While it’s virtually impossible to be entirely self-sufficient as a restaurant, Coombeshead Farm in Cornwall comes closer than most. The venture is run by ebullient young chef Tom Adams, who has a salmon tattooed on one arm and a pig on the other. Having been given three pigs on his 16th birthday, his passion for porkers has grown into an obsession. Adams was one of the first people in the UK to rear Mangalitsa pigs – a hairy Hungarian breed that grows a thick, sheep-like fleece in winter.
He currently has a parcel of the 33 pigs on the farm. “They’re a fascinating breed – they grow more slowly than other pigs, so their meat is a lot darker and their fat is a lot higher in amino acids, so it’s more nutritious. They’re not the easiest animals to breed, because they have small litters and are pretty wild, but I love the flavour you get from them,” Adams says. Before Coombeshead, which he co-runs with his wife, Lottie, and UK-born, New York-based chef April Bloomfield, Adams founded American barbecue specialist Pitt Cue Co in 2011 when he was just 22.
The game-changing venture began life as a food truck parked under Hungerford Bridge on London’s South Bank, then moved to a permanent, albeit tiny, site in Soho, before ending its reign in Devonshire Square in the City. Yearning for country air, Adams left Pitt Cue in 2016 to launch Coombeshead – a country house with barns for rooms where guests dine at communal tables on freshly picked produce grown on the farm.
While Adams is keen to be self-sufficient, he’s realistic about being unable to grow everything themselves. “We’re going to plant an orchard this winter, which will give us all the fruit we need in the next decade, but we’re realising there’s no point trying to force certain things if they don’t work. We don’t have the infrastructure to be entirely independent.”
Adams is also learning to be more stoic about being at the mercy of Mother Nature. “The weather has become a constant topic of conversation – we had pig houses flying in the wind the other day, and all it takes to wipe out a crop is a bout of hail – you can’t plan for it. But when things go well it’s so satisfying and rewarding – eating something that has just been picked tastes better, and it feels better for you,” he says.
One chef who has learnt to lean in to nature is the aforementioned Skye Gyngell, who enjoys letting it take the lead. “It’s incredibly important that we move away from industrial farming towards a more natural way of farming that is gentler on the planet – the food and fashion industries are two of the greatest contributors towards global warming,” says Gyngell, who believes that, like wine, food is influenced by where it’s grown.
“I absolutely believe in the terroir of food – grapes are food, so why would a tomato be any different?” While she works with the produce grown at Heckfield wherever possible, making mustard, ketchup, jams and chutneys, and cultivating curry leaves, ginger and spices in an on-site greenhouse, she isn’t dogmatic in her farm-to-fork approach, and uses Italian lemons, blood oranges and Madagascan vanilla in her dishes.
For Gyngell, the best part about being farm-to-fork is the way things taste. “It’s a joyful and interesting way to work as things are constantly changing and nature gives you little gifts throughout the year. There is no room for error, and every ingredient has to earn its place on the menu,” she says. Seed-to-plate advocate Robin Gill’s job is a bit tougher, being based in London. In 2013, Gill opened The Dairy in Clapham with his wife, Sarah.
It boasts its own rooftop garden where the pair grow everything from lemon balm, golden marjoram and apple mint to wild garlic and nasturtium, and keep a colony of bees. Their fennel salami is made in-house, as is their butter, which is presented to diners on a pebble.
Gill admits that he didn’t do his homework before embarking on making honey. “We were naïve when we inherited the hives the summer we opened – the bees were swarming around and terrifying our neighbours,” he says. Since nurturing his own herb garden, Gill has an added appreciation of the importance of freshness.
“Our herbs pack a much larger flavour punch than anything mass produced – the rocket is super peppery and the chives make my eyes water, but even a few hours after being cut herbs lose their pungency, so they need to be served as quickly as possible,” he says.
Another fellow Irishman championing the paddock-to-plate movement is Richard Corrigan, who splits his time between his London restaurants and Virginia Park Lodge, an 18th-century former hunting estate overlooking Lough Ramor in Cavan. Veg is grown in three polytunnels, while fruit comes from the orchards dotted around the property.
“There’s nothing like cooking with what you grow – even if it’s from a pot on your balcony – everything tends to taste better when it has been grown with respect,” says Corrigan, who plans to use produce from the lodge as his new London restaurant, Daffodil Mulligan, which will soon open where Irish restaurant Nuala burnt brightly but briefly in Old Street. He may be “proud as punch” of his kitchen garden, but Corrigan is candid about the farm-to-fork approach being an expensive way to run a catering business.
“I’m a bit of a lunatic and money is not my biggest driver in life. This is not a break-even exercise,” he says. Rogan is similarly stoic about sacrificing profit for provenance. “It has cost us a lot of money over the years to run our farm but it’s not about that. It’s about having ingredients to hand that you can’t get anywhere else.” While being a farm-to-fork chef may not make you a millionaire, the movement looks set to mushroom in the UK, as diners become ever more curious about what they eat and where it comes from. That growing desire for transparency from the often opaque restaurant industry can only be a good thing.
