Even on the hottest of days as the sun beats down on the rolling hills of Monmouthshire the sizzling burgers are flying out at The Pig and Apple, a modest restaurant on Kate Humble’s 117-acre farm. The idyllic sea of green a stone’s throw from the sleepy village of Penallt is home to 200 breeding ewes, a suckler herd of cattle, native breed sheep, donkeys, goats, pigs, and chickens, and now some of the most popular independent locally-sourced patties in Wales.
Nestled in the country lanes beside the border it isn’t really the sort of place you stumble on – but young couple Jake Feakins and Jess Stephens have worked hard to get the word out here of their meaty creations. Not that they needed to worry – their talking has been done in the kitchen and people have noticed.
The pair, who met while cooking at nearby Haberdashers’ School for Boys in 2016, didn’t like each other at first. Working together for two years they laugh while remembering how they hardly spoke to each other before Jess left for Camp America and Jake travelled for a year in Australia but on their return to Monmouth all of that changed.
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“Jess was so quiet and to be fair I was a bit of a d*** and a lad but I’ve calmed down now,” Jake remembered, his tales only disrupted by the crowing of the farm cockerel and the oinks of the piglets opposite. “It was weird – something just clicked. Six months later Jess turned to me and said: ‘Let’s take on the café at the farm.’
“I said: ‘What do you mean? We’ve only been dating for six months.’ I was actually happy at the school and not working weekends but she persuaded me to give this a go and it’s 100% been the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s been the most challenging job I’ve ever done but we’re happier than ever.”
Kate Humble and her husband Ludo Graham closed the former farm shop and café at Christmas 2015 though Jake admitted he didn’t even know it existed. It had been open for one and a half years as part of the couple’s joint venture to turn a traditional farm into a modern, thriving business. And while the farm continued to grow the shop sat empty until Humble by Nature’s Farmer Tim planted a seed in Jess’s mind.
“I knew quite a lot about the location and how beautiful it was because I worked in the café as part of an apprenticeship in my teens,” Jess recalled of the days prior to agreeing to take it on herself. “I happened to see Farmer Tim at the Monmouthshire Show in 2018 and he told me how the building is empty and that I should come back and try and do something with it. That’s when I asked Jake and our families.”
Jess was only 20 and Jake was 25 but Jess wasn’t going to let age stop her. In fact it was even more of a reason to take it on.
She said: “We lived separately with our parents in Monmouth but my parents just told me to go for it when I asked them. They said: ‘You don’t have a mortgage, you’re not paying for a car each month, and at the end of the day if it all goes to s*** you’ve still got a house to come home to.’ Jake’s family were a bit reluctant, and so was Jake, but we took the leap.”
It hasn’t all been plain sailing. After they opened in April 2019 they were sometimes getting one or two customers a day – especially in the winter months when a trip down the winding country lanes to the farm isn’t quite as appealing.
Now to have a chance of a table you need to book three weeks in advance and the next booking you can get after 6pm is in October. The couple have been so successful they were able to take out a mortgage on their own house and move in together in October last year. It all changed in lockdown when they reviewed what they were offering.
“We’d had the flooding really badly in February 2020 and then we went into the first lockdown,” Jess explained. “We had to think hard about how we were going to cope with it. Up to then we’d been a café doing all sorts but our burgers had been really popular and we knew Monmouth didn’t really have much going on like this.
“Jake’s friend who owns a successful Welsh cakes business told us to choose our best thing and do it really well. And it’s turned out to be fantastic advice. People know what we do and they know how well we do it.
“It got busy quickly. Word started getting around, we really upped our social media, and people started pouring in for takeaways. It really has taken off.”
Jake is treating us to two of his favourites; The Pig and Apple Burger (smashed beef pattie, cheese, bacon, apple chutney, lettuce, and red onion) and Jess’ favourite Jess’ Loaded Cluckin’ (buttermilk fried chicken, cheese, bacon, hash brown, chipotle mayo, barbecue sauce, and lettuce). Burger-lovers are travelling for miles to get them. One regular drives from Exmoor with his son, eats his burger, then drives back.
“It’s bonkers – a lot of my mates come in for takeaways and tell me they don’t recognise anyone in here,” Jake laughed. “People come from all over. It has come as a bit of a shock – this summer has been off the scale because of the schools being off.”
“It never stops – we’ll have people messaging us for orders at 11 at night on a Sunday,” Jess said. “We were on our day off this week on the beach but we were still answering messages and sorting bookings.”
Even in the soaring summer temperatures excitement is building for their Christmas menu written by Jake this week and which includes festive fries and a turkey-loaded burger with gravy dipping sauce. But they aren’t immune to the modern challenges facing their industry.
“We are struggling with prices – that’s the biggest thing for us right now,” Jake explained. “We can’t pass it all on to the customers – we have to take the hit at the moment and so like most we are struggling a bit.
“The price of oil has risen ridiculously and the prices of everything we use in the fryer has risen too. A 20-litre drum of oil was £19, now it’s £47, so we’re getting through £100 of oil alone a week.
“Staffing is probably the biggest issue of all. People just don’t seem to want to do it. We have three local people who work here who we know well and love but we just can’t find other staff. As we’ve got busier we need more people – we can’t just keep putting it on a small group.” You can read more about the severe challenges facing Wales' hospitality sector here.
Not that they want to expand greatly. Their tiny operation is a major reason for their success – and tiny it will stay, Jake said.
“We do it all ourselves because we want it to be really top quality and we don’t want standards to dip. I don’t think I want us to get bigger or open a new place or anything. We know some who have done that and it can go downhill.”
“That’s what’s special about it,” Jess agreed. “Jake does the grill, I do the fryer, and we know everything that is going on and that is happening is to our standard. Mum is always on at me to have a day off but neither of us can leave it alone. People come in and look for us so if we’re not here I think it loses that personal touch.”
Over the hum of the tractor and the cluck of the hens they are putting their final preparations together for another bumper weekend when we visit. “We had to keep telling people to stop feeding them,” Jess said of the hens. “They’re like seagulls here when they know food is around.
“It’s the perfect spot isn’t it? It feels peaceful. The best part for me is when you can hear the cows mooing and the donkeys. Being in the Wye Valley is the best on a sunny day. Maybe not quite this hot but we can’t complain.” You can stay updated with news around food and drink in Wales by signing up to our newsletter here.
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