Edible seaweed is making waves in Wales. Melanie Leyshon tries coastal foraging and discovers news ways to eat and drink it.

Pembrokeshire is known for its beautiful sandy beaches and stunning walks. Now, another coastal asset is enjoying a renaissance. Seaweed is surging in popularity and fast becoming the culinary ingredient of the moment – you see it on restaurant and pub menus and being used as a flavouring for local rum and chocolates.

Traditionally, seaweed is dried and cooked to make laverbread – a dark green purée that’s coated in breadcrumbs, fried and served for breakfast with cockles and bacon. It was a miners’ favourite and nutritional powerhouse of protein and iron – the late great actor Richard Burton called it ‘Welshman’s caviar’.

The quality of Pembrokeshire seaweed has earned it a PDO (protected designation of origin) status, joining Gower salt marsh lamb and Anglesey sea salt (Halen Môn) as one of only a small number of protected Welsh ingredients. Supplies are on the up. The regenerative Câr-y-Môr community project is increasing seaweed tonnage through ocean farming off St Davids.

In late March, we wrap up warm for a coastal forage in Saundersfoot with guide Craig Evans from Coastal Foraging and his loveable, lolloping golden retriever, Llew, to take a closer look. It’s cold, but not enough to freeze your cockles off!

As the high tide recedes it reveals bright green seaweed and the reddy brown dulse variety clinging to the rocks. There are hundreds of varieties of laver (edible seaweed) around this coastline as well as ample supplies of blue-shelled mussels and clams, which Craig cooks in a broth of salty Welsh butter and foraged wild garlic, topped with yellow gorse flowers that taste of coconut.

Over at Freshwater West beach, seaweed champion Jonathan Williams gathers laver for his various food businesses. This unspoilt surfing beach was once the centre of the seaweed cottage industry for local women, who’d gather and dry it in thatched huts before selling it to Swansea Market. You can visit the last hut standing of 20 above the bay.

Jonathan cooks imaginative seaweed specialities at his award-winning Café Môr ‘food truck’, an old fishing boat. It’s outside his restaurant and bar, The Old Point House in Angle, and is a go-to in summer months. As we’re there on a wet and windy March evening, we snuggle up by the fire in The Old Point House bar for an inspired plate of richly flavoured dulse pasta with fresh crab.

Jonathan also sells a range of seaweed products online, from jars of laverbread and seasonings to his scrumptious seaweed-flavoured Barti rum. He wants to secure the future of the coast and its seaweed, so is helping to fund research at Swansea University into seaweed farming and carbon capture.

ON THE WATERFRONT

For high-end seaweed-inspired dishes, we have dinner at delectable Dulse restaurant, located in Tŷ Hotel on the revamped Milford Waterfront. It’s upmarket and wouldn’t look out of place at San Francisco’s famous Ferry Building. Executive head chef Simon Crockford, inspired by Jonathan, has incorporated the umami flavour of dulse into several of his dishes.

A starter of dulse Welsh tea hot smoked salmon is beautifully tender and subtly seasoned, a dulse tartare sauce is a lovely touch for the locally caught battered fish with chips. And the sticky toffee pudding with Barti-spiced rum toffee sauce and salted caramel ice cream from the nearby Scoop Ice Cream Parlour, is indulgent yet light.

The 100-room Tŷ Hotel also has four ‘floatels’ – individual cabins with balconies on the water. They face the harbour and have a backdrop of shops and eateries. Try Dilly’s and Trwffl for chocolates, Scoop for ice creams and coffee, and Martha’s Vineyard for hearty lunches and suppers made with local produce – including plenty of seafood options.

The docks opposite are the working part of the marina where incoming fishing boats sell their catch to the fish shops. At The Fish Plaice, fishmonger Jan shows her counter of plump scallops, snow-white hake, cod, mussels and more. The Welsh Lobster Co is for crab, wild mussels and, of course, lobsters.

Milford Waterfront turns out to be a smart choice for visiting Pembrokeshire. While there is a view of the oil refinery in the distance, the boat-packed marina captures that riviera feel. It’s a good alternative to the oversubscribed hotspots of Tendy, Saundersfoot and Amroth. If you’re looking for a laid-back, well-catered and well-priced coastal break, then this is the place to dock.

THREE BEST BITES