Richard Davies The Manor House Hotel, Castle Combe

Richard Davies is the Michelin starred Executive Chef of the Bybrook, the restaurant of The Manor House, a country house hotel and golf club located in Castle Combe, Wiltshire. The restaurant takes its name from the river that runs through the hotel grounds. Many of the ingredients used in the restaurant’s food come from the restaurant’s vegetable patch and kitchen garden and other ingredients are locally sourced. Before joining The Manor House, Richard achieved a Michelin star while working at the Sawyards restaurant in Storrington. His CV of Michelin starred restaurants also includes The Vineyard at Stockcross in Newbury and the three starred Gordon Ramsay. He appeared on the BBC Two show Great British menu in 2010. Richard started working as a chef at 15, during his summer holidays. Work experience followed after Richard told his headmaster what he’d rather be doing than school. The Bybrook was awarded a Michelin star in 2009 which it has retained ever since.   Richard Davies four years here at the Manor House Castle Combe, great success in that time, talk us through how you, your role and the Manor House have evolved in those four years? I think we have changed quite considerably over the last four years, certainly since I started, we've had three general managers, and I think the change has been good, it’s been successful and it’s been good for the business, one of the general managers was just on a temporary basis so it’s not that we've had instability across the hotel. I came to the Manor House to work for Paul Thompson, a great manager, it’s a stunning property, and it was Paul and his vision that attracted me to the hotel in the first instance. But we have moved on to a new chapter with Stephen Browning, and he has made a massive impact on not just the hotel, but also me and the way I approach my role. I think from an outside point of view, Exclusive Hotels, to me have really sort of pushed themselves forward in all their properties. There’s been a lot of investment over the last few years in bedrooms, we're always getting really great feedback on our bathrooms, I think the bathrooms is one of the biggest areas that they focus on, they’ve all got amazing showers and TVs in the walls because when you go away to a hotel what you’re looking for, you’re looking for a great bed, we've got a pillow menu that people can choose what type of pillow they want, from what type of feathers go in it, what scent goes on the pillows, what fibre’s. It’s endless and the bathrooms, people don’t want a crappy shower that you can have at home, you want something that's, special. I think the Manor House was always stunningly beautiful, tucked away but never really matured into its full potential would that be fair. Absolutely, I'd agree. I stopped on the driveway to take some pictures on my interview, and I've never done that anywhere where I've gone to work, I've been lucky to have gone across the world to see some beautiful places and I've never really been taken back like I had here and I just wanted to produce food that lived up to that expectation and married the surroundings. So what’s the food journey you've been on in the last four years then? Well when I started it was very simple, very safe…I didn’t bring anyone with me, I worked with the team that was here and what I wanted to build was a really consistent product, if it was consistently simple then so be it but I started at the bottom and I think we're in a position now where we are starting to evolve the product and introduce new technique. This is a seven day operation, we turnover £1.4 million a year just on food at the hotel, that's excluding the golf club. It’s breakfast, it’s lunch, its afternoon tea, we cater for the corporate market, working lunches, weddings and it’s all from the one kitchen predominantly. Two things on that it’s very interesting what you said there about starting simple, lots of chefs come into an operation and they want to impress straightaway and they want to do all singing all dancing, whistles, bells, flares, I think what you said makes complete sense, if you can’t be consistent there's no point in having your all whistles and all bells great on one day and then the next day being a total car crash. I've seen it done so many times, a new head chef coming in and trying to change everything like a bull in a china shop and everything is just a complete mess and what I did was settlement myself in and let everyone just carry on. I cooked David Campbell’s menu for about two months with very minor changes. I might change the way in which something was made but predominantly the menu was the same. I’m sure people were looking at me thinking, well what’s he bringing to the table then? But it all came slowly. I changed three of the starters and then another three … But it’s also good that you have the support from the management to allow you to do that because sometimes there's expectancy from them that you have to change everything. And I think that's the best part about this group as well is that Danny is so food led. He's very food focused isn’t he? He wanted to be a chef and I think it was his dad Giuseppe