Owning a small business can be quite burdensome, with bills (in and out), accounts etc. to keep on top of, as well as doing the bread and butter work stuff to get actual positive entries in the P&L account so that there is a P rather than an L at the end of the accounting year. One very small perk (as against the admin. ball ache) is your annual work’s shindig is tax deductable (capped at £150 per head).

Apart from the tax, the big plus of this is, as the head honcho, I get to choose the venue.

I can’t say I ever really enjoyed the works dos (people excepted) at my previous place of employment. The venues choosen were never high on my list of places I like to go to and many were on my list of places not to ever go to again – Exhibit A : the Alchemist, M’lud). Food at these events was usually pretty insipid (to cater for all tastes and the general malaise of mass catering, where the temptation seems to be to make it as boring as possible to elicit the least number of complaints – in effect inducing a culinary coma of indifference) and the wine, with poor lists and budget restriction, was tolerable at best (undrinkable swill at worst).

I am trying (at the time of writing this) to get a anniversary dinner event organised for the hobby side of my life (the Mystere Wine Club – 45 years old this year). This is proving rather more arduous than I had orginally anticipated and as such I somewhat sympathise with those at my old place who had to organise these sort of  events with the likes of me carping from the side lines (in my defence I rarely went to such events – generally had to wash my hair on the nights in question, it really is pretty much singular on my head these days).

My business is a much, much, much smaller affair and I would say the old adage of “small is beautiful” (not applicable to bank balances) is very much in play when it comes to organising a work’s do.

I was able to go a rather more selective route, choosing a summer rather than winter/”C” word do.

I always particularly loathed a “C” word office do – in the season (with some notable exceptions) of “Sling out any old rubbish at twice the normal price as the plebs aren’t paying and will probably be too pissxd to care“. As an aside, I have (in f’ffing June, I mean seriously) seen my first “C” word ad. Personally think that deserves 20 years hard labour (as a min.) cleaning out cesspits.

Anyhow back to the matter at hand, with the board’s (me) unanimous decision being to go for Thomas by Tom Simmons (to me in the very top tier in terms of Cardiff dining out) in the form of a tasting menu collaboration between chef patron Tom Simmons and guest chef Tom Peters.

Tom Peter’s come with a rather fine pedigree having worked previously at 3 star Maaemo in Oslo (a cool £1000+ for the seasonal taster and “Prestige” wine pairing there 😱 – slightly out of my budget), Bob Bob Ricard (of the champagne button fame), Roux at Parliament Square (of no more) and now it seems Gracy’s in Valletta, Malta (rather nice it looks too)

The menu for the night’s festivities looked very fine indeed on a first and then second read.

Ticked an awful lots of boxes for me this menu, with some intriguing twists. Chamomile with the king of the sea (turbot), sweetbread croquettes with the lamb saddle and, of course, there was the A5 (the top grade) kagoshima wagyu (never tried that before)

Snacks were up to the usual high standard you expect of this place.

The truffle butter had a pleasing funky earthiness, without it overpowering, and the mushroom croquettes were as good as ever (on my list of one of the best things to eat in Cardiff at mo). Lovely stuff (as was the cultured butter) on their Ground bakery bread.

The star of the snack show, however, was the rather dainty cucumber and dill tartlets.

Nice balance with the dill (which can overpower) operating to really bring out the flavour and refreshing nature of the cucumber (which didn’t look the prettiest it has to be said) and a beautiful crisp (brick?) pasty case. Tasted like summer holidays packed in a pastry case to me.

Next up was one of the best veggie dishes I have had in a very long time (up there with, if not surpassing, the Gorse’s dynamite daikon).

The salt bake celeric had a lovely caramelisation to it which really brought out its innate nutty earthiness. That was amped up a few more notches by an rich brown butter spiked with sherry vinegar. Intensely flavoured dehydrated apple discs brough acidity to the party to keep it all in check. Only thing I didn’t get was the advertised truffle, but to me this dish really didn’t need it.

St Brides Bay lobster was deliciously sweet and enveloped in a rich, but subtle, aniseedy lobster sauce.

Crisp crouton brought a nice texture contrast into play and dainty segments of  pink grapefruit balanced the dish with a splash of acidity.

Turbot is rightly known as the king of the sea and when cooked well it has few piscine peers in my view. Here the fish was cooked absolutely à point, with just past transluscent, pearlescent, flesh.

The clam and mussel sauce (split with dill oil) was an ozone inbued wave lapping up against the turbot headland, without taking away from the delicate flavour of the fish.

I got a double helping of the Jerusalem artichoke (they don’t agree with Mr. SF), which had a nice nutty sweetness (enhanced by a hefty bit of caramelisation). Not 100% sure what the puree was (more of the artichoke?) but it had a pleasant floralness to it from the advertised chamomile

Very fine fish dish this.

The first meat course was A5 grade Waygu and I must admit at first blush (or lack of it) I was a little unsure. I love my beef very (slap its arse and bring it to the table still mooing) rare so this looked to me (on the face of it) a touch over.

Once I tasted it, however, my fears were allayed as the massive fat content requires (it seems) a bit more cooking to render it down properly. What I got was a serious tender and full on flavoured bit of beef. The fat had melted down into the muscle bathing it in a rich fatty essence of beef. Minimal mastication was required as the taste buds just seemed to absorb the fatty flavour bomb.

Roasted pepper added a bit of charry bitterness to counter the richness of the meat and the sesame seeds a buttery nuttiness. A black garlic inbued sauce added a mellow alium smack on the chops.

Enjoyed this, but is A5 waygu worth the exorbitant price (£275 a kilo) as against top notch UK grass feed beef? Not so sure personally.

The final savoury course was (I think on balance) my favourite

The lamb was cooked exactly as I like it with a ruby red core, but no bleed as it had been properly rested, a nice fat cap that had been rendered down sufficiently and crispy skin. Really good flavour to this, with a distinct summer meadow flavour (grassy herbalness). A very good jus topped it off nicely

I enjoyed the goats cheese and sweetbread croquette, but felt the cheese rather dominated such that I couldn’t really get the sweetbread element and the coating could have been just a touch crisper.

The baby leek had a nice sweetness to it, but still retained an almost spring onion intensity and the vibrant wild garlic puree complimented the lamb very well (a sort of middle class mint sauce).

The first pud looked a bit weird, as if the chef had stubbed out a couple of ciggies,

but tasted rather better than its “ashtray” apparel suggested.

Good milk ice cream (never sure what that really means, as it is ice “cream” isn’t it, but assume it alludes to the use of condensed milk here) sitting on a gooey (Italian?) meringue

This encased a sharp berry concoction that worked well as a counterpoint to all the sweetness. The fag ends were meringue tubes

The second dessert, a muscovado tart, was more of a looker, with a oiled bronzed adonis hue and a satisfying wobble.

Much lighter and less sweet than I expected, this hit the spot nicely in terms of finishing off the meal.

I particularly enjoyed the malt ice cream, which was deliciously toasty in nature. A crumb added a welcone touch of texture.

On the booze front I have never been hugely enamoured with the wine list at this place (only real flaw in my view), which I find a bit boring and is (I think) a bit pricey.

On top of this, I have got more wine that I really know what to do with (many of which were bought ages ago at bargain prices – seems I am quite a canny buyer) and I do need to start denuding my stock (or at least drink some more to balance out the constant additions).

On this basis I messaged them in advance to ask about their corkage policy (a quite steep £30 a bottle with a max of 4 bottles per table).

As the alternative was an £80 a head (so £160 for the two of us) wine pairing option

I decided (in advance) that BYO was my preferred option, with a white and a red bought from my collection.

The white Vina Tondonis Reserva is a bit of a marmite wine which you either love or hate (I am very much in the love camp), of which I picked a few up from the winery in Haro about 10 years ago for about €20 a pop (if you can find it, doubtful, it is now going for north of £100 a pop).

Lovely rich golden colour,

with aromas of fresh lemon zest, orchard fruit, orange peel and a touch of the foreshore.  On the palate there was orange peel, candied lemon, mixed in with sea salt, and a funky earthiness as it lingered for an age.

Worked very well with all of the non meat courses.

For the red I picked a Vina Real rioja number I got a while back in an M&S clearance sale for £20 (reduced from £55 and you are talking £90+ to buy this vintage – an excellent one – these days)

Nice drop this,

which if anything looked and tasted a bit on the youthful side. Nice layers of black fruit, as well as tobacco and cedar. Good with the waygu and the lamb dishes, but probably could have done with another 5 even 10 years bottle ageing I think.

As we had to wait 30 odd mins past our alloted time to be seated, I didn’t moan about it, they unilaterally (and very nicely) waived the corkage charge, which made it all a rather bargainous night on the wine front.

The verdict

There was an interest exchange the other day on twitter about controversial opinions on Cardiff food and I must admit the one that slightly surprised me was someone who thought that this place is not even close to Cardiff’s top ten. I must admit it is certainly in my top 10 (comfortably at the top end too) and this meal reinforced my view to that effect.

Not had a bad dish, let alone meal, here and I have been a fair few times and this meal was no different. The lamb on this visit will be difficult to beat in terms of my annual round up in the meat dish category.

It ain’t cheap, but really good things rarely are and (ever rising) costs have to be taken into account (restaurants have bills to pay the same as the rest of us and are entitled to make a profit).

My controversal food opinion is I think food in restaurants in the UK is often priced too cheaply bearing in mind the overheads, skill, time and sheer bloody effort applied and wine in UK restaurants, with the level of mark ups applied, is too expensive for the same reason (such that that the winos subsidise the meals of the non winos). As a wine drinker (I can very much relate to the Brillat – Savarin quote of “A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine“) and I think more balance is required or the likes of me will increasingly resort to corkage.

A parting gift for the fizz fans out there (not me as can’t drunk the stuff, other than in very small doses, as it sends me mental),

with this looking interesting and pretty good value (for the all in price) bearing in mind the quality of the food and wine you will get.

The details

Address: 3-5 Pontcanna St, Pontcanna, Cardiff, CF11 9HQ

Website: https://thomas-pontcanna.co.uk/