The Fox Hunter Hotel

Nantyderry, Near Abergavenny, Abergavenny, Wales

This green and undulating pocket of Wales is becoming quite the food lover’s destination thanks to Abergavenny’s famous food festival and a cluster of seriously good restaurants: Shaun Hill’s Walnut Tree, Stephen Terry’s The Hardwick and James Sommerin’s The Crown at Whitebrook. Matt Tebbutt’s The Foxhunter is very much part of this pack. When he’s not starring on the small screen, he’s doing clever things with Welsh produce and wild food in the restaurant with rooms that he runs with wife Lisa. Hidden away in the hamlet of Nantyderry, enthusiastic diners fill the spacious stone building, which is smart yet rustic, with flagstone floors, wood stoves and starched tablecloths. The Tebbutts have created a lovely atmosphere, with staff stopping to natter to customers as they provide effortlessly efficient service. It might be Matt’s celebrity that attracts some people but it is his non-fussy, full flavoured and seasonally in-tune cooking that brings them back for more. A vast bowl of black-bean soup with crunchy pieces of pancetta and a dollop of crème fraîche was utterly delicious, while the skate wing melted in the mouth – its brown butter sauce, dotted with capers and sweet nuggets of brown shrimp, added a salty piquancy. End on a high by digging into an Eton Mess, which could hide plump new-season cherries. Keep your eyes peeled for one of Matt’s suppliers, who often walks in with a basket brimming with assorted mushrooms and tufts of wild greens. Throughout the year, expert forager Raoul Van Den Broucke supplies the kitchen with wild ingredients and leads guests on foraging expeditions too, returning to The Foxhunter for Matt to whip up the day’s pickings into a sublime feast. Stay in one of the two tiny but gorgeous cottages (a two-bed and one-bed) just next door so you won’t have far to stagger after your generously portioned feast. Kitchens are kitted out with all you need to cook up your own breakfast – eat on the patio as you look out over the lush, green fields and plan a picnic nearby. Cottages from £145 per night, including breakfast provisions. Dinner from £25 (foxhunterinn.com)

Foodie diversion Buy Welsh cheeses at McBlains of Usk. Or, if you are around on the last Thursday of the month, head to the farmers’ market in Abergavenny’s historic market hall.

Come here for a walk on the wild side in Wales.