A TV chef who’s cooked for royalty and lives with pop royalty is championing food from Wales.

Bryn Williams , who runs a swish London restaurant, will bring his crusade to Wrexham on Saturday, May 18.

He will be passing on his cooking tips for free when he gives an al fresco demonstration as a guest of Eagles Meadow shopping centre in Wrexham.

Bryn’s visit has been organised to coincide with Wrexham Food and Drink Festival weekend (May 18/19) which raises money for Wrexham’s Nightingale House Hospice.

Eagles Meadow has arranged for Bryn to do a book signing session at the food festival on Llwyn Isaf at 2pm on the Saturday before the demonstration at the shopping centre an hour later.

At a time when aspiring cooks are looking to achieve overnight celebrity status, the lad from Denbigh has grafted 15 years in the kitchen and learned his craft at the feet of the masters to reach the pinnacle of his profession.

In 1997 he began work under Marco Pierre White at The Criterion, went on to work under Michel Roux Jnr at Le Gavroche for three years.

He  went on to be Senior-Sous at The Orrery for four years and then moved to open Galvin at Windows with Chris Galvin, before opening Odette’s in Primrose Hill, London, in 2006, and becoming its owner in 2008.

In the same year that 35-year-old Bryn opened Odette’s, he was chosen to compete in the first series of the Great British Menu on BBC1.

Competing for Wales, Bryn triumphed with his fish course and went on to cook for the Queen’s birthday banquet.

But working at Odette’s also introduced him to special customer, Texas lead singer Sharleen Spiteri, and he and the Scottish singing sensation have been partners for more than five years.

“Obviously I will be cooking something seasonal when I come to Wrexham,” said Bryn, who has been in London since he was 20.

“A lot of the ingredients will be coming from North Wales although I won’t know the menu exactly until about a week before I come up.

“I try and get home about three or four times a year although unfortunately my visits are more work-related than purely social.

“I will have been in London 16 years this June – and I only came down here for a year!” said Bryn, who has just finished his second series for S4C Cegin Bryn (Bryn’s Kitchen) and has plans for a third series. He also has another cookery book out in October.

Bryn comes from a farming family and after leaving school at 16 he went to Llandrillo College where he was student of the year.

Bryn cooked live every day  in the GMTV kitchen with Myleene Klass during the last week of its 17 years as a breakfast television
broadcaster onITV.

He is passionate about the quality of Welsh food and believes it is as good as anything in Europe and probably the world. Many ingredients at his London restaurant come from Wales, the lamb from Henllan and the beef and pork from John Williams of Denbigh and cheese from South Wales.

“Fish is the only thing I struggle with from Wales. I think it tends to get sold in bulk and that’s a shame.”

He confirmed he is looking for a place he could buy in Wales, is he can find something at the right price and in the right location.

“I’m always looking but it would have to be the right building in the right location,” he said. It would not mean a move back to North Wales for Bryn however, and he would probably look to get one of the many “brilliant chefs” in Wales he has worked with to run it for him.

As chefs become ever more famous, Bryn cautions about expecting overnight success. “Being a chef is about experience. For me I worked with some of the best chefs in the world because I wanted to learn from them.

“It’s a tough industry, although not as tough as when I started but you still have to put in the time.

“People say it’s an unsociable industry but I have met some amazing people at Odette’s. You have to be enthusiastic and disciplined, which is true of any career.

Marks and Spencer will be supplying some of the ingredients for while there will also be a cookery demonstration by the centre’s Nando’s restaurant.

Eagles Meadow Manager Kevin Critchley was delighted that Bryn was coming to the shopping centre.

He said: “We are very pleased that we are working with the food festival to help raise money for Nightingale House which provides a fantastic and much needed service.”

The festival will take place on Saturday 18 and 19  at Llwyn Isaf, Wrexham.

Last year’s event was a huge success, attracting new people to Wrexham and raising the profile of locally produced food as well as the Hospice.

There will be also collections in aid of Nightingale House at Eagles Meadow.

Margaret Hollings, Nightingale’s fundraising and events manager  said: “This year we are looking forward to an even bigger day extravaganza. The weekend will include numerous food and drink stalls and demonstrations from many different local businesses.

“There will be cookery demonstrations from the AGA Rangemaster Kitchen, with Paul Prescott (Executive Chef, Nelson North West), Kevin Williams (Coleg Harlech) and many more over the course of the weekend.

“A full weekend of entertainment will also be provided using the fields band stand. Entry is £4 per person (Under 10’s free). Please come and support this wonderful event; taste some Wales’s finest foods whilst raising funds for a vital charity in the community at the same time.”

Nightingale House Hospice provides specialist palliative care services, completely free of charge, to people across Wrexham, Flintshire, East Denbighshire, the A494 corridor to Barmouth, and the borders, including Oswestry, Ellesmere, Wem and Whitchurch.

In 2013 it will cost £2.6 million to run the Hospice which equates to over £7000 per day. Since only 19% of this comes from the Local Health Board, it is only enough funding to support the Hospice for 69 days, and the hospice therefore greatly relies on the generosity of the communities it serves to raise the additional funding for the remaining 296 days of the year.

For more information please visit www.wrexhamfoodfest.co.uk or call 01978 314292. Stall spaces still available.

A group of care home residents in North Wales have turned their memories into touching poems.

Now the work of the senior wordsmiths from the Gwern Alyn care home, in Wrexham,  has gone on show at the Waterstones book shop in the town.

People can read the poetry or buy a copy and all the money raised will go to the Hope House children’s hospice.

The Poetry Group saw residents of the home, part of the Pendine Park care organisation, working together to turn some of their fondest memories and most difficult experiences into verse.

According to Waterstones manager Ged Armstrong, the poetry is already proving very popular.

He said: “People have really taken great interest in it. We are finding customers sitting in the shop and reading through it. I think many are touched by both the way the poems are written and of course the subjects.

“Some poems are humorous while some tackle quite difficult subjects and I think readers really get a sense of the personal memories of those that have written the work.”

He added: “We are certainly pleased to have been able to support Pendine Park residents by putting their book on display and we were really pleased to welcome the poetry writers to the store.”

Gwern Alyn’s activities coordinator, Yvonne Moran, said: “Many people seem to think older people living in care homes only watch television or sleep all day. But nothing could be further from the truth!

“We set up the Poetry Group as a way of stimulating interest and getting residents to think and talk to each other.

“The main thing is each poem we have written is relevant to a member of the group. Some are humorous while some are very touching and some extremely thought-provoking.”

She added: “But having written such lovely poems we didn’t want to simply leave them gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere so we looked at how we could put them into a book.

“Pendine Park’s Artist in Residence, Sarah Edwards, has been working with other staff to put the book together and Ged was very enthusiastic about having the book on display at Waterstones.

“He has also put a comment book with it so people can leave their thoughts and, perhaps, a small donation to a local charity, Hope House Children’s Hospice. It’s something we, and our residents and members of the Poetry Group, are very excited about.”

But Yvonne says nothing will beat the experience she has enjoyed of working with residents putting their memories into poems.

She said: “It’s been a wonderful experience and I feel very privileged. It really shows that older people have so much to say and we should never forget that.

“I have, on occasions, laughed till I cried and I have also cried from the sheer emotion of some of the stories and memories they have put into poems. It really has been a momentous experience and we have many more poems just waiting to be written.

“And I have to say relatives of our residents are really thrilled with the poems and the hard work residents have put in. I think everyone is touched buy the poems and the sentiments expressed in the work.”

Resident Marian Williams, 91, absolutely loves being part of the Poetry Group and really enjoys hearing the experiences of her fellow residents too.

She said: “One of the poems is called Climbing Trees and Walls. We wrote this as when I was a little girl my parents would never allow me to climb yet my brothers were always up trees enjoying themselves.

“Even now I gaze at trees and think I’d love to climb that! Of course I used to climb trees when I was out of sight of my parents. But if they caught me I’d been in real trouble.”

She added: “It was really great fun sitting down and talking with my friends and reminiscing about what we used to get up to.

“I have lived here at Gwern Alyn for about a year now and I really like it. I have lots of friends and we can be as busy as we want, there is always something for us to do.

“It’s wonderful to see our book on show here at Waterstones, whoever would have thought. We might be famous yet, who knows!”

Beryl Francis, 94, who originally hailed from Marchwiel, found the Poetry Group stimulating and really enjoyable.

She said: “I always liked literature and studied hard at school. We did Shakespeare and things like that even if it was a long time ago!

“I have lived here in Gwern Alyn for 12 months now and really like it.

“I have loved coming to Waterstones and seeing our book out on show. How marvellous and humbling. I hope people take the time to read our poems.”

Resident and Poetry Group member, Joan Bowyer, 92, agrees adding: “It’s nice to talk to other residents and share memories.

“I’m really pleased we have put the poems into a book and if it makes even just a few pounds for charity that’s a really good thing.”

Resident Tom Wynn, 88, is a member of the Poetry Group and penned War, a poem which draws on his wartime experiences of fighting on the front line.

He said: “I was called up at 18 and was originally sent to Algiers and later Italy. I saw things I don’t like to think about and I suppose my poem is anti-war.

“Every soldier that fought, or fights today, probably becomes anti-war. I saw a woman pushing a badly wounded man, I think it was her brother, along the road in a wheelbarrow trying to get behind the American lines. You don’t forget things like that.

“We were only boys and we had to see and do things we should never have had to. It was strange but being on the front line your senses, your hearing and sight, seemed to improve and I tried to explain that in the poem.

“We did the poem together and I don’t care if it’s anti-war, it’s just about what I saw and what I did.”

Tom’s daughter, Susan Clutton, said: “I think it’s a brilliant poem and I am so proud of him. It really brings it home what the war was about then. Perhaps we don’t realise today quite what it was like.”