Mrs Danvers: Another Lazy Day

After doing very little on Sunday we had another lovely meal at the Portmeirion hotel restaurant in the evening. We decided to visit Castell Deudraeth for Mondays evening meal. There are two hotels at Portmeirion Village and they are at opposite ends of the site. Castell Deudraeth has more bistro style food than the hotel restaurant and we fancied a change.

Sunday nights meal was as beautiful as ever with a little bit of artistic drama with the desert. We both chose the same food for all three courses and we plumped for a starter of Tartar of Welsh beef with parsley caviar, Marmite egg yolk & charcoal emulsion. Pretentious or what? Followed by Halibut, aubergine caviar, king prawns, black olive braised potatoes and coconut. We were given an amuse bouche of scrambled egg with caviar and smoked salmon. This was delicious as was the halibut main course but the Welsh beef tartar dish tasted too much of charcoal. The beef was beautiful but overwhelmed by a burnt charcoal taste (I forgot to take a photo of this dish)

For desert we both had a chocolate & Grand Marnier tart with blood orange sorbet. A round chocolate dome was in the centre of my bowl when it arrived and was not what I was expecting as I thought it would be a flat slice of tart. The waitress then produced what looked a perfume atomiser and sprayed the chocolate dome and set it alight. A foot high flame was produced and made the chocolate warm and gooey - delicious. The photo I took does not quite catch the flame but it was pretty dramatic.

We had been looking at the desert wines when we ordered the chocolate tarts and could not believe the price of a half bottle of wine - £400? Should it be £40? No it really was £400 and after surfing the internet I found that there are other vintages for £5,000 - £10,000. I would not enjoy any glass of wine at this price as I would be mentally counting the cost of each sip. Who pays that much for a half bottle of wine?

We strolled around the village Monday morning after breakfast and before the day visitors arrived. It is lovely to have the place to ourselves and walk through all the gates and doorways that say 'Residents Only' as you get to take in views and see areas of the buildings that you can't as a day visitor. I used to visit the village many years ago and dream of staying here. Now we come every year and just love it.

There were gardeners out pruning the shrubs, other sweeping up leaves and cleaning the tops of benches and tables. It is immacutely well kept and a joy to walk around. At the bottom of the hill where the moored boat is I 'face timed' my father-in-law who lives in France to show him the view across the estuary and up to the top of the village. I asked "guess where we are" and he immediately said Portmeirion. I knew he would as we have visited here as a family for over 40 years. I have photographs of me in the gardens aged about six.

We called into a couple of charity shops in Porthmadog and I bought 4 as new books for 50p each. Three are by one of my favourite authors, M C Beaton and they are from the Hamish Macbeth series (I normally go for the Agatha Raisin series). The fourth book is a hardback copy of Miranda Harts book Is it me? I think she is very talented and incredibly funny so I am looking forward to reading this. I also spent £2 on a DVD which is more than I usually pay but I do like any film that has Colin Firth in it so it was paid for and in my bag pronto.

Castell Deudraeth has the most fantastic crackling fire in the hall area where we sat having pre dinner drinks. The restaurant itself is just off the hall in a large and airy orangery and when we arrived a young guy (who turned out to be a guest) was playing the grand piano beautifully.

I had moules marinierre which were beautiful and served with toasted soda bread. Mains for both us was a ribeye steak with proper chips, watercress and rocket salad and bernaise sauce. We had a cheese board between us for desert. It was a lovely change to have large portions of simple food instead of lots of very fancy dishes.