WELSH FOOD & DRINK

Welsh food is rooted in honest, hearty cooking shaped by centuries of farming, mining and fishing. The dishes visitors are most likely to encounter are:

• Cawl — a slow-cooked broth, usually lamb, with root vegetables. Wales’s closest thing to a national dish.
• Welsh Rarebit — a rich, savoury cheese sauce served on toast. Think of it as the sophisticated Welsh answer to cheese on toast.
• Laverbread — edible seaweed harvested from Welsh shores, often served with cockles and bacon as part of a traditional Welsh breakfast. Known as “Welshman’s caviar.”
• Glamorgan Sausage — a vegetarian sausage made with Caerphilly cheese, leek and breadcrumbs. One of Wales’s few meatless traditional dishes.
• Welsh Cakes — flat, griddle-baked spiced cakes studded with currants. Sold fresh in Cardiff Market.
• Bara Brith — a tea-soaked fruit loaf, often served sliced with butter.

Welsh lamb is are world-renowned and you’ll find them on menus across the city.

Cardiff has a growing number of restaurants and cafés proudly serving Welsh produce and traditional dishes. Some of the best places to try include:

• Welsh House (Castle Arcade) — an independent restaurant dedicated entirely to Welsh food and drink, right in the heart of the city. A great first stop for visitors wanting an authentic introduction.
• The Potted Pig (High Street) — a Michelin-recognised restaurant set in a former bank vault, with a Welsh-sourced seasonal menu.
• Daffodil (Windsor Place, city centre) — a food-led bar and restaurant housed in a building with roots dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, with Welsh heritage at the heart of both the food and drink menus.
• Thomas by Tom Simmons (Pontcanna) — French technique, Welsh ingredients, well reviewed
• Madame Fromage (Cardiff Arcade) — a cheesemonger and café with Welsh rarebit and cawl on the menu, and over 150 Welsh and artisan cheeses to browse.
• Cardiff Market — for Welsh cakes fresh off the griddle and local produce, the indoor market is hard to beat.

A traditional Welsh breakfast includes the usual cooked elements – bacon, eggs, sausage; but adds laverbread and cockles to the mix. Laverbread is edible seaweed collected from Welsh shores, often pan-fried and served alongside smoked back bacon. It’s an acquired taste for some visitors, but a genuine and distinctive part of Welsh food culture. Several Cardiff cafés serve it, including Milkwood in Pontcanna.

Brains is Cardiff’s own brewery, and ordering a pint of it in the city is as much a local ritual as watching rugby at the Principality Stadium.

The brewery was founded in 1882 when Samuel Arthur Brain purchased a brewery on St Mary Street with the help of his uncle, Joseph Benjamin Brain. At its peak, the company controlled more than 250 pubs across South Wales. It’s been woven into Cardiff’s social fabric ever since.

The flagship beer is SA, a copper-coloured premium bitter, malty and full-bodied. First brewed in 1958, its name has long inspired debate: does SA stand for Special Ale, Samuel Arthur, or the colloquial nickname “Skull Attack”? The truth, as Brains put it, is lost to time – and that’s part of its charm.

SA was originally brewed to coincide with Cardiff hosting the Empire Games in 1958, now the Commonwealth Games, giving it a civic significance beyond just the beer itself.

Brains now brews at the Dragon Brewery, a modern facility just outside the city centre near the docks. The original brewery site on St Mary Street is now the Brewery Quarter — suitably a bar and restaurant complex.

Absolutely. Wales has a broader drinks culture than many visitors expect:

• Penderyn Whisky — a single malt Welsh whisky distilled in the Brecon Beacons. Available at many Cardiff bars, and a popular post-dinner tipple.
• Tiny Rebel — a Newport-based craft brewery with a strong Cardiff following. Their beers are widely available across the city’s pubs and bars.
• Welsh gin — a growing category, with several small-batch Welsh gins now on back bars across the city.
• Welsh cider — produced in Monmouthshire and beyond, and increasingly available on draught.