As Hay-on-Wye comes alive for its annual festival, Lucy Shaw finds the perfect retreat for literary lovers to unwind with thoughtful food and warm hospitality — just a short stroll from the festival grounds…
“Hay-on-Wye, is that some kind of sandwich?” American playwright Arthur Miller famously quipped when he first heard about the tiny Welsh town that boasts the largest number of book shops per capita in the world. Home to less than 2,000 people, the town swells when Hay fever hits, with over 150,000 bibliophiles flocking to its rolling hills during the Hay Festival, dubbed ‘the Woodstock of the mind’ by Bill Clinton, which will be taking place from 22 May until 1 June this year.
Having played host to literary luminaries such as William Golding, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis and Zadie Smith, this year Hanif Kureishi, Simon Armitage, Jeanette Winterson, Michael Morpurgo, Stephen Fry, Lynn Barber and Grayson Perry will be taking to the stage to share their hard-earned pearls of wisdom. But man cannot live on words alone, so if you’re feeling peckish in between talks then head to the aptly named Chapters restaurant on Lion Steet for a guaranteed good feed.
The cosy restaurant may be small – it can seat up to 22 – but its ambitions are mighty. Housed within the old meeting room of St. John’s chapel, Chapters is run by dynamic husband-and-wife duo Mark and Charmaine McHugo, who couldn’t be more serious about produce, much of which they grow themselves in their half-acre kitchen garden close to the venue. What their garden can’t provide is sourced from local suppliers within a 20-mile radius; a green-fingered approach that earned them a coveted Michelin Green star in 2022.
With Mark in charge of the cooking and Hereford-born Charmaine running the front of house, the pair’s field-to-fork ethos is bang on trend and was evident in the plates I enjoyed on my recent visit, all of which tasted vividly and reassuringly of themselves. Open for lunch and dinner throughout the festival (they operate as a dinner venue during the rest of the year, along with a lunch service on Saturdays) at dinner they serve a £65pp set menu of their latest greatest hits, which rotates every six weeks to keep things fresh and hyper-seasonal.
On the current menu you’ll find Pembrokeshire oysters with pickled rhubarb; wild venison dolmades and cavolo nero pickle; and Huntsham Farm middle white pork with burnt apple, leek jam and cider velouté. A keen forager, Mark gets heavily involved in pickling, fermenting and preserving during the summer months to help see him through the winter, blending acorns into his bread flour and using hogweed and dried meadowsweet as botanicals in Chapters’ own gin. Butter is shot through with a Marmite-like yeast spread made from bread offcuts, while leftover vegetable trims are boiled down to make a sticky-sweet stock.
Extending their sustainable ethos to the dining room, menus are printed on recycled paper and all of the paintings on display are for sale should you want to walk away with one. In a hat tip to its ecclesiastical location, old hymn boards hang on the walls and church pews double as seating. The dining room is rustic and pared-back, with wooden flooring and tables, tan chairs and hessian curtains. An assortment of dried grasses floats like an ethereal art installation in the window above a pale blue glass demijohn and a curated pile of books.
The smallest of culinary details are noteworthy here: the linseed crackers were so divine we couldn’t stop ordering them, while the peppery baby radishes and creamy, sunflower seed-flecked carrot hummus would make Peter Rabbit weep with joy.
Speaking of carrots, the sticky carrot pickle accompanying our medallions of middle white pork terrine was the star of the show. A pickled vegetable and garden herb salad had a Scandinavian feel, its vinegary tang helping to cut through the richness of our cubic crab mac ‘n’ cheese croquettes.
While unmistakably British in nature, Mark weaves in little nods to Japan throughout the Chapters menu, be it via a cooling shiso mayo or a fruity fig leaf katsu sauce, though he sometimes veers into other cuisines. My dish of the day was a supremely comforting bowl of wild garlic and red lentil dhal, which hummed with warming spices and disappeared quickly.
The wine list is largely made up of organic and biodynamic drops and includes a decent selection on offer via Coravin, including my textured 2021 white Châteauneuf-du-Pape from Clos Saint Michel, which was all beeswax, lemon rind, lime blossom and peach.
Many of the wines are available to buy to take home. Among them are a few funky English bottlings – including a Pinot Noir rosé from Essex and a Bacchus from Bristol – and craft ciders with orange crown caps and kooky labels.
The final chapter came in the form of a decadent chocolate delice served with a palate-cleansing verbena sorbet and a deliciously glossy coffee gel that packed a flavour punch. For clean, fresh flavours that sing of their soils a visit to Chapters during the Hay festival is a must, or make a weekend of it and book a stay in Hay once the crowds have dispersed if you want the book lovers paradise all to yourself.
Chapters, Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5AA. For more information and for bookings, visit www.chaptershayonwye.co.uk.
