The story
Just outside Raglan, in the quiet Monmouthshire countryside of Bettws Newydd, The Black Bear Inn is a pub that puts its faith in the best local ingredients. The team describe their approach as “seasonal British food which changes weekly,” and they mean it. The menu is concise by design, ensuring everything is fresh and made from scratch.
The kitchen works with a carefully chosen network of producers: Neal’s Yard Dairy, Hodmedods, Talgarth Mill, and Flying Fish among them. Farmers like Tom Jones and foragers like Welsh Truffles supply the pantry. The result is a short, evolving à la carte menu that reflects what is best at that moment. Oysters are a regular feature, ordered as fresh as possible, and the team are happy to reserve them if you mention it when booking.
The same menu runs at lunch and dinner; there is no traditional Sunday roast. Vegan dishes are not typically on the menu, but the kitchen is happy to prepare them with a day or two of notice. The dining room welcomes well-behaved dogs on leads, and the atmosphere is relaxed and unfussy.
The Black Bear Inn holds a Michelin Recommendation, a recognition that quietly underscores the quality of what is being done here. It is a place that earns its reputation through ingredients and consistency, not through fanfare.
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‘Overall, to find this level of cooking in such an unassuming location was a real treat,’ is praise indeed for Josh and Hannah Byrne’s warmly welcoming rural dining pub, which is surrounded by rivers, mountains and fields. Perched proudly by the side of the road – and seemingly a beacon in an area with not much else around – the Black Bear Inn has quickly built a reputation with diners who keep coming back because the food is precisely what they want to eat. From what must be one of the smallest kitchens in Wales comes a menu heavily weighted towards delicious snacks (we got a little overexcited and ordered too many), but the trio of starters and mains is well worth investigating – perhaps Dexter beef tartare with fried bread and anchovy mayo or haddock and mussels in herb butter sauce. The largely European wine list offers an astonishing range for a country pub, full of excitement, with interesting grape varieties all over the show, interspersed with some orange stuff and chilled reds. Check the blackboard for excellent by-the-glass selections.
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