January 12, 2017
When we were leaving Washington, DC, a lot of friends said that though they envied the country lifestyle, they're not sure they could live without good city restaurants. Well friends, now that we've found Dylan's, we have both.
Granted, the restaurant is in Criccieth. And while according to GoogleMaps Criccieth is only 26 miles away from home it's nonetheless an hour and a half drive. But counting Metro waiting time, etc, really it's the same thing as living in Virginia and going to dinner in DC. Probably.
The main difference, of course, is that in Criccieth - unlike in DC - you enter a lovely art deco, glass-fronted restaurant on a gorgeous beach with sweeping sea and mountain views.
Planning my holidays around free bottles of wine
As I mentioned in my blog about Cwrw Llŷn Brewery, after having quite a few proseccos P and I accosted several food stall staff at the Portmeirion food festival. This included a woman holding a sandwich board advertising the restaurant we'd just bought wonderful skinny fries from - Dylan's. As we learned after being way over enthusiastic Americans with her for a few minutes, this was the same restaurant that our property agent had told us about in our first few weeks in Wales, that we'd been meaning to get to.
Hearing this, she gave us a gift certificate for a free bottle of wine in the Criccieth restaurant in January or February. Enthusiastic about the fact that my birthday was in the normally horrid month of January and that this could give us something to do, she advised that maybe we'd want to stay the night if we were having a bottle of wine.
Overly suggestible, that's exactly what I decided to do, and that's how we found ourselves staying as the only guests at a promenade-front Criccieth B&B with panoramic sea, castle and mountain views, and walking along the beachfront through really painful hail to the Criccieth branch of the original Menai-Straits favorite local-ingredient focused Dylan's.
Did I mention we got free wine?
The restaurant itself was a lovely space, open, airy and with whole walls of floor to ceiling windows to frame the view (during the day - it being nighttime in the winter, of course we didn't actually have a view). Besides that, I was particularly impressed with the calendar of events on the table - they have lesser known wine region nights, Welsh cultural evenings, and all manner of reasons to come up and eat here.
I'm not much of a food writer - but sufficed to say everything was great. I *think* Dylan's is known for pizza and fresh seafood, so I got the 'Drunken Mussels' - mussels steamed in Welsh cider, leeks, bacon, and finished with tarragon and cream - with a side of the skinny chips. Although I got this as a second choice - as unfortunately they didn't have the grilled lobster I'd originally wanted (I know, I get fancy when you give me a free bottle of wine) - and although it really would have gone better with cider than with a bottle of red wine, they were really, really, really good. Delicious in fact. As good or better than many of the mussels I've gotten in France or Belgium.
The only problem is that they came with lovely sourdough bread, which wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that we'd also ordered the bread platter as an appetizer, and may have slightly overdone ourselves on bread for two people.
So, debating whether to surreptitiously stuff the remaining bread in our pockets for our hike in the morning (because you can dress me up but you can't take me anywhere), I swore there was no way I could eat anything else. Which is how I ended up with an amazing 'Messy Môn' - it being my absolutely favorite style of dessert of summer berries, whipped cream and crushed meringue.
Knowing I couldn't stuff this in my pockets for the morning, I ate the entire, giant ice cream sundae-sized thing, despite being absolutely stuffed to the gills. Because it was. So. Good. I can only imagine it being better when summer berries are in season.
Another great thing I have to mention (but only a great thing for Americans, unfortunately this isn't a great thing for locals) is that with the current exchange rate we spent well less than we would have on a similar meal at home, even considering the bottle discount.
So we walked out into the driving hail and sleet stuffed, happy, and with empty pockets. Because I didn't actually line them with bread. I do have some limits. Also the efficient service staff probably took them away before I could, I really don't remember all that well - free drinks. . .
