Lower Brynamman - Restaurant Guide

Sue & Mark Manson serve a daily changing menu based around seasonal local ingredients that draws regular diners from a wide radius to their studiously unpretentious rural bistro in Carmarthenshire’s Towy Valley – mismatched tables, no tablecloths, and you pour your own wine. There’s a “remarkable set-price menu at £44 for three courses at lunchtime” (two courses £34; dinner £40 and £54 respectively). Top Menu Tip – “wonderful Welsh saltmarsh lamb”.

"African roots. Welsh home." Ghanaian-born Adisa Amanor-Wilks (a Welsh resident for more than 10 years now) has brought the flavours of West Africa to West Wales. Jollof rice with chicken, goat, fish, or vegan options, alongside Red Red—a black-eyed bean stew with fried plantains—all feature alongside a selection of soups including groundnut soups with choices of chicken, goat, or fish.

Laidback Italian, a two-minute walk from Liberty Stadium (pardon, Swansea.com Stadium as it’s now known), which has a crowd-pleasing menu particularly strong on fish dishes and pizzas, though they also proffer fancier fare like 28-day mature British steaks. It secured very respectable marks in this year’s annual diner’s poll but very little in the way of actual commentary.

“A gem of a restaurant in the docks” say fans of Jonathan Woolway’s yearling on the city’s developing waterfront which most reports say is “good value given the standard of cooking and very friendly waiting staff”. The menu is in a modern bistro mould and ranges from the meaty (a recent sample includes Barnsley Chop, Road Pork Collar and Steak Pie) to “really fresh fish, cooked simply but perfectly and accompanied by local ingredients like cockles and seaweed”. Ratings though are capped by those who are not fully bowled over (“I don’t know what restaurant Grace Dent ate in but it can’t have been this one!”)

A polished Indian dining experience awaits at this stylish subcontinental, with bold wall fabrics, peacock feathers and exotic prints; the broad menu takes in mixed platters and tandoor grill items, with “very friendly and accommodating staff” a boon alongside the “reasonable prices”.

Promising feedback from the locals on this brightly decorated dining room, whose strong vegetarian selection of dishes is a feature on a menu they describe as ‘Classic French and Vegan cuisine made using traditional and original recipes’. In practice this means a melange of dishes from ‘Escargots de Bourgogne’ and ‘Poulet à la biscayenne’ to ‘Fricassée of Tempeh’ or ‘Buckwheat strudel’. Part of a hotel that’s not super-slick in its approach, feedback says its heart and value are in the right place.