WHETHER you’re tired of paying extortionate prices for beer or wine when eating out, or simply fancy seeing your steak of fish cooked before your eyes for a change, a thriving Conwy restaurant may have the answer for you.
At LAVA Hot Stone Kitchen, you provide the alcohol, and they provide the glassware, ice and soft drinks – all while watching your meal cook at your table on volcanic rock, exactly as you like it.
These two ideas were introduced from the moment John Jackson and wife Chloe opened LAVA in late 2018, and has helped create one of Conwy’s most unique and popular dining experiences.
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John said: “We wanted to set ourselves apart, and make it more affordable for people.
“It’s just a small, family-run business. We don’t have big expenses for top chefs and things like that. We could offset the alcohol sale against the fact that we’re a small independent business, and it just worked well for us because it created lots of buzz.
“Not many people have had steak on the stone before, so although you get some who are a little bit scared of it, the hard work is done beforehand, and we find it works really well for people.
“The beauty of what we do is that the meat is sealed before it goes out, and then once they slice a piece of that meat off and pop it on the stone, it locks in all of the flavour and gets rid of the blood.
“It works really well for those people who want a well-done steak, because they’re probably tasting a steak that they’ve never tasted before, because it’s still so succulent and moist.”
With their help of their two children, and Chloe’s mother, Annie, John and Chloe have also managed to make a success of LAVA while also running the hugely popular Characters tea house in Llandudno, which re-opened this month.
Both are open Wednesday to Saturday, albeit not simultaneously (Characters: 11am-4pm, LAVA: 5.30-11pm), and has proved a successful balancing act for John and Chloe.
John added: “While we were in the midst of getting everything ready (to re-open Characters), it was quite full-on, and the fact that LAVA is open in the evening and characters in the day does give us long days, but we’re also closed three days a week, so we get our time to relax then!
“Chloe and I are definitely hands-on, at the close of every shift, and I’m in the kitchen every night. We’ve worked together for the last 20 years, so it works really well for us.”
LAVA Hot Stone Kitchen, 1-3 Bangor Road, Conwy, LL32 8NG.
For more information, go to: www.lavakitchenconwy.com.
If you’re interested in having your business featured, request a Q&A questionnaire by emailing coastal-news@nwn.co.uk.
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