Review- Lan y Môr restaurant, Coppet Hall, Saundersfoot

Inside the décor is warm and earthy, with Welsh wool blankets on the wall, cosy green walls and enormous trees from floor to ceiling.

The décor and the setting complement perfectly the land and sea ethos of Lan y Mor’s new menu, sourcing the best local ingredients on offer from the surrounding area.

Lan y Môr is the Seren group’s new restaurant at what was previously Coast at Coppet Hall, Saundersfoot.

(Image: Seren Group)

The three AA Rosette eaterie, under new head chef Gerwyn Jones is offering a more casual dining experience designed to appeal to locals and visitors alike.

We arrive to a warm welcome from the beautiful staff and are soon sat in front of those wonderful windows overlooking the beach.

(Image: Seren Group)

The restaurant’s new menu offers more flexibility. There are snacks, small plates and sides, with bigger dishes on offer from pasture, sea and land.

The idea is that you can pick and choose your dining experience, you could just pop in for a few small plates and a glass of wine or go the whole three course hog.

We opt for the latter.

For starters come Carmarthenshire frockles and Monkstone mackerel.

First mackerel of the summer- yum. (Image: Western Telegraph)

This is my first mackerel of the year and it is delicious, the flavour is delicate for mackerel and comes as two perfectly presented fillets perched atop sour crème and garnished with watercress and fennel as well as a liberal sprinkling of toasted rice.

It is a beautiful balance of textures and flavours and I even eat the skin, which is rare for me.

Frockles with nori mayonnaise, chilli and sea salt. (Image: Western Telegraph)

My dining companion has the frockles; cockles in a light batter drizzled with a seaweed mayonnaise and with a small bowl of garlic and chilli salt. I have a taste and they are very nice; dipped in the chilli salt with the light batter coating a great accompaniment to the cockles inside. I am not sure I could have eaten a whole bowl but they are part of the snack section on the menu, so perfect for sharing.

Sourdough and burnt leek butter. (Image: Western Telegraph)

The starters are accompanied by two slices of wholemeal sourdough with a lozenge of burnt leek butter.

It comes beautifully presented on a slab of slate and a pebble. 

For our mains we both go for the sea section of the menu, ordering Saundersfoot fish of the day, in this case sea bass, and a Swansea smoked salmon nourish bowl.

Fish of the day was sea bass. (Image: Western Telegraph)
The sea bass comes in a small dish on top of a mixture of leeks and coastal herbs in a rich dashi sauce.

I had a taste and it is beautifully-flavoured, with the rich creamy sauce offsetting the more delicate flavour of the fish.

My companion said she would rather have had it served on a plate instead of a small bowl, but praised the flavours.

A beautifully-balanced nourish bowl. (Image: Western Telegraph) 

Te nourish bowl is fairly small so maybe don’t order it if you are starving. The salmon is just the right texture and not overly smoked. It comes on a bed of quinoa with dabs of pureed avocado, curls of radish, and a scattering of sea herbs.

For some reason I had a mental block on the cucumbers, they were cut as I would do them for the kids at home. I thought such a dish needed better cucumber presentation, suggestions on a postcard please!

All the flavours and textures in this dish were well-balanced, a healthy and delicious dish.

As it was small for a traditional main, we also ordered some skin-on fries, some deliciously-burnet and buttered cabbage (oh, if I could cook cabbage like that I would eat it every day!) and tenderstem broccoli as sides, so we didn't go hungry.

We had just enough room for dessert. My dining companion ordered the lemon tart and I had the Grove garden rhubarb pavlova.

Pavlova with Grove garden rhubarb. (Image: Western Telegraph)

This pudding epitomises Lan y Môr's locally sourced ethics, with the rhubarb coming from sister hotel The Grove, just eight miles away.

I substitute the offered Turkish Delight ice cream for good old vanilla, so that nothing distracts from the tanginess of the rhubarb and enjoy it with shards of merengue and ginger on a scoop of soured cream.

Lemon tart. (Image: Western Telegraph)

My companion is nonplussed by the shape of her tart, it’s a rectangle not a traditional slice. She devours it however and says that it is good and flavoursome along with the yoghurt sorbet.

We wash all this down with a perfectly palatable bottle of house white, at £32 the cheapest on the menu.

Throughout the meal the staff are delightful; attentive but not overly so, we have a variety of wait staff over the course of the evening and they are all equally lovely.

Lan y Môr offers a more democratic dining experience with the idea of making the restaurant more accessible to more people.

The table next to us all went for posh burgers and chips. Sure at £16 a go they were not cheap. However, they were only a pound more than the burgers at a street food festival I recently attended, and served in a much more convivial setting.

The flexibility of the menu at Lan y Môr means that you can make your experience what you want it to be. You can come for a traditional three courses but, you could equally enjoy a tapas-style feast of snacks and small plates or a few nibbles and a cocktail.

Combined with the stunning view and faultless service, that has got to be a good thing.