Ross Clarke

Ross Clarke - Travel, Food and Wine Writer 
BA Language Studies and Spanish with Business Studies. Class of 2009

What was it that made you come to Swansea?  

A great question. Well, I'm originally from Newport, so I straddle the South Wales coast. I had a bit of an odd route in, because I applied to university through UCAS, had all my offers back, and then decided I wasn't going to go to university, so I declined all my offers. It must have been May time and my teachers in school said, “Are you sure you don't want to go to uni?” So, I said, maybe I'll have another look. I had previously applied to all business studies courses, and realised I didn't want to do business studies at all. So, I had another look, and there was a course at Swansea at the time that was English, Spanish, and Business, which is essentially what I was studying at A-level. I get bored very easily, so having multiple subjects seemed like a good idea. I went through a thing called UCAS extra where you get one extra choice before clearing starts. Luckily, Swansea accepted me, and I knew Swansea relatively well, I'd been to a few open days and stuff before. And who didn't want to be by the beach, right!  

What was your go-to place in Swansea food-wise?  

As a student, anywhere cheap! Pub on the Pond was where you would take any family that were visiting. Starvin’ Jacks! Is that still there in town?  It was a café where they did big sandwiches and stuff like that. Chickoland after a night out. You’ve got to get a chicken burger on Wind Street before you head for home.    

What was the food on campus like?  

I was in halls, and I had breakfast included, so I went to Fulton House every day. Our quiz team name was “Fresher than a Fulton House breakfast”.  I must have had a cooked breakfast every day for the entire year, and I put on a load of weight as did everyone else!  Waterstones used to be in Taliesin, that had quite a good cafe at the time.  

And where would you eat now? 

It’s not a student budget, but I desperately want to go to The Shed. It’s run by Jonathan Woolway, who used to be the head chef at St. John in London, which is a famous restaurant in London, where they do nose to tail dining, and an amazing Welsh Rarebit. It's made with all the good stuff and all of the good fat. It's buttery and delicious. The Shed is all seasonal local produce. Jonathan decided he'd been working there for a long time, and he wanted to come back to Wales, to Swansea. I'm desperate to go and try it. 

What motivated you to specialise in travel, food and wine writing  

Ahh, they are the great things in life! Well, I studied Spanish at Swansea, and then I worked for the university for a little bit in student recruitment. I used to be the person that talked to students and went into schools and talked about UCAS forms and all those kinds of things and did all the campus tours, open days and all that stuff. Then I got an offer of a teaching job in Spain. So, I moved to Gran Canaria for a little while as a teacher and then came back to the UK. Again, I worked in universities, in marketing, but I knew that was not what I wanted to do. I’d toyed with journalism a bit and I decided that was what I was going to do.  

I went to Cardiff to do a master's in journalism which is the course I teach now. After the master's I went and did any journalism I could, but I knew I wanted to do food and travel because they seemed like fun things. I didn't want to do any newspaper journalism. I wanted to do cool magazine stuff. So, I started out working for Tesco magazine updating all their recipes on their website.  

Not that I knew too much about food then, but I was updating them – making sure hummus was spelt the same in every recipe – not the best job in the world, but it got me into the industry. Then I moved back to Spain for a little while because as I said, I get bored very easily. It was then that I got contacted by the same agency who had British Airways as a client. They were looking for someone to temporarily be the social media editor for British Airways. I did that for quite a while. That's when I knew I wanted to get into travel. Thankfully, an experienced editor said to me, “If you're going to be a travel journalist, you'll find it much easier if you become a specialist”. So I thought, what and where do I know a lot about? Wales, of course, but that seemed like I wouldn't get to go many places. I thought, I know about Spain, I speak Spanish. I've lived in Spain, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to specialise in Spain.  

The more and more you talk about something, the more people then go, “Oh, you know that guy who knows loads about Spain? We'll ask him to write stuff for us.” So now I specialise very much in the Canary Islands as a destination. 

Did the pandemic inspire you to start The Welsh Kitchen?  

It wasn't a great time to be a travel writer, so I wrote more food and wine content, but I also missed writing. I still had a job as an editor working for a hotel company, but otherwise I was sitting around the house. In fact, I had moved back to Newport at that point and so I thought, what can I write about that I know something about. Let's do Welsh food. There's nothing out there that I could find, and I thought, let's just try it.  I was writing a newsletter every week for the first year, and then as my actual work started coming back, I realised that it wasn’t sustainable. And so, it turned into a monthly, and it's been going ever since. It's just hit a thousand subscribers and it's been shortlisted for the Wales Food and Drink awards.  

Can you share a favourite meal? Recipe from The Welsh Kitchen?  

I've got about 90 Welsh recipe books from various periods of time, and nearly every one includes cheese, dried fruit, or some kind of dough. I love rarebit, and I love messing around with rarebit. You can put in different types of cheese and other things. So, I've just done some recipes for Ocado Life magazine for their March issue for St. David's Day, one of which was a Welsh pear-bit. That was slices of pear, and you put cider instead of ale, which you traditionally put in the cheese mix. You can see them in the magazine or online. Anything cheesy is good – even Welsh cakes! 

If you could only eat one dish, I'm guessing it would be rarebit, or would it be something Spanish?  

That is really, tough. I could live off tortilla (Spanish omelette) but maybe it could be a Spanish rarebit. I’ve done one of those, where I sautéed some onions in some olive oil and then added the flour to make the roux. Then I put some chorizo in there as well as some paprika and then put dry sherry. Then I added Manchego cheese. It was a Spanish Welsh mix. Delicious.  

If you could give one piece of advice to anyone looking to enter the food and drink industry, what would that be?  

Probably the same advice I give to most journalists who want to get into it: don't expect to be paid an awful lot, but just do it. It doesn't matter if you're writing for yourself. Start a newsletter, start a blog, have an Instagram account. It doesn't matter what. Just do it. You can get better at it. You can go on courses, get a master’s, there are so many options. If you want to get into travel, you don't have to think big. Some of the best holidays I've ever had were in my Nan's caravan in Porthcawl and those make great travel stories. You don't have to go hiking up Kilimanjaro for a great travel story. So, think small and write what you know. 

What would be your favourite place in the world for food and wine?  

These are impossible questions! Obviously, I'm slightly biased towards Spain, but the place that surprised me the most is South Korea. I didn't know what to expect and it was incredible. The Korean barbecue, the soju, which is a bit like sake, and the rice beer. It's like a cloudy, milky beer. It tastes custardy, but it's quite lethal. You usually drink it from a bowl, and I learned that you cannot top up your own drink. You must top up the person next to you which is not so good if you're quite a quick drinker like I am. The food scene there was mind-blowing, with places like Busan, which is in the very south on the coast, that has an enormous fish market. There are all these old ladies with kind of coiffed hair, all lacquered up, and they look so glamorous, and then they've got their hands in gloves, and they're gutting fish. 

Japan was also incredible. In fact, that's the place I ate raw chicken purposefully. Chicken sashimi, it's a delicacy, and I had it in Tokyo. They knew I was a journalist, and they said, “We've got this special for you.” I didn't know what it was and then they said, “Oh, yes, it's chicken sashimi”. In my head, I'm saying to myself, doesn't that mean raw? It tasted delicious! It tasted really chickeny. But the problem was that you know what raw chicken feels like. So, when you feel it in your mouth, every bit of your brain is going: “don't eat it, don't eat it, don't eat it. It's going to make you sick. It's going to make you sick.” But because of how it’s prepared, it’s quite safe. Obviously, I had to eat it anyway, as they’d put it on especially for me. I think they got the sense that I wasn't too keen, though so they suggested I have something to follow up. That’s when they brought out steak tartare or so I thought. It was actually horse! I just said, oh well, keep it coming. I will eat absolutely anything, even if I don't like it. Though, I'm not a fan of pig’s trotters, even though they are popular in Spain.  

And what about wine? 

The place that surprised me recently and is great for wine is Georgia. It’s possibly where wine originated. It's thought that they taught the ancient Greeks all about wine, and there's a grape variety called Saperavi and it's about 8,000 years old and it's one of the only grapes in the world that produces black juice (most black grapes still produce white juice). Champagne is often made with Pinot Noir, for example, which is a black grape, but produces white juice. Saperavi is one of the only grapes that has a black dye, and that's where the name comes from, and it stains your fingers. It's delicious, and there's a good one in M&S or on Ocado now.

Aside from being a lecturer, what is a typical day like for you?  

The days I'm not lecturing, if I've got an article commission, I'll be researching and writing that piece. It might be pitching to editors. If I've got an idea for a story that I think could work, I'll be reaching out to editors, trying to get them to say, yes, we want you to write this for us. It might be arranging a trip somewhere. If I've been commissioned, it could be speaking to tourist boards or arranging flights, what I'm going to do, where I'm going to go, where I'm going to stay. The life of a journalist these days is very much a portfolio career. You do a bit of everything. It might be putting my newsletter together, or coming up with a recipe, or trying the recipe out, it could be going to an event in the evening, then some kind of PR event. So perhaps a new restaurant launch or something like that. No day is the same.   

Final question: Joe’s or Verdi’s   

Joe’s for ice cream. Verdi's for the thick Italian hot chocolate.