Gingey Bites

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Gingey Bites

Old school food blogger writing about foodie travel, sustainable eats and instant noodles. www.atthesauce.com

I've been writing this food blog since 2009 and have loved trying new food and experimenting in the kitchen since I was small. My blog is full of recipes, reviews and thought pieces with a focus on sustainability, organic eating and travel. I really love East Asian food but am keen to explore as much of the world via my palate as possible. Check out my food podcast at the sauce for conversations a

bout food with people from all over the world of food and drink - from farmers to home cooks, chefs, business owners and producers.

31/08/2026

It’s been a jam packed month!! I thought I’d share a few highlights, starting with the stunning light over Pendine Sands at sunset.

Matching shirts for our boy and his bestie at Valley Fest. His first experience of a festival and I think he enjoyed it!

BlackBerry picking for days. We ate them with ice cream, yoghurt and of course straight off the bush too!

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Getting back onto some semblance of a healthy lifestyle (aside from all the meals out!), thanks to the guiding lights Geoff and Jess at NOURISH & GAIN ONLINE COACHING 🌟

No words needed. We love a trip to Pettigrew Bakeries, and their Welsh cakes are the best. 😋🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Another Cardiff institution, finally visited Calabrisella Gelateria and it was goooood! 🍨

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Sometimes simple is best. Pasta for days!

More visits to Roath Park than I can count. Our son’s fave place and let’s be honest, mine too!

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A perfect four days away. Caravan holidays just remind me of being a kid and I love’em. 🏖️ 🪣 🪏 🌊 ☀️

Cockles and prawns in Saundersfoot - a snack that’s hundreds of years old. I’ve written about it in my blog - go take a read! 🦐 🐚

Great food at The Sultan down in Cardiff Bay. Their lunch menu is brilliant value and the portions are huge. 😋

A cheeky visit with mum to Bar 44 Tapas Y Copas with a leftover birthday voucher. Their lunch deal is cracking, at £25 a head for three tapas items and a drink. Perfect charity shopping fuel.

Pulled pork tacos from BAB HAUS + BAB HAUS MEX at Ffos Caerffili before a bank holiday stomp around the castle. No notes. 💯 🌮 🧡

Always time for a spot of lunch at Snails Deli Ltd, this time with my mum who was visiting

26/08/2026

Today’s lunch time trip took me to Cardiff Korean & Japanese Food to stock up on a big bag of rice. It’s been ages since I’ve been so obviously, rice wasn’t the only thing I brought home!

Here are a few of my fave bits in no particular order:

👉 D**g Won tuna is the best
👉 Burdock & Mooli for making Kimbap
👉 Takoyaki! Excited to try these!
👉 Samgap Kimbap seaweed AND mould to make that classic triangle shape!
👉 Seaweed sheets for Kimbap
👉 Frozen hoeddeok (pancakes filled with brown sugar yum)
👉 Vitasoy chocolate drink (IYKYK)
👉 A gorgeous ‘winter edition’ royal milk tea - my fave.

And of course, we popped into Fang's Oriental Bakery next door for treats. I got the spring onion and pork bun which is always my favourite!

We paid £68 for all that (including a 10k bag of rice and a few other bits). What do you think?

23/08/2026

Hell of a lunch deal at Bar 44 Tapas Y Copas in Penarth. £25 for three tapas and a drink. I love this group of restaurants (having had excellent food at their Bristol and Cardiff branches, as well as Asador 44 in Cardiff) so I knew it would be good. And it was!

Here’s what Mum and I had:

👉 Cantabrian Boquerón anchovies
👉 Galician padron peppers
👉 Heritage tomato salad, moscatel dressing, dried black olive
👉 Triple-cooked patatas bravas, sherry alioli, bravas sauce
👉 Little gem, Manchego, anchovy Caesar salad
👉 Crispy market fish in Estrella Galicia batter, sherry alioli

This, with a glass of cold rosé made for a perfect treat lunch and a quick break between charity shopping - Penarth has a great selection of charity shops!

The market fish and patatas bravas both came with an incredible aioli which I pretty much wiped the plates clean of. The tomato salad packed an incredible punch and the padrons had just the right amount of char and sea salt.

And, to make this even more of a bargain lunch, I had a £40 voucher from my birthday last year (thank you Charlotte Feeney-Swiatkowska & !) so the bill came to less than £20 with tip included.

21/08/2026

Another great meal at Thomas, The Brasserie last night, this time with my mum who’s been visiting for a few days. Did we drink too much? Yes. Did we embarrass ourselves? Almost definitely. Was the food stunning? 100%! 💫

The St Brides Bay crab crumpet with salted butter, chives, and lemon was the star. My mum loves crab and this was delicious. A generous pile of white crab meat delicately seasoned and sat on a light as air crumpet. A must order!

Mum had the lamb which I ordered last time (see blog on gingeybites.com or scroll further down my feed to see) and I had the pork loin with cabbage and apple c***r. Cooked pink and charred to perfection. The capers were also the perfect salty accompaniment.

We ordered the Tom’s chips (more like layered roasties) and green beans to accompany our mains and of course, I reordered the taramasalata from the ‘for the table’ section as I loved it so much last time.

I know you’re thinking it can’t ALL be that good and actually, it wasn’t. There was one dish that missed the mark for us. The red prawn tortellini just didn’t quite work. The broth, with tiny diced shallots had all the flavour you’d expect from a stock made with the heads and shells but it just lacked something. The filling of the tortellini felt a little lost and overall, it’s not one I’d order again. At £16 for three tiny pieces, it was also pretty pricey.

Overall though, a stunning meal and a brilliant night catching up and celebrating the end of a terrible time at work.

The bill came to £240 including tip for two starters and two mains, two sides, one bottle of w**e, six cocktails ( 🙊 🙈 ) and one sharer.

18/08/2026

We celebrated our 11 year anniversary yesterday with a 10am (😂😳) cinema visit to see The Oddysey, followed by lunch down at Cardiff Bay.

I often feel that although it’s a nice area, it’s a shame there aren’t more indies down there. Cue a perfectly timed post from Emma-Leigh🍽 talking about The Sultan! We went on her recommendation and really enjoyed the food.

The lunch offer of two courses for £15.90 is excellent value and we rolled out of there. To be honest, we’d have been fine with one course (at £12.90) but hey, it was a celebration.

Here’s what we ate:

👉 Shakshouka (served cold, rich and moreish full of aubergine)
👉 Beef sujuk sausage with a creamy dip
👉 Chicken shish kebab
👉 Adana kofte (lamb)

The starters came with Turkish bread and dips and the mains came with chargrilled veggies, rice and salad.

For me, the winners were the chicken which was tender, moist and beautifully flavoured, and the shakshouka which just blew us away in its rich depth of flavour, nothing like the watery breakfast item you so often see cooked with sad hard eggs.

The only let down was the rice. Peppered with overcooked peas and sweetcorn, it felt like hispitql or school dinner food and neither of us ate it. It felt at complete odds with everything else we had! Luckily the salad was vast. Maybe dropping the rice and adding more bread would work better. bread instead

Service was friendly but discreet and although the decor was a little nondescript, overall we thought it was a great spot and excellent value for money. The bill came to £42 with drinks and a tip.

Thanks again for the recommendation Emma-Leigh🍽! 👍 👍

16/08/2026

We’ve just got back from a few days on the Pembrokeshire / Carmarthenshire border and what a lovely time we had. Stunning coastline and brilliant weather. ☀️

A quick shout out to Harold O’Vinegars seafood deli on the Saundersfoot Harbourside. A small area of shops and eateries has popped up there since our last visit a few years back and it’s a great spot for a sit down and something to eat at.

Harold’s sells locally caught fresh seafood in many forms - from sandwiches to platters and, to my delightful, in tubs ready to be dowsed in pepper and vinegar. I went for a mixed tub for £5 and it included cockles, mussels, prawns, whelks and brown shrimp. A very traditional seaside snack and one I adore.

Do you enjoy this kind of food? 🦐 🐚 🌊

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24/07/2026

Good god, I love hot dogs! Such good hot weather food. 🌭

We’ve had these ones before from Costco Wholesale UK (top recommendation from Lia Kelly - Korean Foodie in Cardiff who knows all the best buys there) so I picked some up again this week too. If you spot them, grab them! 😋

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20/07/2026

I rarely talk about what’s happening in my real life. My Instagram is about food and experiences, not really the day to day. Work is causing me a huge amount of stress atm so getting away for a few days to Palma with my amazing friend Jenni was just what the doctor ordered.
We stayed in the C’an Pastilla area just outside Palma - at the adults only El Cid hotel. Three nights without our kids and partners to just eat good food, chat, sleep and read our books by the pool felt like a complete luxury.

This is a bit of a random selection of pics, but a few highlights: at Restaurante Tres Leñas we ate paella, fried artichokes and baby squid whilst drinking delicious house rosé.

At Marisquería Internationale we had lobster with fried egg and padrón peppers, plus huge red prawns - and you have to see Jenni cutting that lobster open to get every last bit out, she was not leaving a scrap behind!

We drank many cocktails around town, all of which were under €12, and I enjoyed empanadas from Don’t Cry for me - in Espinita (spinach) and Barbacoa (pulled pork). At under €4.5 each they were delish!

C’an Pastilla isn’t a party area but it had a nice buzz. Plenty of bars and restaurants and a huge swathe of beach running the length of the town and beyond. It was also surprisingly affordable with the most expensive meal being the prawns and lobster only coming in at £45 a head with drinks.

We flew from Bristol in just under 2.5 hours and are already planning to return next year with more friends in tow!

13/07/2026

We live not too far from Rhiwbina and recently have found ourselves more and more popping into Snails Deli Ltd for lunch. Slowly getting roots here in Cardiff since we moved a year ago and it’s really beginning to feel like home! 🧡

A proper lovely spot with a good lunch menu, daily specials and everything made in house. Pictured here are their Welsh rarebit, in the background - smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel, and their three cheese and onion toastie.

It gets busy so get there early for a table! They also do takeaway!

The high street is worth a potter after - there are two charity shops, a couple of lovely gift shops and several lovely restaurants. Very lucky to live so close by!

11/07/2026

Last night Kacie Morgan and I treated ourselves to dinner at Thomas, The Brasserie. It was my first time there but it will not be my last.🤩

From the sharing section, the taramasalata was so good I nearly asked for a spoon. Salty and smooth with pops of briney flavour from the salmon eggs and a freshness from the herbs on top. Perfection.

My starter, the hot smoked salmon was equally delicious, aided again by those perfect little eggs and topped with lightly pickled cucumber.

For my main, I went with the lamb cannon with crispy lamb belly, potato rosti and tomato fondue. You don’t often see lamb belly so when it’s on, I usually jump at the chance. The lamb was perfectly pink, properly rested, with just the right amount of char and the flavour in that fondue was exception. I also ordered a side of glazed carrots which were surprisingly tasty (I think something like miso butter and seeds).

As I was waiting for Kacie to arrive, I enjoyed a brilliant non alcoholic French 75 and then with my meal,an Argentinian Malbec rosé that made a nice change from all the Provence rosé on menus right now. 😏

One of the reasons we chose to book Thomas was because they’ve been refreshingly honest lately about tweaking things behind the scenes, adjusting from more fine dining to a brasserie model which is more affordable. The move was in a bid to help sustain the business - they were busy last night so hopefully things are stabilising for them.

The bill came to £88 per head which, for the quality and service, was in my mind worth every penny. Perhaps still a little pricey for every day dining but a sure fire hit for special events.

thomasbrasserie

Address

Bristol

Website

http://www.gingeybites.com/

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