Why chefs are getting their hands dirty: The new age of farm-to-table restaurants

A chef’s day usually begins with checking produce deliveries before starting on prep, but for Dan Cox of Crocadon restaurant in St Mellion, Cornwall, it can just as easily be spent in a field, lambing. Having spent his career in Michelin-starred kitchens, including time at Simon Rogan’s farm-to-table focused restaurants in Cumbria, Cox decided his own restaurant would start with the foundation of food – the soil.

Cox took on a 120-acre organic farm in 2017 and, before even opening the restaurant, spent five years developing a vegetable market garden and managing rare breed sheep on the pasture. Farming gave Cox a new level of control. “I was owning that process. My intention was to delve into it as deeply as possible to find the best possible ways to do things when it comes to soil health and the flavour of the produce”.

It’s a sentiment shared by Jan Ostle of the husband-and-wife team behind Wilsons in Bristol, which has a two-acre market garden to serve its bistro and bakery. “Chefs are always looking for a higher level of control and involvement in the journey of produce to their plates. It’s the epitome of cooking great food to be involved with it from seed to plate.”

Fresh as a daisy

With ingredients harvested on their own land, chefs can offer a new level of quality and freshness. “If you pick something just before service, it tastes better than if you’ve had it in your fridge for a week. And if you’re looking after the soil and putting a lot of effort into the health of the plants, you know they’re going to taste even better,” says Cox.

Joey O’Hare and Katy Taylor are the couple behind Husk, a supper club and farmstead in Suffolk. Growing their own, they say, gives them more choice in the kitchen. “We grow heritage varieties,” says Taylor – “quirky things you’re not going to see on supplier lists or supermarket shelves.”

Putting in the work in the garden means by the time the vegetables are harvested they’re already superior and don’t need so much work. “It’s quite pleasurable as a chef because you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, it’s just putting this amazing produce on the plate,” says O’Hare. “We’ll gather the tomatoes for a starter just before service so they’re still warm from the greenhouse; it’s an hour – or less, sometimes – from field to fork.”

Food with a sense of place

For the chefs, growing their own also brings a new level of hyper-seasonality to dishes that become a snapshot of a time and place. “It’s about the terroir,” Ostle explains. “You can eat pigeon with foie gras and puy lentils in Michelin restaurants in Paris, London, New York and Tokyo – and they’ll be delicious but the same in each place. What we have here is unique to our surroundings.”

Cooking seasonally brings a sense of harmony to the dishes too. ‘What grows together goes together’ is a well-known chef’s mantra, even quoted on the hit TV restaurant drama The Bear. “Our menu is based on exactly what we have at that particular moment,” says Cox, using brassicas as an example. “We don’t use micro herbs but we’ll cut small sections off the leaf that are beautiful and use those for service. And then it starts to change. It starts to flower, and you get the little shoots and the broccoli, so that’s what we’ll be picking.”

Success is baked in

For those chefs turned farmers, working with nature goes hand in hand with producing more flavoursome food – and the trend has spread to baking, too. In 2011 sustainability consultant Ben Mackinnon founded E5 Bakehouse in east London because he believed food could be a “catalyst for change” and that bread, as a cornerstone of our diet, could have a positive environmental impact.

Mackinnon discovered that, in order to make sourdough bread with flour grown on lower-input farms (which don’t rely on chemical fertilisers) he had to turn to heritage varieties of wheat. He invested in some land in Suffolk, now the 70-acre Fellows Farm, as well as a mill for the bakery.

“We were amazed by the flavour of the old varieties of wheat we experimented with,” he says, and it’s a distinction their sourdough is now known for. Without the predictable uniformity of modern wheat varieties, however, Mackinnon and his team must be flexible and responsive to the flours they use. “The bakers are engaged because there are interesting characteristics to the flours, the way they behave in the dough, the baking properties, the crust they’ll give or the crumb structure – but the flavour is the overarching one,” he says. “It makes the baker’s job more challenging – but they love that”.

It’s all in the breeding

Flavour is at the heart of every decision for chefs farming livestock. The choice of breeds, the age they’re taken to and the feed grown for them all contribute to the first-class taste. Chef Tommy Banks comes from a farming family in Yorkshire. The family’s decision to take on a run-down village pub in 2006 developed into a successful business, now with three restaurants, two of them Michelin-starred including the famous Black Swan where it all began.

With that expansion the farming changed too, from cereal crops to a whole system that feeds the various arms of the business across 160 acres. They rear Herdwick sheep, Oxford Sandy & Black pigs and Dexter cattle. “We take the cattle to two-and-a-half years old, slow-growing them on the silage and out on the grass so the meat is just so tender and tasty,” says Christie Banks, Tommy’s sister-in-law, who runs the farm.

Similarly, the pigs are fed homegrown beans and barley as opposed to imported soya feed and have freedom to roam. “All of them can get to the food, they exercise in the process and there’s no pressure on them. That really makes a difference.”

Investing in the future – and preserving the present

Bridging the gap between the cook and the growing alters a chef’s relationship with the ingredients. Jan Ostle explains: “Cooking the food that Mary, my partner in business and in life, has grown, I feel connected to everything – and it’s easy to feel disconnected when you spend 18 hours in a kitchen.” Similarly, Katy Taylor describes “putting down roots” at their farmstead as literal: “We did an entire bed of asparagus crowns that we’re not going to see until 2027 or 2028, but you know they’re there. It’s that permanence and sense of connection with the land I get a lot from.”

When so much time and care goes into the production of ingredients, every scrap is valued. Preserving takes a major role in all these chef’s kitchens to ensure any surplus is used and trimmings aren’t wasted. Tommy Banks’ operation has a preserving arm that works with ingredients from the farm, veg garden and local forage to extract the most flavour from everything – 60-70% of the produce is preserved so it can be used on the menus year round.

Cucumbers are grown and pickled into gherkins for burgers at the pub, The Abbey Inn, while vinegar is infused with cherry blossom for The Black Swan. Head of farm production and preservation Dickie Jack describes how they forage woodruff and use it to flavour whisky. “A few years ago we would have just composted the ‘waste’ woodruff [after making the whisky], then we realised it still has loads of flavour. So we put that into a syrup, which we use to flavour our vermouth.” With the resulting second ‘waste’ product they decided to try making mead, “so you’ve got three products from one ingredient”.

Passing it on

It’s not just the chefs – the diners are also drawn closer to the land by homegrown produce. When guests arrive at Husk they’re immediately among the geese and chickens, greenhouses and flower beds. “It’s a very obvious and immediate connection,” says O’Hare. “It’s quite exciting to know you’re eating food from the land in which you’re sitting.”

For Ostle, having their own farm has informed the way they communicate with their guests – this kind of growing isn’t about perfection but really good food. “We like knobbly veg and being honest about the realities of farming and agriculture, how tough it is,” he says. “Everyone platforms the chefs but really we should be platforming the farmers. Their job is a lot harder.”

It’s not surprising these chefs echo sentiments of kinship with their land. This kind of cooking is embedded in growing. Farmers have long understood that working with nature requires a deep understanding of the land and everything is at the will of the elements. Having turned to farming to gain control of their ingredients, these chefs have ultimately learnt nature is really in charge – and it needs to be treated with respect.

Your UK farm-to-fork hotlist

• Crocadon Restaurant, St Mellion, Cornwall
• Husk at Walnut Tree Farm, Thorington, Suffolk
• The Banks empire: Black Swan Oldstead, The Abbey Inn and Roots, North Yorkshire
• Wilsons, Bristol
• E5 Bakehouse, Hackney, London (Fellows Farm, Suffolk)
• L’Enclume, Cartmel, Cumbria
  Simon Rogan’s flagship restaurant that pioneered the UK’s farm-to-fork scene
• Chapters, Hay on Wye, Wales
  Husband-and-wife run restaurant with produce from their walled garden
• The Smallholding, Kilndown, Kent
  Seasonal set menus in the heart of the Garden of England
• Pennard Hill Farm, Shepton Mallet, Somerset
  Farm feasts with glamping and cottage stays
• The Free Company, Edinburgh, Scotland
  Supper club style dining at the foot of the Pentland Hills
• Worton Kitchen Garden, Worton, Oxfordshire
  A hidden oasis with a greenhouse restaurant
• Glebe House, Colyton, Devon
  Guesthouse and 15-acre smallholding in an idyllic valley
• Grace & Savour, Hampton-In-Arden, West Midlands
  Tasting menus with ingredients from their walled garden within the Hampton Manor estate
• Heckfield Place, Hook, Hampshire
  Sophisticated retreat with two restaurants and a spa in a country estate
• Where The Light Gets In, Stockport, Manchester
  An urban rooftop garden serves this restaurant in an old coffee warehouse

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