Amidst the gentle drizzle of the bleakly beautiful Dee Valley in Gwynedd, North Wales, I’m being shown around Palé Hall, a grand Victorian pile built in 1871 by the Scottish industrialist Henry Robertson. It’s changed hands a couple of times since I was last there, and has recently done so again, though its stately presence surrounded by sweeping sculpture-dotted lawns with rabbits bobbing all over the place like Watership Down, is as picturesque as I remember it.
In the still-under-construction spa complex away from the main building, we get chatting with Tony, waving a hammer about on the floor outside the new Himalayan salt room. I’m struck by how remarkably well-informed Tony seems to be about the myriad developments underway at the hotel, until it eventually becomes evident that I’m not talking with one of the builders but with Palé Hall’s new owner, Tony Barney.
Tony is as enthusiastic an advocate of what you see is what is you get as one is likely to encounter, and is soon regaling me about his personal odyssey from Wolverhampton estate to hammer-wielding Lord of the Manor. Anthony Cooper-Barney, to accord him his full title, whose horse has just enjoyed a well-publicised win at the Cheltenham Festival, is one of the UK’s most successful and engaging entrepreneurs.
Now a doting grandparent, I wonder if he shouldn’t be enjoying the fruits of his self-made labours a little more judiciously. “My approach to life”, he explains, through still discernible Black Country intonations, “is the wheelbarrow approach – once you stop pushing it, everything else stops”. One thing’s for sure, the man with the hammer is going at his new luxury hotel venture, hammer and tongs, with much already accomplished in just two years of stewardship, and plenty more in the pipeline.
Outside in the soon-to be Japanese Garden, he introduces me to his wife Donna, sweeping up the mud with a giant broom, seemingly another devotee of the wheelbarrow worldview. Donna, though, underneath those mud spatterings, looks every inch the stylish chatelaine, à la Liz Hurley perhaps, who purportedly eschews workouts in favour of just working out and about on her Herefordshire estate. Either way, this delightfully down-to-earth couple are fully intent on repositioning Palé Hall further along the hospitality spectrum than it may have found itself previously.
A significant step in that direction was taken earlier this year with the arrival of Luke Selby as chef-partner. Within the gastronomic universe, it can sometimes seem like there are more rising stars than restaurants, but Selby undoubtedly is one. Aside from being the first to win, at just 27 years old, both the Roux Scholarship and National Chef Of The Year within the same year, and enjoying successful stints at some of the U.K.’s most renowned eateries, he is yet another talent to have been mentored and cultivated by Raymond Blanc at his world-famous Oxfordshire retreat, Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons.
Latterly, the Executive Chef at Le Manoir, Selby is now embarking on a major career move with the newfound partnership with Tony Barney, who, as he explained to me, he’d met quite coincidentally, while fly fishing along the bucolic banks of the Dee down below Palé Hall.
Updating the 22 rooms and suites inside the Hall is already underway, though the preeminent project remains a new fine dining space where it’s hoped Luke Selby’s culinary genius will be allowed to run free and unfettered – and most likely headlong into Michelin stardom. The restaurant is envisaged as a conservatory-styled extension probing out into those gorgeous grounds, with Tony and Luke currently confident of a successful launch later this year.
Perhaps the most significant step so far on what is shaping up to be a momentous journey, however, has been the acquisition and restoration of the Bryntirion Inn. The Bryn, as it’s known locally, sits just outside the entrance to Palé Hall, and so effectively forms part of the estate. Perched atop a little rise of a quiet country road, gazing down towards an ancient stone bridge that straddles the burbling waters of the River Dee, it looks as though it’s been a part of this screenshot of pastoral perfection forever. Dating right back to 1695, in a way, it has been, though by the time it fell under Tony Barney’s ownership, the Bryn was definitely feeling the weight of its years. I asked Tony if it was true he’d spent a rumoured million pounds renovating the property, at which he pulled out his phone and reeled off a sequence of photos showing the pub’s magnificent exterior stone walls and not much else.
The restoration of the Bryntirion Inn was clearly a very comprehensive ground-up operation and evidently did put that seven-figure dent in Tony Barney’s wallet, though it should now be set fair for another few hundred years.
There are just six rooms, named after Welsh mountain peaks, spread across the first and second floors, all finished with a simple yet stylish design template, conjuring up the kind of cosy yet comfortable experience one expects to encounter inside an old country pub. Only now the hot water will work, central heating pipes won’t bang, windows don’t leak, and the doors can shut properly. Breakfasts had originally been served in a breakfast box left outside the door, but with the rooms not really affording the space for that concept to take off, thankfully, breakfasts can now be taken downstairs.
The public areas have been redesigned around a motoring and motorsport aesthetic to reflect Tony Barney’s passionate interest in four-wheeled pursuits, with memorabilia from his personal collection on display all around. In spite of this unique approach to its interior design, the pub, with open fires crackling away and snug sofas to sink into, retains its traditional allure. Perhaps the most notable addition to the newly reinvigorated Bryntirion Inn, though, is its food offering. Luke Selby’s simmering gastronomic revolution for the Hall is already up and running down at the pub, where a highly professional kitchen serves a seriously sophisticated cuisine into the 60-cover dining room.
All around the newly conceived Barney-Selby iteration of Palé Hall I encounter people who’ve arrived there in Luke Selby’s wake, not least his brothers, Theo, and Nathaniel, with whom he is used to working. The Head Chef at the Bryn, Ethan Cleary, is yet another emigre from Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons. Watching Ethan working energetically away through the pass of the kitchen, as if he was still ensconced in his 2-Michelin-starred comfort zone, merely reaffirmed that what’s evolving here is something considerably more elevated than the ubiquitous Cotswolds gastro-pub.
The menu does indeed look like a standard pub offering with innocuous sounding dishes like braised chicken pie with mashed potato, and beer battered fish & chips. The brown sauce accompanying the scotch egg, though, will be home-made and like no brown sauce you’ll have tasted, there’s focaccia made in-house, while the unexceptional sounding chicken wings are accompanied by gochujang (Korean condiment) and lime and definitely are exceptional. My wild garlic velouté was particularly outstanding, as was the chicken liver parfait with plum chutney, while the mouth-wateringly tender Welsh black sirloin with creamy mushrooms was as good as you’ll encounter.
I asked Ethan how he made that wild garlic velouté, thinking I might attempt it, at which he reels off a complex sequence of technical procedures that can only have their genesis in a Michelin-starred kitchen, following which, I concluded that perhaps I won’t attempt it after all. This is pub food, alright, though not as we know it.
One thing that will underpin Luke Selby’s ambition to create a culinary centre of excellence among the blisteringly beauty of these Welsh-speaking backwaters is undoubtedly the exceptional quality, availability and provenance of pretty much everything that goes through the kitchen door. A natural asset that’s now further embellished by the impressively large kitchen garden he’s been busily establishing.
We’ll see soon enough the full extent of what Wales’s new superstar chef intends to serve up. For now, though, the Bryntirion Inn, secreted away in some of the U.K.’s most spectacular driving country, with wonderful walks from right outside the door, and the little market town of Bala just 4 miles away, already dangles as a foretaste of what’s to come.
@thebryntirion | thebryntirion.co.uk
Llandderfel, Bala LL23 7RA
@palehallhotel | palehall.co.uk
Pale, Estate, Bala LL23 7PS
