Menuwatch: SY23, Aberystwyth, Wales

But the star turned out to be red, accompanied by an opening of the year award for the restaurant, which began welcoming guests at the tail-end of 2019.

The announcement was made at the same time as GBM aired and suddenly Davies was on the TV and all over social media. "It's been absolutely bonkers, dream-come-true sort of stuff. We're a little place in west Wales people have never really heard of, and now people are travelling from all over to visit," he says.

It's been non-stop ever since for the team at SY23, with its three chefs – Davies, Charlie Jones and Kuba Biskup – in the kitchen, serving a 10-course tasting menu four evenings a week as well as two lunch services. Eager guests will be lucky to get a table this side of October. And Saturday? Try again in 2023.

While the excitement of the past few months hasn't really sunk in, Davies is intending on keeping his feet firmly on the ground. Being immersed in nature helps him stay focused. The restaurant is metres from the sea where, during the summer months, the majority of his seafood is line-caught, while his menu also benefits from foraging in the woodlands. As a certified tree surgeon, he even fells and dries the logs for his open-fire cooking himself.

"We're dictated in the order of play by the fire – we build it at the beginning of service so it's incredibly hot for the first course of scallop and slightly less fierce for rendering lamb fat or cooking ribs later on."

This is serious fire cooking, with guests entertained by the performance put on by Davies and his team behind the open kitchen. The first dish of mushroom is pure comfort food. Davies reduces button mushrooms to make an acidic ketchup which sits at the bottom of the bowl, before grilling hoppy maitake mushrooms with miso butter and soy, served with pickled shimeji mushrooms. Button mushrooms, dashi and cream are then turned into a light mouse aerated through an iSi gun. "We then take a thin slice of raw button mushroom, dust in a powder made from shitake mushrooms and sit that on top – when you look at the bowl it just looks like a mushroom soup, but it has loads of texture and flavours."

Next is the aforementioned scallop, which is placed straight onto the embers. "We don't turn them over, so you have a beautiful just-cooked middle, one side is caramelised, with that crunch on top, and the other is just warm with a luxurious, meaty texture."

The scallop is served with pickled foraged seaweed – either samphire, sea aster or sea purslane depending on what is available – with rice vinegar to cut through the richness of the scallop. "We then grate the white meat of a scallop onto hot oil, so it cooks into sweet and crunchy breadcrumbs. It's served with a sauce made from a cultured butter that's a little sour and we burn that and use it as the base of the sauce with dashi. A second dressing is made from soy, mirin, rice wine vinegar and miso. We finish it off by toasting seaweed over the fire and turn it into a powder to sprinkle on top."

There are Asian influences throughout his cooking – a nod to his time spent as head chef at two-star Ynyshir near Machynlleth, as are SY23's moody interiors, modern playlist and the animal skulls on a bookcase, which also proudly displays his red star accolade.

While he prefers to cook with local ingredients, Asian flavours bring a freshness to the menu, highlighted in a pre-dessert of a yuzu tart, where a thin pastry case houses a yuzu curd crowned with Italian meringue, branded using a hot piece of coal. Meanwhile, a rhubarb dessert comes with a side of drama in the form of dry ice swirling around the dish of rhubarb in raw, compote and sorbet forms, with cream cheese, nettle oil and an intricate nettle biscuit.

Is it fair to ask this chef what is next when he's barely come up for air? Probably not, but we ask anyway. "We were cooking without pressure before," he says. "Even though we didn't know we were going to get it, but we definitely can't lose it now. But if you cloud your mind with that too much, then you stop yourself from moving forward."

From the menu

• Local grains – cultured miso butter
• Scallop – seaweed – burnt butter
• Crab – preserved elder
• Turbot – cockles – broccoli
• Lamb – black garlic – mushroom
• Strawberries – elderflower – cultured cream
• Lemon – meringue
• 64% chocolate – grains – sour cream
• Cox apple – wood sorrel – granola
• Burnt butter fudge – chocolate – salt

From the tasting menu, £110

*2 Pier Street, Aberystwyth SY23 2LJ

sy23restaurant.com*

Photos: Michelle Martin