Ten Miles From Field To Fork At The Gallivant
The trend for
locally sourced ingredients in restaurants is one which is continuing to grow
in popularity, with discerning diners keen to know the provenance of the
ingredients on their plate. Increasingly consumers are embracing the benefits
of local, fresh and good quality food with the emphasis on seasonality,
sustainability and traceability – and the desire to know how far their food has
travelled from field to fork!
At The
Gallivant, the coastal restaurant with rooms across the road from the dunes and
the beautiful sandy beaches of Camber (named as one of the Top 50 Beaches in
the World by the Sunday Times Travel Magazine April 2015) chef Danny Perjesi
and owner Harry Cragoe have set themselves an exciting challenge - to source 95
- 100% of the fresh produce used in the kitchen from a tiny 10 mile radius.
When Harry
first took on The Gallivant, some 5 years ago now, the kitchen supplies arrived
by lorry from across the country. Having explored the surrounding area and
realising what wonderful variety and quality was on their doorstep Cragoe
decided that local and fresh was the way forward, and has been working with
local producers and suppliers ever since.
He explains
"As a young boy I still remember the excitement of eating the first
English summer strawberries with straw coloured raw Jersey cream from the farm
in the village, new season local potatoes with lots of butter and the first
Spring lamb reared in the fields around us with fresh mint sauce from the
garden. Nothing compares to eating hours fresh English produce. It is
extraordinary, incredibly exciting and unrivalled in my opinion."
Head chef
Perjesi and his team are very fortunate with their location, in what is often
described as the 'larder of England'. The Gallivant kitchen enjoys fish and
shellfish caught in front of the Gallivant by Joe and John and delivered daily,
wonderful Romney Salt Marsh Lamb, beef and pork reared by Todd up the road in Brooklands,
all manner of game shot from the local estate and an abundance of fruit and
vegetables grown by a select group of nearby farms. As a result virtually
everything has only travelled a handful of miles, often delivered by the person
that reared, caught or picked it hours earlier.
Cragoe says
"I thought a lot about the title 'locally sourced' and didn't think it was
specific enough and therefore easily abused, after all, just what is local, 10,
15, 20, 25 miles? So I came to the conclusion that 'local' should mean
somewhere close enough that if push came to shove you could hand deliver it and
10 miles sounded about right."
The only
downside is that they can't serve the area's renowned lamb all year round!
"We sometimes get asked why we don't sell Romney Salt Marsh lamb all the
year round like all the other local restaurants and we politely point out that
lambing doesn't start until late March and after about September the lambs
aren't really lambs any more...."
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