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Well, what a week! We’re incredibly proud to be on the front page of the Carmarthen Journal this week. It’s a real honour to see The Warren featured so prominently in our local newspaper, and we’re immensely grateful for the opportunity to share a little of what we’re doing with the wider community. I’ve attached the article below for you to have a read, but do check out the online version or, even better, pop out and buy a copy of the Journal. It’s lovely to see our little corner of Carmarthen getting some attention!
Right then, here we go. I’m back in the kitchen, doing my most favourite thing, and there’s plenty to tell you about this week!
A little bit of green tomato magic with Glasbren CSA
One of this week’s highlights has to be our collaboration with Glasbren CSA. If you haven’t come across them before, they’re a community-supported agriculture scheme based in the Llansteffan area, working to connect people with the land and the food it produces. One of the services they offer is a local veg box scheme, which I have to say feels like receiving a little gift to myself every week. It’s a reminder to look after myself, feed myself well and stay connected to what’s happening on the farm. They also send out a rather special newsletter, which, now that I think about it, has been a big inspiration for writing this one. There’s something lovely about hearing directly from the people growing your food, learning what’s happening on the farm and feeling a little more connected to the seasons.
Last Thursday, the Glasbren team joined us at The Warren with a surplus of green tomatoes from their harvest. Rather than letting them go to waste, we brought our teams together and got preserving. More than 130 jars of green tomato chutney! They’re now maturing, waiting to be labelled, and should be available to buy in the next couple of weeks.
Celebrating 40 years of love at The Warren
We also had the absolute honour of hosting our good friends and loyal customers, Avril and Mark, for their 40th wedding anniversary. It was a lovely reminder of how well The Warren lends itself to intimate gatherings and celebrations. The restaurant was transformed for the occasion, with the central section becoming a stage, while the other two sections provided space for guests to eat, drink and mingle.
It was a wonderful evening, and we’d love to host more celebrations like it. One of the things I love about this building is its versatility. It’s somewhere you can come for a quiet meal, enjoy a lively evening with friends or bring everyone together to celebrate something truly special. If you’re planning a party or another occasion, you can book out the whole restaurant for private events, with a minimum of 40 guests. Whether it’s an anniversary, birthday or simply an excuse to get everyone together, get in touch and let’s see what we can create.
We’re still looking for our next chef!
We’re still on the hunt for a chef to join our kitchen team, and we’ve now upped the ante. We’re offering a £500 finder’s fee to anyone who helps us find the right person! Finding a chef at the moment feels a bit like searching for a rare bird. The hospitality industry is almost unrecognisable from what it was before COVID, when we’d often be inundated with applications for kitchen jobs. Somewhere along the way, kitchen life became synonymous with high stress, long hours, little recovery time and not enough recognition or respect. It’s hardly surprising that the industry has struggled to attract people back, and I think we need to be honest about why that is.
But I’d like to think The Warren is doing things differently. Our cooperative approach is about bringing a different kind of energy into the kitchen. We want to create a workplace that cares for its people and the planet, where there’s time to recover, where people are respected and where a good wage comes alongside meaningful work. It’s about making hospitality a sustainable way of life, rather than something that burns people out. We want people to feel proud of the work they do, enjoy being part of a team and have the space to live their lives outside the kitchen, too. The challenge is getting that message in front of the right person, especially with social media changing so quickly. That’s why this journal and our newsletter are such important tools. They help us reach people who already understand what we’re trying to do, so if you know a chef who might be looking for something a little different, please send them our way. And if you introduce us to the person who joins the team, there’s £500* in it for you!
Hazelwell Farm beef is back!
There’s been plenty of excitement about getting some of Paul’s incredible beef from Hazelwell Farm back on the menu. This Sunday will be the first time we’ve served it since reopening, and we’ve already had a few requests for its return. We love being able to work with producers who put so much care into what they do, and bringing their produce into our kitchen is one of the best parts of running The Warren. If you’ve been waiting for the beef to return, this Sunday is your chance.
I’ve got a new red wine to tell you about, and I’m rather excited about this one. Jack and I recently headed to Les Caves De Pyrene wine trade tasting, where we met a father-and-son team behind a family Vineyard called Clos du Gravillas that really caught our attention. They were wonderfully entertaining characters, full of personality and stories, and, thankfully, their wine was every bit as memorable as they were. Their wine was recognised among France’s top 100 wines in 2023, and having tasted it ourselves, we couldn’t resist bringing some back to The Warren. It’s always a pleasure to meet the people behind the bottles, hear their stories and get a little insight into what makes them fire up!
For now, this is our newest red wine, and it’ll be available on the menu from Friday. Keep an eye on the wine section of our website for more information about the wine and the people behind it. And who knows? Perhaps a visit to the vineyard might be on the cards one day. I have a feeling this could be the beginning of a rather lovely relationship.
All of this brings me rather nicely to our new Wine Club. One of the things we’re trying to build at The Warren is a community of curious people: people who are interested in food, drink, the land and the stories behind the things we consume. And wine is such a fascinating part of that. But here’s the thing: you don’t need to know anything about wine to join us. This isn’t an elitist club where you have to know your Burgundy from your Barolo (I certainly dont). It’s simply an opportunity for a group of us to get together, share a bottle or two and learn something along the way. Wine can sometimes feel intimidating, with all its terminology, rules and supposed experts, but I think some of the best experiences come from simply opening a bottle, tasting it together and talking about what we enjoy.
The idea is to meet roughly once a month, explore the wines we serve at The Warren, meet the people who make them and discover what makes each bottle special. We’ll invite different people to host our gatherings. It might be a local enthusiast, a wine producer or one of our own team members who has a particular passion for a bottle. Our focus will be on natural, biodynamic, organic and low-intervention wines, with an emphasis on the people and places behind them. From what I’ve discovered so far, the producers are often just as interesting as the wines themselves. Their stories are quirky, unexpected and wonderfully memorable, and I want to create a space where we can share those stories, ask questions and discover new favourites together. Our first Wine Club event is now live and ready to book, so head over to the Wine Club page on our website to find out more and reserve your place. We’d love you to join us, whether you’re already a wine enthusiast or simply curious to learn a little more.
For a building that’s been part of Carmarthen life for more than a decade, it’s a little embarrassing how little use our upstairs space has had over the years. That’s about to change. We’re transforming The Cwtch into a dedicated space for people to meet, work, learn and get together. It’s a lovely room that can comfortably accommodate around 15 people, making it ideal for smaller meetings, conferences, workshops, clubs and community groups. We’re kitting it out with everything you’d expect from a modern meeting space, including a TV screen for presentations, a webcam and conference microphone for hybrid meetings, HDMI cables, new carpeting, its own toilets and separate access. The aim is to make it a practical, comfortable and welcoming space that people can use for all sorts of things, whether that’s a team meeting, a training session, a community group or a workshop.
Most importantly, it’ll be available seven days a week, with simple half-day and full-day booking options. We’ve made the booking process as straightforward as possible, so you can reserve the space directly through our website without endless emails going back and forth. And, of course, it’ll also be home to our new Wine Club. I’m excited about finally opening this part of the building up and giving it the life it deserves. Whether you’re organising a meeting, running a workshop or simply looking for somewhere to bring people together, we’d love you to make use of it. Head over to the website to explore The Cwtch and book your space.
We’ve made some big strides with the Warren Food Collective this week, and things are beginning to get exciting. For those who’ve already signed up, you now have access to a catalogue of more than 2,000 products to browse. We’re starting with dry food goods from Essential Wholefoods and building from there, seeing what people want and gradually expanding the range. The idea is simple: make good-quality, sustainable food more accessible by buying in bulk together. By combining our orders, we can make use of wholesale prices and give people the opportunity to buy the things they need without having to pay the usual retail mark-up. It’s another way of bringing people together around food and making it a little easier for all of us to make choices that feel good for our pockets and the planet.
Here’s how the first order will work. The catalogue is available to view now but the ordering window opens at midday on Thursday 29 October, when accepted members will be able to add products to their baskets. You’ll then have a week to browse the catalogue, decide what you need and place your order before the basket closes on Thursday 5 November. Once the ordering window closes, we’ll bring everyone’s orders together, place the bulk order with our supplier, organise everything when it arrives and get it ready for collection. Collection day will be Thursday 12 November, with a daytime window from 12 noon until 2.30 pm and an evening window from 5 pm until 8 pm. The evening collection will coincide with our first Gathering event, giving everyone a chance to pick up their food, meet other members and spend a bit of time together.
This will be our first and only Food Collective order before Christmas, so if you’re planning to stock up on essentials for the festive season, this is your opportunity. We’ll continue adding products to the catalogue as the collective develops, and it’ll be exciting to see what people want and how the range grows over time. If you’ve had any difficulties signing up, just drop me an email. We’re still ironing out a few things as the system develops, and your patience is appreciated. I’m really excited about what this could become. By buying together, we have the potential to make good food more affordable while supporting a more sustainable food system. But there’s something much bigger at play here, too. It’s about building our food resilience in a system that often makes it incredibly difficult for us to do so. By coming together, sharing resources and taking more control over where our food comes from, we can start to create an alternative that works better for our communities, our pockets and our planet. It’s about becoming less dependent on a food system that doesn’t always put people or the environment first, and creating something more local, more connected and more resilient in its place. We might be starting small, but I believe there’s real potential in what we can achieve when we work together.
Our last volunteer day at The Warren brought another lovely development. We’ve signed up to Tempo, a scheme that rewards people for volunteering by giving them time credits they can spend on a range of activities and experiences. These might include visits to national parks, bowling, coffee shops, surfing lessons and plenty more. I think it’s a brilliant idea. Volunteering already gives people a sense of purpose, connection and belonging, but it’s wonderful to see a scheme that offers something tangible in return for the time people give. Too often, the value of volunteering is measured only in the practical things that get done, when the people giving their time deserve recognition and opportunities to enjoy themselves, too.
And now The Warren is part of it! We’ve signed up as a place where people can spend their credits at our Gathering events, which means you can exchange a Tempo credit for a free hot or soft drink at the bar. If you volunteer with us at The Warren, whether you stay for an hour, two hours or the whole day, you’ll receive four Tempo credits. We’re really excited to be involved. It’s another way of recognising the people who give their time and energy to making our community a better place, and it fits perfectly with what we’re trying to build here. We’re looking forward to seeing how people use their credits and where this scheme takes us.
Speaking of community, let’s talk about The Gathering. This is something our wonderful volunteers have helped me develop through our volunteer days, and the idea is beautifully simple: make The Warren more accessible to anyone who wants to come in, spend time here and connect with other people. We’re aiming to hold one Gathering every month, bringing back some of the spirit of the parties and events we’ve hosted here over the past ten years while creating something that feels right for where we are now. We’ll also be bringing back an event that people still tell me how much they loved: our open mic nights. This time, we’ll be focusing on singer-songwriters and acoustic musicians, with a particular emphasis on encouraging young and emerging talent to get up behind the microphone and share what they do. It’s been wonderful watching some of the artists who performed here ten years ago go on to do amazing things, and I’d love to create that opportunity for the next generation, too.
But The Gathering isn’t just about music. It’s about opening our doors and giving people a reason to come together, whatever that looks like for them. Perhaps you’ll come to play a board game with a friend upstairs in The Cwtch, meet someone for a date, catch up with neighbours, discover the Food Collective or simply spend an evening in good company. You can also use your Tempo credits for a hot or soft drink at the bar. We’ll have a few simple nibbles, olives, cheese and other bits behind the bar. This isn’t about elaborate food from the kitchen; it’s about creating a relaxed, welcoming space for people to enjoy. Our first Gathering will take place on Thursday 12 November, from 5pm, so save the date, spread the word and come along. The most important thing is simply that you show up. This building has so much to offer, and the more people who fill it with life, the better. I can’t wait to see what we create together.
Finally, I have to tell you about something that’s been getting a surprising amount of attention this week: perennial kale. I made a video of myself harvesting leaves from my Taunton Deane perennial kale plant, mentioning that I had some cuttings available, and it turns out quite a few of you are interested! For anyone unfamiliar with perennial kale, it’s a type of kale that keeps coming back year after year rather than needing to be replanted every season. Given the right conditions, it can develop into a substantial, almost tree-like plant, providing you with delicious leaves over many years. It’s incredibly tasty, packed with nutrients and a brilliant way to produce some of your own food at home. Imagine having a plant in your garden that keeps giving you fresh greens year after year. You don’t need an allotment or a huge growing space to get started, either.
Following the lovely response to my video, I’ve teamed up with my neighbours and good friends Liz and Zoey from Moonbrook View, who grow and sell perennial kale cuttings. We’ve got 20 cuttings arriving today, available to collect from 11 am for a price of £2.50 each which goes into our community food pot. We’ll leave them in the back alley at The Warren so you can collect yours at a convenient time, but there are only 20 available in this first batch, so please email or call us to reserve one before coming to collect it. The good news is that Liz and Zoey are already growing more, so there should be further opportunities if you miss out this time. I love the idea of this. The more of us who can grow even a little of our own food, the better, and perennial plants like this are a wonderful place to start. There’s something really satisfying about being able to step outside your door, pick a few leaves and know that you’ve grown them yourself. If you’ve been thinking about growing more of your own food, this could be just the thing.
And that’s another week at The Warren!
Thank you to everyone who’s volunteered, supported us, come in for a meal, signed up to something new or simply taken the time to read this far (who isn't my mother). I really do appreciate it. And if you’ve enjoyed this week’s journal, please consider signing up to our newsletter, where a shorter version arrives in your inbox every week. It’s the easiest way to keep up with what’s happening at The Warren, discover upcoming events and hear about the projects we’re working on. Wishing you all a wonderful week.
Deri and the team at The Warren
*Terms - The candidate must stay employed with us for 3 months, £500 is in vouchers to use at The Warren.
