3 Best Restaurants in Holyhead, Wales

The surprise at this downtown restaurant, above the Gateway Café, is not that you've found Mexican food in Wales, but that it's so good. It's more than a little cheeky, especially in the large murals of Three Amigos and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid., which customers like to pose in front of. Although the menu only covers the basics of Mexican cuisine—quesadillas, taquitos, chimichangas, tacos, and fajitas—they're prepared with enough gusto to take them to the next level. However, authenticity takes a backseat to taste.

Attached to the Holyhead Maritime Museum on Newry Beach, this bistro café offers the best view in town from its patio. Watch yachts, catamarans, and vintage sailboats crisscross the harbor while you wait for fish chowder, slow roasted pork belly, and lamb shank in minted red wine sauce, and marvel at the Victorian engineering skill required to build the breakwater, the United Kingdom's longest. Fresh ingredients from the bistro's own farm and local fishermen factor highly in the general praise, but it's the sunset seating Thursday through Saturday that is particularly coveted.

This idyllic English countryside café, 21 km (13 miles) north of Holyhead, serves probably the best fresh cream scones with strawberries in Wales. The meat, fish, and potato pies impress as well, especially when followed by apple pie with custard, all homemade with fresh ingredients. For the full measure of Welshness, pop in mid-afternoon for traditional tea with scones. The nearby coastal path provides excellent motivation to work off the calories.