Maes Yr Haf

Quick glance:
+ fantastic food
+ value for money with set menu
+ seasonal menu
+ local ales and ciders (bottles)
— tricky to find
I came here on a Sunday in September (2011) for lunch, having read good reviews about the establishment elsewhere. The restaurant was slightly tricky to find because of its address (Parkmill in Swansea!) and the sat-​nav wasn’t particularly knowledgeable. We drove up, then down, the road and eventually found it.
The slight mishap with finding it was worth our patience, as the restaurant offered top-​notch food, beautifully presented using local and fresh ingredients. I had the pork belly with beautiful crackling, while my partner’s order of Welsh beef was tender and juicy, served with homemade Yorkshire pudding. The mains also came with sides of seasonable vegetables that were fresh and sweet. You can also see the chef’s love for food through not only the quality and taste but also the delicate presentation, completing the whole dining experience.
The set menu at lunch was £15.95 for two courses and worth every penny, or £20.95 for three courses. I must say I was slightly disappointed by my dessert but that’s just personal taste!
(As at May 2012, the price has gone up slightly, now £16.95 for two courses Sunday lunch menu. By the way, Sunday’s lunch menu has a wider selection than the set menu on other days!).

This newly converted building is more or less opposite the Gower Heritage Centre in Parkmill, so it’s pretty accessible from Swansea. It is advertised as a restaurant with rooms which is what attracted us to visit as we passed one lunchtime, based on the consideration that you would be unlikely to make this claim unless you were at least trying to do good food. We weren’t disappointed. Although there is no children’s menu, the staff were welcoming of us as a family and arranged to make some slight modifications to the adult menu to make it more suitable for the kids. The place is modern, clean and attractive and the toilets are an absolute joy of spacious cleanliness. Having just returned from a week in France we were particularly delighted by that fact. The waiting staff are smartly dressed in black shirts and trousers, and are attentive without being smarmy or irritating. The lunch menu is extremely reasonable, from recollection being around £15 for two courses or roughly equivalent to go a la carte. We paid half price for the kids. On offer were three ‘fine soups’ which sounded so good we both opted for them. The ginger & parsnip soup was spicy and well-​rounded, while the spinach, courgette & ricotta soup was nicely balanced and creamily rich. Delicious. They were served with a trio of good homemade breads (including chorizo and walnut flavours) which were also available as an extra at just £1. For mains, the children each wanted to have the cod in spring-​water batter, with hand-​cut chips. They eschewed the mushy peas for garden peas instead, and ketchup was also very kindly brought out to replace the tartare sauce. I had a breast of corn-​fed chicken on a bed of mushroom risotto with very fresh, crisp green beans. It was good, and accomplished, although for my taste the risotto could have been slightly more creamy and perhaps a touch saltier. Mr Bristol had a salad of home-​smoked chicken which was, again, accomplished. The desserts looked really good but sadly the children weren’t behaving well enough for us to stay and sample them. When we tried to book to come back without children (under sixes not welcome in the evenings) so that we could have the full 3 course experience there, we found that unsurprisingly they were fully booked with cancellation lists also full. This is a testament to the high quality food on offer in pleasant, friendly surroundings and at a reasonable cost. We will definitely visit again.
Well we did visit again, in August ’09 although sadly we could only manage two courses. For the two of us to eat a two-​course meal, plus a good bottle of wine, the bill was extremely reasonable at under £50. I started with the courgette and bacon soup which was most tasty although for me a little too well-​seasoned, with perhaps an especially extra blast of pepper. Mr B had a home-​made salmon gravadlax in whisky, with cream cheese and lime. The whisky was a mere hint on the salmon, which was absolutely spot-​on: deliciously flavoursome and juicy. Our starters came with the trio of (presumably) home made breads including cashew nut & honey, something with cheese and a white/​brown mix. All three breads were expertly baked and delicious.
We both ordered the rib-​eye steak, curiously and inaccurately described by the waiter as stringy when we ordered it rare, hence his suggestion (which we accepted) that it should be cooked medium rare. It was fantastic and accompanied by very good chips and a quite delicious bearnaise sauce. We were left waiting so long after this course that by the time a waiter finally arrived to ask whether we wanted dessert, the food had settled on our stomachs and we realised that we were too full to justify a dessert. A shame, because they really looked good!