Rundown town centre building transformed into high-end restaurant and cafe

Owner Sian Woodhead has bought back the venue she sold eight years ago and partnered with a chef who honed his craft at a top London location. Robert Harries finds out more

- Robert Harries

WHEN Sian Woodhead sold her popular Carmarthen cafe in 2017, she would never have believed that in just a few years, she would be buying it back and opening what she hopes will be a destination food spot in her hometown.

Hiraeth is a powerful thing in this part of the world and for Sian, the pull of coming back to a building close to her heart was too strong.

She originally bought the building, in Mansel Street in the centre of Carmarthen, in 2013.

Having put her stamp on it, the building was opened in 2014 as a cafe called Calon, which proved to be a hit with locals wanting a bite to eat or a nice space to sip their coffee in the morning.

Three years later she sold the building and it has since been run as a different cafe and later a bar, before lying empty for more than a year.

Sian remembers driving past it and feeling a sense of sadness.

"The building had become rundown because it was empty and it was awful passing it every day and seeing it like that," she says sitting inside her new cafe and restaurant - now fittingly called Adref due to her feeling like she's come home.

"I just had a yearning to come back to it. There was a real sense of hiraeth; I missed it terribly from the moment I sold it."

Sian has worked in property development for many years and admits that in 2013 she wasn't really ready to run a food and drink business.

"When I bought the building the first time around, I thought I was going to turn it into a couple of flats but then one day I just thought, 'No - I'm going to open a cafe' despite the fact I had never run a food business before.

"It took off like crazy, which was wonderful, but it just wasn't the right time in my life to do it."