Shropshire Star

Fallen tree on Shropshire border helps restaurant promote its latest tasty dish

A legendary fallen 1,200-year-old oak tree on the Shropshire border is helping a local restaurant to promote local cuisine as its wood chips are being used in the cooking process.

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Cygnets Restaurant, an old drover's inn at Pontfadog in the heart of the Ceirog Valley, has created a special burger using bacon smoked by chippings from the oak tree.

Chef Max Payne, 21, has teamed up with a range of local meat and produce suppliers to create The Great Pontfadog Oak Cygneture Burger in affectionate tribute to what was Wales' oldest oak tree until it fell in a storm in 2013. The tree's fate received worldwide publicity such was its status as the third largest oak in Britain and one of the oldest trees in Europe.

Max said: "We were invited to create a special burger with a unique twist as part of a North East Wales tourism initiative promoting great Welsh produce, chefs, pubs and restaurants. I gave our best-selling 'Cygneture Burger' a twist, adding smoked bacon from a top local butcher smoked at our local Chirk Trout Farm & Smokery using chippings from local oak, ash and beech trees blended with chippings from the Pontfadog oak.

"I used to play in and around that tree as a kid. Everyone in the village was devastated when it fell. The tree's custodians Huw and Di Williams are regular diners at Cygnets and Huw kindly said I could have a large cut from it as well as chippings to use in the local smokery where we buy our fresh trout. Huw tried the burger last week and gave it the thumbs up. He also finished it so he was chuffed to have his name added to our 'Cygenture Burger Honours Board'."

But tree lovers around the world can rest assured the much revered fallen oak isn't simply just going up in smoke - local wood craftsman Mark Turner, from Fusion Design & Build in Glyn Ceiriog, has crafted four commemorative wood platters from other parts of the tree for the restaurant upon for the burder to be served up on.

The burger also contains Welsh beef mince from Porthmadog and Bodnant Dairy's Aberwen cheese, fried onion rings with beery batter from Conwy Brewery and salad dressing using organic wildflower honey from hives kept just a half a mile away in Pontfadog by beekeeper Kirsty Williams.

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