Plate With A View: Hotel Portmeirion, Wales
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Your support makes all the difference.Anyone who remembers Patrick McGoohan running across a sun-drenched estuary, pursued by Mini Mokes and a large ball of bubblegum called "Rover", will thrill at the chance to dine where the cult series The Prisoner was shot.
Clough Williams-Ellis, the brilliant Welsh eccentric who built this fantasy village in the 1930s also provided Portmeirion with a hotel and restaurant on the quayside opposite Amis Reunis, Williams-Ellis's celebrated concrete sailing boat.
Recently, Terence Conran was called in to refurbish the dining-room, which he's turned into a feast of blues, brilliant white and polished wood.
The dinner menu consists of Welsh dishes such as cawl, Pen Llyn lamb and Portmeirion bread-and-butter pudding along with more international fare such as melon with red berries, fruit coulis and champagne sorbet, pan-seared halibut with roasted baby vegetables and almonds or turbot on lemongrass-scented tagliatelle. Music is provided by a Welsh harpist (of course).
THE VIEW
The stunning Dwyryd Estuary sweeps in front of the restaurant, framed by the rigging of Amis Reunis. Here at low tide is where escapees from The Village were invariably hunted down. As the tide turns, sunlight is reflected in the estuary's broad sweep of water. On the far side lie unspoilt wooded hillsides, unchanged since the hotel's opening in 1926.
To the right diners can make out the Observatory Tower, with its statue of Lord Nelson, which Williams-Ellis built in 1935. The house next to it is where Patrick McGoohan stayed in 1966 while filming The Prisoner. To the far left is the Italianate bell tower that is Portmeirion's trademark.
THE BILL
Dinner costs £37.50 for three courses, £32.50 for two. Lunch: £15-£22.50. Open every day. Book ahead (01766 772440).
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