Gwenann Davies to join Felin Fach Griffin as head chef

Gwenann Davies has been appointed head chef at Welsh gastropub Felin Fach Griffin in Brecon, Powys, and will officially join the business on Monday 15 May.

Formerly senior sous chef at Lush by Tom Kerridge event catering, she replaces Nick Evans, who left to pursue other opportunities.

After training at Neath Port Talbot catering college and studying Culinary Arts Management at University College Birmingham, Davies started her career at Gleneagles in Auchterarder, Perthshire, in 2016, before joining Lush by Tom Kerridge in June 2019.

The new role sees her return to Wales, having grown up on a farm in Nantgaredig, Carmarthenshire.

Co-owner Edmund Inkin said: “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.”

Davies added: “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.”

The Felin Fach Griffin pub with rooms was the first of the EATDRINKSLEEP inns and has been run by brothers Charles and Edmund Inkin since 2000. Sister properties in Cornwall include the Gurnard’s Head in Zennor and the Old Coastguard in Mousehole.

The eight-bedroom Felin Fach Griffin sits between Brecon and Hay-on-Wye, between Bannau Brycheiniog and the Black Mountains. The group has twice been named in the Top 30 Places to Work in Hospitality.