has zero interest in cars other than knowing that they can get me from A to B) before you get bored.

15 minutes is all well and good, but what to do for the rest of the day? Well, about half way from our house to Pendine is the gorgeous Pembrokeshire town of Narberth - lovely shops, lovely cafes and home of the utterly fabulous Ultracomida deli & tapas bar. There's a branch in Aberystwyth too, and quite simply if you have any affinity with Spanish flavours at all, it's a 'must visit'. Blue is about as big a fan of chorizo and manchego as I am, so it didn't take much to persuade him that what he really wanted to do, given that we'd exhausted Pendine pretty quickly, was to see if we could grab a spot of tapas on our way home.



Ultracomida is a veritable treasure trove for foodies. Stuffed to the gunnels with all manner of moorish treats, food, drinks, oils, vinegars.... sigh...

Up till now, I've only managed forays into the deli for cheeses, chorizos and salamis, and just fabulous Spanish almonds which I could eat till they came out of my ears and I start rattling. On previous visits to Narberth, I have been thwarted either by time, or a heaving mass of people in the tapas bar, and have had to withdraw, clutching my deli counter prizes for treats at home.




Arrive at 11.30, however, and the breakfast crowd has departed, the lunch crowd not yet arrived. And while the full tapas menu isn't available till 12, we settled down to a platter of 'Embutidos' (cooked meats) and a 'Platter de quesos' (cheeses) plus complimentary olives cornichons and divine, nutty bread.

There's not much to say about it other than it was exactly what I was hoping for - and Blue loved it all too. It's a great thing to be able to share this love of food with him. The only thing he was slightly ambivalent about were the crisp rosemary flatbreads that came with the meats and cheeses, but I thought they were perfect.

There's a really convivial atmosphere promoted by the seating arrangements - no individual tables for 2 or 4, simply a couple of big tables where you grab a seat, plus a bar with high bar stools, which reminded me of the tapas bars I visited in Barcelona many years ago... 

Deeply satisfied, we perused the deli and chose a selection of meat to take home for the Husband and Pink to enjoy too, plus a tin of olives and some cooking chorizo. 

A thoroughly successful outing - and, calling in on the off chance, we even managed to score some rugby boots on sale in the sports shop in Cardigan, too.

Hampshire Tapas at Caviste - food & wine heaven (a review)

As you know, I am a big fan of good food (aren’t we all). I am also, you may have noticed, a fan of ‘local’ food, be that veg from the back garden or the Farmers’ Market, locally reared pork or blackberries foraged from the hedgerows round and about the village. 

Where we live we have some great independent shops, one of which is a wine merchant, Caviste. I should say now that I don’t pretend to buy all my wine here, or, in fact, that I know much about wine at all. On the other hand, I do like a good glass or two, and Caviste is where I sourced the Prosecco for my 40^th birthday party earlier in the year. If we are having people for dinner, I will head there with my menu in hand and a budget in my head and come away with bottles of loveliness and delight . When I have done this in the past, the wine that I have been recommended has always complimented the meal beautifully.

If you’d asked me before we moved here whether I would have bought wine from an independent wine merchant, I would have probably explained that it would be far too expensive. However, the reality is that it isn’t. They can, or course, sell you a bottle of wine costing £30, £50 or even (I believe) £500, but they also sell a fantastic range of ‘everyday drinking wines’ starting at £5 a bottle. Again, I can’t pretend to have tried them all – partly because the stock changes, but I have always enjoyed what I have come away with.

Now. What does all this have to do with local food? Well, I’d been aware that the shop had been refurbished and that a couple of tables had appeared in the windows, and thought nothing of it. Imagine, then, my excitement, when I walked passed a few days ago on the way back from a particularly muddy dog walk and spied a big sign outside announcing: Hampshire Tapas. I had to find out more, and deciding that there was no time like the present, I told the dog in no uncertain terms to be on his best behaviour, and went in.

Well, she who dares, wins, and as a result of that, I was delighted to be invited back (without the dog) on Friday lunchtime to have chat with Graham Devereux, the General Manager, over a platter of said tapas and a glass of extremely delicious red wine, which I can tell you was a 2012 Meerlust red from the Stellenbosch region of South Africa.

Hampshire Tapas is, I think, a totally genius idea. The tapas concerned are locally sourced, from independent producers in the county. The idea is that the intentionally limited selection will change according to the seasons and as Caviste discover more producers. When I had originally seen ‘tapas’, I had imagined the Spanish version made from local ingredients, but how much better to serve up the best of Hampshire in this form:  a slice of pork pie, Scotch egg, mozzarella made from a buffalo herd grazing the fields around Overton itself, and Tunworth cheese, all served with slices of rosemary and sea salt loaf and a lovely chutney.  

The pork pie is hand raised by Peter Lane whose business name  ‘I Cook You Eat’ says it all. The pie was meaty and well seasoned, a gorgeous pink, the jelly and pastry just right. I also got a sneaky sample of his game pie filling – now the Husband makes a pretty good game pie, but this is in a different league altogether. The Scotch Egg is from Newlyns Farm, made with their own pork and eggs. The egg was perfectly cooked and the ‘scotch’ (the sausage meat casing) was meaty and not too peppery, firm and not at all greasy – if you thought you didn’t like Scotch egg, the time might have come to change your mind. 2 cheeses: The Tunworth cheese is just a mouthful of heaven – honestly, if you ever come across it you must try it – it’s a soft brie type cheese with a subtle, nutty flavour. Not surprising that it is considered one of the best British cheeses, but what is amazing is that Stacey Hedges and Charlotte Bruce have only been making it since 2005. Finally, ‘Hampshire Tapas’ in Overton wouldn’t have been complete without something from the brilliant Laverstoke Park. I often encounter the Laverstoke herd of buffalo while walking the dog, so very appropriate that the platter included 2 little balls of creamy, smooth mozzarella, produced just outside the village.

2 of Jody Scheckter's Laverstoke Park herd of Buffalo

 

You can imagine what heaven I was in – amazing food and delicious wine in great surroundings. I have always loved the feel of Caviste – very calm and measured (and quite unlike the frantic pace of my usual day to day) and that hasn’t changed with the refurbishment – only now, you can sit down and drink it all in. I also love the idea that the selection of tapas on offer will change so you never quite know what will be available, only that it will be of exceptional quality. And I should say that while the food isn’t yet available for online purchase, the wine most definitely is...

As you’ll probably have gathered, I was lucky enough to have been invited to try the tapas, but I can tell you that the platter I ate was their ‘Vineyard Platter’, for which I would have gladly paid £7. You can also choose to have the individual dishes. In addition, while I wasn’t required to provide a positive review, you will appreciate that it would be hard not to, given everything I have described. I can’t for an opportunity to get a babysitter sorted and head up there with the Husband for an early evening aperitif, as a great kick start to an evening.