Y Polyn, Capel Dewi, Carmarthenshire, (01267 290 000)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £45
I must have looked a bit odd. First I rubbed the bread between thumb and forefinger. Next I tapped the crust against the wooden table. Finally I pressed it against my nose and sniffed. Loudly. The smell was yeasty and earthy and ripe and when I ate some the flavour was just as engrossing. I was lost in the loaf. I was in bread heaven. Mostly I was confused. This tasted and smelled like Poilane, the king of sourdough breads, a loaf of which can cost a tenner. But we were well off Poilane territory. Yes, the great Parisian bread makers now have a bakery in London, but I was a long way from there. Even allowing for the outrage of the good people of west Wales, I think I can be allowed to say I was a long way from anywhere. Y Polyn is a pub restaurant a five-minute drive outside the village of Capel Dewi. Which is a 15-minute drive outside the town of Carmarthen. Which is a 45-minute rackety train journey from Swansea. Which is ... you get the idea.
Anyway, the point is they appeared to have Poilane. Though, of course, they didn't. They had something far better. They had Mark Manson who is a partner in the business, and who had made the bread that morning. Mark used to be a restaurant inspector for the AA. His partner in the business, which they launched at the beginning of last year, is Simon Wright who used to be the AA Guide's editor, until he resigned on a point of principle (the small matter of an AA executive trying to get a restaurant's rating downgraded because he couldn't get the table he wanted.)
Simon and Mark run front of house. Their wives, Maryann and Sue, are in the kitchen. Plastered on the walls are menus from some of Britain's finest - Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White, Angela Hartnett, Pierre Kaufmann and Shaun Hill - but in such an admirably slap-dash manner that it speaks only of appetite (or greediness) rather than anything approaching preciousness.
So does Y Polyn. It's a misshapen, whitewashed building on the junction of two country roads. Inside, there's a dining room and, on the other side of the bar, an area where you can still smoke while you eat. The walls are claret-coloured, the floor is hard-tiled and any wooden bits are picked out in cream. It looks like it's had one of those cheap but effective makeovers that they do two-thirds of the way through Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, which might well be the case; in his spare time Simon Wright is a consultant on the series. He knows a lot about very bad restaurants.
Certainly the menu - three courses for £26 - is well thought out. No flights of fancy. No thrilling fusions of the culinary traditions of, say, Cambodia and Equador. Nothing served in shot glasses or on Japanese ceramic spoons or over dry ice. Just a bunch of pleasing bistro classics using good produce. A chicken liver parfait, with a plum and apple chutney, was what that sourdough bread was invented for: soft and light, without denying its ripe offal origins. Their fish soup (with croutons, rouille and Gruyere, natch) was both powerful and comforting, with the dense texture of its ingredients. They told me despairingly that, despite being so close to the sea, the fish had to come all the way from Brixham because almost everything that's landed nearby is stolen by the Spanish. No such problem with the fantastic salt-marsh lamb from the Gower, simply roasted and served with a dark sticky puree of onions, garlic and thyme, which is the sort of thing I'd like to just spread on toast. Or spooned neat into my mouth. Or smeared all over my ... sorry, I got carried away there.
The killer dessert was their own honey and almond ice cream made with crunchy bits of meringue, but there is also a fine treacle tart with a crisp chewy surface as well as both a frangipane and a chocolate tart which, seeing how far I'd come, they let me try too. The wine list is a globe-trotting but intelligent selection which doesn't go much beyond the dizzy heights of a Cloudy Bay Sauvignon (2005) for a very reasonable £28.50. There is also, praise be, a good choice of half bottles for about £10 each.
Y Polyn is a model of its kind: a simple country restaurant set up by people with good taste who know what's nice to eat and how best to serve it. Plus, as I was leaving, they gave me a whole loaf of the sourdough. As a result I was accompanied on my journey back, not just by the memory of a fine dinner eaten, but by the comforting smell of freshly baked bread. It might get better than that, but not by much.
