Redefining Welsh Dining: A conversation with Chefs / Co-Owners Lewis Dwyer & Andy Aston, Hiraeth

At Hiraeth in Cardiff, chefs and co-owners Lewis Dwyer and Andy Aston have built something deeply personal – a restaurant shaped by Welsh land, Japanese technique, and a sincere love for their city. Set opposite leafy Victoria Park, this intimate two AA-rosette restaurant has fast become one of Wales’ most exciting dining destinations. Here, the duo share with The Knife how a smallholding, a sense of belonging, and a late-night idea called Chicken Tea are defining a new generation of Cardiff cooking.

Lewis Dwyer (L) and Andy Aston (R) at Hiraeth, Cardiff / Image: Courtenay Pipkin Photography

• "Hiraeth" speaks to a deep, place-rooted longing. How does that idea translate into concrete decisions in the kitchen, on the menu, and in the way you welcome guests?

Andy: The sense of Hiraeth is a feeling that means something different to each and every person. It’s a little cliché but we want all our guests to feel like they are being welcomed into our home. The restaurant is our space/home and so it’s important to us that people feel comfortable, welcome and at ease. Our goal is that the food and service hits in such a way that guests want to return and so leave with that longing for their next visit to Hiraeth.

• You’ve planted yourselves opposite Victoria Park on Cowbridge Road East. What does this specific corner of Cardiff give you that you wouldn’t find elsewhere in the city?

Andy: Victoria Park gives us the benefit of being within a capital city whilst feeling like we are not caught up in city life. We have regular repeat custom from locals which makes the location feel much more like a neighbourhood and yet we are a stones’ throw from central Cardiff.

• Your smallholding sits less than three miles away. Which crops or herbs from there most changed the way you cook, and how do you plan a menu around the unpredictability of your own harvest?

Andy: It’s not really one specific crop that has changed the way we cook, but more the focus on what we can achieve. The smallholding is a huge learning curve, and more lessons are thrown at us, often unwillingly, with every season! Rae, who looks after the growing day-to-day, regularly asks what we want to see from upcoming seasons and researches different varieties of seeds etc. It means we have had to start thinking much further ahead. We’ve learnt what we can grow easily and successfully and have ambitions to grow more. As Rae gets more confident and the area becomes more established, we are taking on more land. Little by little working towards the goal of growing all the produce used on the menu.

Due to the huge amount of effort that goes into producing we make sure we waste nothing. This means the kitchen processes must evolve into more pickling and fermenting to make sure any excess is used on future menus. We are also looking at selling produce to our local community. As the farm grows this will give us more opportunities to do this.

Lewis plating a dish at Hiraeth / Image: Courtenay Pipkin Photography

• Lewis, Japanese techniques are threaded through the menu. Beyond flavour, what disciplines from Japanese kitchens have most sharpened your approach to Welsh ingredients?

Lewis: I've always been enthralled by Japanese culture and the food scene, especially the respect for ingredients. Be it a morel mushroom or an onion, you should treat each ingredient with the same amount of care and respect. And hopefully it should come out on the plate.

• Andy, you led at Llanerch Vineyard during award-winning years. What did that high-volume, yet quality-driven environment teach you about consistency that you’re applying in a tighter, chef-led dining room at Hiraeth?

Andy: Llanerch, as you suggest, is a very high-volume business with many different aspects to the catering. Working in that environment enabled positive development in my career. I’m a firm believer that anything a kitchen/restaurant/business achieves is not down to one person. I did not achieve the awards; the team did. My role was to lead the team and Llanerch taught me that, regardless of the high volume, we could achieve the goals we set out to by giving the team the tools to flourish. Hiraeth is no different. We have a fantastic team. It may be a smaller business, but we have big aspirations, and we have clear goals we are striving to achieve. From my experiences with Llanerch I know that Lewis and I can’t achieve these on our own and so as a team we will tackle them together.

• Chicken Tea has become your signature. What’s the origin story behind this four-part ritual, and how do you keep it evolving without losing the comfort that regulars expect?

Andy: We have, at no point, set out to have a 'signature' dish. In fact, the thought of having a signature dish makes me cringe! We just cook food that we like to eat, and we think our guests would love. Chicken Tea started out like almost all the dishes on our menus. We sit down, often after a busy service, and just start chatting about food over a beer or a glass of wine, or two! Lewis and I lose hours of sleep with late nights in the restaurant just chatting menus, dishes and throwing ideas around. Chicken Tea was a product of one of those late nights and has become a dish we can’t take off the menu!

Hiraeth dish / Image: Courtenay Pipkin Photography

• The tasting menus change "as quickly as the Welsh weather." Walk us through your changeover process: who pitches ideas, how do you test them, and what’s the threshold for a dish making the cut?

Andy: Changeover process, in the early days, was a massive stress. I just don’t think we were very good at it! But, over time, we have become a lot better. Not perfect, but better! We change the menu monthly and as a result the talk of the next month’s menu starts happening almost as soon as the menu roll out is done. Anyone can pitch in. We are an open forum. The final menu is then brought together by Lewis and me. We’ve worked together and written menus together for so long that this feels pretty natural now.

Dishes don’t always work. In fact, dishes not making the menu is not that unusual. The important part is knowing when the dish isn’t good enough. Some of our best, most loved dishes on menus have been created out of a moment of panic because a planned dish just hasn’t been right. However, there is no better feeling in the kitchen than creating a dish and having the team and then guests taste it, and everyone agree it’s a banger!

• Dishes like kombujime mackerel with tomato ponzu or salt-marsh lamb with a glazed bao speak to cross-currents. Where do you draw the line, so the plate reads as Hiraeth, not a passport stamp collection?

Andy: Hiraeth, the menus, the service style, the food and the team are all really personal to us. We cook food we enjoy eating and cooking ourselves, regardless of its origin and we also have a very clear understanding of what our restaurant is and, importantly, what it isn’t. For that reason, this is not something we would ever worry about. If we do it, it’s because we believe it fits our vision for our restaurant and what we want to deliver for our guests.

• Lewis, Great British Menu has spotlighted your celebration of Welsh history. Which GBM ideas or research threads have meaningfully fed back into Hiraeth’s menu development?

Lewis: When researching for the Great British Menu, Dinah Williams struck a chord with me.  She was a pioneering member of the Soil Association and the first person in Britain to register her farm, Brynllys, in Ceredigion, West Wales to be a certified organic dairy farm. At a time when most of her contemporaries were using chemical fertilisers, Dinah opted for the organic approach and used seaweed. This instantly fed back into how we run the kitchen. We want to keep everything as natural as we can.

Precision in plating at Hiraeth / Image: Courtenay Pipkin Photography

• You’re pursuing nose-to-leaf thinking with plans for an in-house greengrocer in 2026 to use surplus produce. How will that change the way you plant, preserve and price, both for diners and your wider community?

Andy: The immediate goal is to grow as much as possible that we will use on our menus. The plan is that we will have more than we can use and so we want our guests and locals to enjoy the produce as well. This hasn’t been thought up from a spreadsheet business decision, but we would love to see a restaurant doing this so figured we may as well do it ourselves!

• Cardiff’s dining scene is rising fast. Where do you see Hiraeth’s role in that momentum, and how are you collaborating with other local chefs, growers and foragers to push the city forward?

Andy: Agreed, the Cardiff food scene has transformed over the last five – 10 years. It’s very welcome! We are just doing our own thing and are happy that guests love it. We, like most independents, have a great network of local producers and foragers that source us the goods. Without them all the decent places to eat would be gone, so they play a huge part.

• Guests praise the "vibe" as much as the food. What have you built that turns a technically ambitious menu into a relaxed Cardiff night out?

Andy: We are both very clear on the type of restaurant we want to deliver. We’ve created a restaurant that we want to be in. We choose the music. We choose the food. We choose the wine. We choose the beer. Hiraeth is the place where, in our career, we can be ourselves. We don’t fold your napkin every time you get up from your table. We’ll pour your wine if you’d like us to, but we won’t if you don’t. We don’t open on Sundays because we want to be home with our families. The vibe is created because we, including the team, genuinely want to be there and we want our guests to have the best possible time with us!

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