Michelin stars were pitted against hygiene scores when Gareth Ward, chef-patron of the two-Michelin starred restaurant Ynyshir, was recently given a hygiene rating of… one. 

Ynyshir, which sits on the edge of Eryri national park near Machynlleth in Ceredigion, has held its second Michelin star since 2022, making it the first restaurant in Wales to receive two of the accolades. The restaurant offers a single 30-course tasting menu, to which changes cannot be made for allergies or preferences, at a cost of £468 per person. Its most recent food hygiene inspection found that its management of food safety required ‘major improvement’. The cleanliness and condition of facilities and the building also needed ‘improvement’, while their food handling was rated ‘generally satisfactory’. 

A hygiene rating of one means that the restaurant is operating below minimum legal standards – although does not necessarily mean that it must close. In Wales, it is compulsory for restaurants to display their hygiene rating in a prominent place in the entrance or dining room (the same is not true in England). 

Ward told the BBC that he was ‘not embarrassed’ by the low score, blaming the inspectors being uncomfortable with the use of raw and aged ingredients. ‘I’m buying sashimi-grade fish from Japan and they’re questioning, “Well, we don’t know the water, so how do we know it’s sashimi grade?” Well, it is sashimi grade, this stuff’s eaten raw all over the world and just because our rules don’t fit their rules, they’re questioning........

© The Spectator