Hank! A Cardiff Food Podcast Jane Cook and Matt Appleby

As Welsh hospitality prepares to reopen indoors, we ask the founders of Cardiff's newest burger venture what it was like to launch a new restaurant at the height of a global pandemic.

The result of a partnership between chef Aled Hill, and fourth generation farmer / butcher Shaun Jones , Ansh serves up 'uniquely home-grown burgers which celebrate Wales in every ansh (bite).'

Continuing on from our conversation with restauranteur Simon Wright in Episode 9 - in this instalment of the podcast, we speak to Shumana Palit about how the Coronavirus crisis has affected her.

Shumana Palit and her husband Paul Grimwood run Ultracomida; a business which incorporates two Spanish deli-restaurants in Narberth and Aberystwyth; Curado Bar and Vermut in Cardiff city centre; and an online shop which delivers imported Spanish produce across the UK.

This episode was recorded just as it was revealed that the Welsh hospitality sector was facing up to 30,000 job losses, with half of these having already taken place. A desperate situation, exacerbated by the fact that there was still no update on indoor opening for restaurants, bars and pubs Wales. In this episode, we spoke to restauranteur, food writer and broadcaster Simon Wright about the impact of the Coronavirus crisis, the formation of the Welsh Independent Restaurant Collective, and the damage to the hospitality industry in Wales that has already been done.

Whilst NHS staff across Wales face the Coronavirus crisis head-on, in Cardiff a network of volunteers worked to ensure that these key workers were well-fed. In this episode we spoke to Kevin McGuckian (Holy Yolks) about the band of local independents involved in #feedtheheroesdiff, and to Kasim Ali (Waterloo Tea) about the #FeedTheHeath campaign which raised more than £80,000 to feed the staff at Wales' biggest hospital.

In this episode we look at the phenomenon of the 'Kitchen Takeover'. We chat with the lovely James from pop-up, sell-out success Matsudai Ramen, and Edwina O'Hart of Get Well Fed.
Both tell us what it's like to enter a professional kitchen and start cooking for paying customers, despite having no formal background in food. We also speak to one of Cardiff's nomadic OG's - Krish from Keralan Karavan, the Indian street food pop-up that has been moving around the city, taking over kitchens and popping up at festivals since 2016.

In this episode we catch up with local ultra-athlete Matt Pritchard (also known as 'Pritch' of MTV's Dirty Sanchez) to find out about his new TV program, 'Dirty Vegan' and his new cookbook of the same name.