Salt Marsh Kitchen – All My Welsh Dreams Come True

As you can tell from the advanced age of my two, it’s maybe been a little longer than anticipated since the last post about my 2 toddlers. But it has meant an awful lot of family trips to the upper left-corner of Wales, and in particular, to Tywyn. After playing the game to see if any food could be served without coleslaw again (No, if you’re interested, nothing can escape the side dish.), I unexpectedly passed this awesome find – Salt Marsh Kitchen on what I guess you could call the ‘high street’. It looked promising, it looked like a proper restaurant, but could it be? Really? Here?

I must admit, this find did run a close second-best-find of the holiday after discovering you can now by trousers in Gwynedd (the county, if you’re interested). Wifey-packing-fail previously resulted in Husband wearing Welsh dragon comedy boxers for a week from the local tourism shop. This time, forgetting to pack any jeans, seemed like it could be a much worse problem. But like the wonders of Narnia, the Co-op of Machynlleth now has a secret passage (err, well, it’s tacked on the side of it) to a Peacocks. Never in my life have a been so excited by a cheap high street clothing chain like the magical discovery of the Machynlleth Peacocks. I shrieked with joy as the locals hid their children and valuables from this mad American woman in their exciting new shop. I even treated the Ninja to a new Frozen tshirt, that’s how over-whelmed I was. The ability to buy another crap tshirt was just too great; I had to do it. Anyways,…the restaurant in Tywyn…

We tried a few times for lunch, as I wasn’t quite sure how child-friendly it would be, making lunch the safe option. Sadly, they seemed to only be open for dinner, from 6pm onwards. We rocked up on our last night at 6 on the dot, hoping to bagsie a table for 4. WIthout any phone reception anywhere, reservations were sort of out of the questions unless we figured out how to use a pay phone (think randomly jamming buttons and shouting voice commands at it a la Scotty in The Voyage Home, “Hello computer?”). They had a table and thankfully a mostly empty restaurant until about 7, so no dirty looks from loved-up couples.

Here is soon to be a school-aged-Weasel, enjoying her linguine bolognese. Our kids’ choices were chicken goujons and chips, fish & chips or spag bol. For the second time that day, she opted for the pasta. Thankfully we ate the other first, otherwise I think she would have had the stomach for the other non-mixed, from a jar variety after this beaut.

The Ninja opted for the chicken. To be honest, it was just the thing she thought would be the best utensil for eating ketchup. So 2 happy kids!

As for us, my amazing idea of bread to keep the kids happy ended in me finishing half a loaf of amazing, but not amazingly kid friendly tomato and olive bread (I think that’s what it was. I was tasty and had bits. So clearly kids were avoiding it like the plague.). My Linguine with seafood was incredible and Husband’s lamb was soft and tasty. The Eton messes were great, although kids weren’t quite as pleased with a scoop of vanilla with strawberry powder on top. Note to restaurant – chocolate powder. A strawberry could be misinterpreted as an actual fruit by the youth of today and rejected outright in principle.

Prams? Probably not going to fit. High chairs? Not sure I saw one. Changing table? No chance, but there was space for your potty trainers and possibly a floor-based nappy change. And because this is in the ass-end-of-nowhere you can park for free! Right outside! Seriously, places like that still exist.

I don’t know why you might be near here (it is far from anything really) but if you are, it’s well-worth a visit. And you won’t find any sneaky coleslaw or jacket potatoes thankfully on the menu.

Tags: children, food, restaurants, Salt Marsh Kitchen, travel, upper left hand corner of Wales