One tucked-away business has won best restaurant in Wales for its eight year.

Off the beaten track nestled next to an RSPB wetland site is the Ynyshir restaurant and rooms, where for £540 you can taste the roving creations of chef and owner Gareth Ward.

The two-Michelin-star restaurant has won best restaurant in Wales by the National Restaurant Awards every year since 2018, an award that uses 200 experts from across the industry to vote annually on which establishments will make the list.

Not only the best in Wales, Ynyshir was ranked sixth in the UK this year after four London restaurants, Osip in Somerset and Moor Hall in Lancashire.

Sharing the news on Instagram, the restaurant simply put, “thank you again to the best industry in the world”.

The review describes the multi-course tasting menu as “uncompromisingly edgy, Asian-influenced food”, the intimate dining room “stripped back”, with a fully open kitchen for diners to “watch the brigade at work”.

The site is described as the “antithesis of a boring country house”.

It continues: “The food itself is described as ‘ingredient-led and flavour-driven ’.

“This is an entirely accurate description, but one that doesn’t quite do justice to Ward’s explosive cooking.

“His approach is strikingly different to the norm – a peculiar but effective marriage of top-quality produce, Asian flavours and unusual technique served in a succession of tiny bites.

“To dine at Ynyshir is to have more than a meal; it is an experience unlike any other on these shores.

“The in-house DJ (surely the only two Michelin-starred restaurant in Europe to employ one?) keeps things lively, playing a set that reads the vibe of the room, with a glitter ball put into action as the night unfolds.

“Anywhere else this might not work, but at Ynyshir and under the spell of Ward's supreme cooking, it's something to savour.”

Despite being adorned with accolades, the restaurant has recently come under scrutiny by Ceredigion’s Food Standards officers.

It was revealed in January that the Food Standards Agency awarded the restaurant a one-star hygiene rating, requiring “major improvement”.

The inspectors listed concerns including sticky strips hanging with dead flies on in a preparation room, broken equipment, inadequate hand washing facilities and poorly kept records as contributing to the low rating.

Inspectors ordered the restaurant to no longer serve lobster meat raw, identified a dirty floor and knife as issues, the report also stating it took several attempts to get staff to provide the restaurant’s current menu.

Ward said he was not embarrassed by the rating and that the restaurant had addressed all concerns raised by the report and was awaiting a reassessment.

He did however call the inspectors “prehistoric” for not understanding their non-traditional methods of cooking.

A statement from the restaurant added that some of the report was “factually incorrect”, that the dirty knife was halfway through being sharpened and cleaned, and that the issues mostly related to “documentation and a lack of understanding of our specialised procedures”.