The Felin Fach Griffin appoints new head chef
Davies was most recently held the role of a senior sous chef at Lush by Tom Kerridge providing day-to-day leadership at this high-end events company.
Eat Drink Sleep, a small group of family-owned inns has announced the appointment of Gwenann Davies to the role of head chef at its original pub with rooms in the Brecon Beacons, The Felin Fach Griffin.
Davies, formerly in a senior role at the Tom Kerridge group, replaces Nick Evans, who has left to pursue other opportunities.
She grew up on a farm in a small village, Nantgaredig, in rural Carmarthenshire just an hour from The Felin Fach Griffin.
After winning multiple “Outstanding Student” awards at Neath Port Talbot catering college and a 1st Class Honours degree in Culinary Arts Management from University College Birmingham, she started her career at the Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland in 2016.
Davies was most recently held the role of a senior sous chef at Lush by Tom Kerridge providing day-to-day leadership at this high-end events company.
She also worked closely with and sometimes within the group’s Michelin starred pubs such as The Hand and Flowers and The Coach at Marlow.
The Felin Fach Griffin was the first of the Eat Drink Sleep inns and has been run by brothers Charles and Edmund Inkin since 2000.
With eight bedrooms upstairs and dining rooms downstairs, it sits between Brecon and Hay-on-Wye.
It has two sister establishments in Cornwall, The Gurnard’s Head in nearby Zennor and The Old Coastguard, in Mousehole.
Davies said: “I’m absolutely thrilled to have the chance to work at one of the original pubs that do great food. It’s a different environment to the one I’ve operated in for the last few years, but I just love that challenge of bringing all my experience together to cook good simple food with great ingredients back near where I grew up in rural Wales.”
Inkin, one of the two brothers who heads Eat Drink Sleep, added: “We couldn’t be more pleased to welcome Gwen to take over this totemic role in our little enterprise. She brings wonderful experience from Kerridge’s and seems to understand instinctively what will work here at The Griffin, both in terms of her food and how she works to develop a team.
“We feel she is just the right person at the right time to cook food which hits the mark in what is, after all, just a little pub in the middle of the Welsh mountains.”
