A high profile hotel manager who quit his job a year ago has returned to Birmngham city centre with one of his former employer’s biggest rivals.
Mark Davies made his name as general manager of Hotel du Vin and helped make the hotel a favourite haunt for the business community and celebrities visiting the city but quit the post last March after six years with Malmaison which owns hotel.
For the past nine months he has been working for catering giant Compass but Mr Davies has now been appointed as general manager of Hotel Indigo Birmingham and Marco Pierre White's Steakhouse Bar and Grill at The Cube – just a stone’s throw from Malmaison’s flagship hotel at the nearby Mailbox.
Mr Davies said it was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to turn down.
He said: “I missed Birmingham. I have lots of friends in the city from my time at Hotel du Vin and have kept a close eye on what has been going on.
‘‘If I’m honest I don’t think I would have come back to the city for anything else so it was a real honour to get the call and have the opportunity to work at such a prestigious development, one that I have watched grow.
"I have enjoyed nine months at Compass having a very different experience in large scale catering and have achieved what I wanted to and now feel I am back where I belong.”
The new Marco Pierre White restaurant is on the 25th floor of the landmark development with the hotel on the two floors below and the hotel’s club and spa on the ground levels of the scheme.
‘The restaurant has become one of the city’s most popular haunts since it opened in December although some customers and food writers have been critical of the dining experience.
Mr Davies said he was looking forward to imparting his own style of management on the hotel and restaurant and was confident he had joined a team that was going places.
“I wasn’t necessarily looking for something else but I got the call and met Nick Taplain from Sanguine who I thought was a nice guy and I liked what they were doing with the company,” he said.
“It is young and it is great to be part of something new and fresh with opportunities going into the future, not just now with Hotel Indigo and Marco Pierre White’s.
“I know the Birmingham market and I know how expectations are high in the city.
‘‘People want to know who’s running an operation – I want to run this like I ran Hotel du Vin so that if people want a table or a room then they can say let’s ring Mark.
‘‘The team here have done a brilliant job so far and I am looking on building on that and making this the place to be in the city. I also want to bring the whole building’s offer together so that people feel they can come and spend time in the spa, then use the restaurant and then maybe spend the night. We want it to be a journey for our customers.”
As well as Mr Davies, Sanguine Hospitality – which owns the hotel and restaurant – has appointed Ryan Edge as the new executive chef at Marco Pierre White Steakhouse Bar & Grill.
The 32-year-old, who trained at Birmingham’s College of Food (now BCU), joins from The Hansom Cab Grill Room and Oyster Bar in London, where he worked alongside Marco Pierre White himself.
In just six months, Ryan achieved two rosettes for The Hansom Cab’s food. “Marco’s philosophy that I want to instil here is ‘feed people and feed people well’,” he said.
“With great quality produce you can turn out great food.”
