It’s 9am and I’m standing ankle-deep in mud at Brown Cow, an organic Somerset farm, on a freezing early spring morning. I’m with the chef Barny Haughton, who has taken me to see a couple of his suppliers, the better to explain his ground-breaking new restaurant.
Called Bordeaux Quay, it will open this summer on Bristol’s dockside offering a new approach to dining. The £2.7-million venture will house a restaurant, brasserie, bar, deli, bakery and cookery school and promises to serve food produced from within a 50-mile (80km) radius (Brown Cow is 25 miles from Bristol). It will also deliver responsible energy consumption, aim to produce zero waste and educate the community about food. He’s calling his new venture eco-gastronomy.
“It is saying that the restaurant world can do better. That to take responsibility for energy consumption, food miles, water and waste, and to be aware of its potential role in the future of farming systems, animal welfare, food education and the environment should be the prerequisite of all good restaurants,” Haughton explains.
Haughton is the chef-proprietor of Bristol’s Quartier Vert, a restaurant and cookery school that has been feeding and educating the city for the past 18 years. He is also, declares the TV chef Rick Stein, a true food hero.
Haughton has always championed local producers, and their efforts pack the menu at his restaurant. The South West is luckier than most — it has the highest concentration of organic producers in the country, so he has plenty to choose from, including Brown Cow Organics, owned by Judith and Clive Freane.
The Freanes have run their family farm in Pilton for 16 years, going organic when the BSE crisis hit. They have both dairy and beef herds, producing some of the most tender, flavour-packed meat you’ll ever eat and yoghurts stuffed with healthy omega-3s. “Everything we do, the health of our animals and ourselves, is all down to the soil,” says Judith.
At Brown Cow they analyse their soil and adjust it accordingly with a nutritionally rich balance of minerals and trace elements, aerating it regularly to trigger natural bacteria, to ensure the best possible grass for their cattle to munch on.
Then there’s Wootton Organics next door, whose owner, Dave Bartlett, keeps Haughton happy in pigs (he bagged a couple of particularly plump little fellows while we were there). They feed off the whey left over from the farm’s sheep cheese-making operation, which also supplies Quartier Vert. “This is what it’s all about,” grins Haughton, stroking a snout.
When the Soil Association conducted a systematic review of the evidence comparing the vitamin and mineral content of organic and conventionally grown food, it was found that, on average, organic food contains higher levels of vitamin C and essential minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, iron and chromium.
But many chefs argue that organic produce is just too variable and too expensive, that their customers won’t want to pay extra for it. They will also insist that flavour is paramount and that if they can source better-tasting lamb from the Pyrenees, then so be it. But 95 per cent of the fruit and half the vegetables in the UK is imported, and we all know, surely, that freshly picked vegetables are better nutritionally as well as having more taste? “It’s a hugely complex issue — there are many variables,” explains Catherine Reynolds, the head of communications, and a former microbiologist, at the Institute of Food Research, in Norwich. Apparently, the proportion of nutritional value lost during transportation depends on many factors — such as the type of food, the storage conditions, storage abuse and the growing conditions of each variety. “But anyone who sources locally and eats seasonally is to be commended,” Reynolds adds.
There’s no doubt about the environmental benefits. Recent estimates suggest that the food chain contributes at least 27 per cent of the UK’s total emissions of carbon dioxide and that 40 per cent of all UK road freight is food related. In short, buying local is hot in eco-friendly terms. A report published in the journal Food Policy calculated that if all foods were sourced from within 20km of where they were consumed, environmental and congestion costs (such as clean-up following pollution or the loss of profits caused by erosion damage) would fall from more than £2.3 billion to under £230 million — an “environmental” saving of £2.1 billion annually.
“I think the restaurant industry as a whole needs a big sharp shock,” says Haughton. “There is a powerful and intellectual body of good chefs who ought to be shaping the way the whole nation sees food and they are not doing so. Instead, we remain a Pot-Noodle culture. Bordeaux Quay is about recognising that things are about to change; that people are really worried and feel they can no longer trust the food that they eat. We want to restore true food values,” he says, as we swing on to the quayside in Bristol, parking near a skip full of builders’ rubble.
The site, opposite the Arnolfini arts complex, stretches across 16,000sq ft. Haughton has gone for a low-carbon design (the aim is to be carbon neutral) and environmentally responsible material specifications, such as building blocks made from recycled aggregate, ceiling tiles made from recovered household glass, durable oak floors made from slow-growing trees, solar panels and a rainwater-harvesting tank that will provide 60 per cent of the water for dishwashers and toilets. The eco-friendly brownie points are endless. And get this — Haughton has also employed a full-time sustainable-development manager, Amy Robinson, who will keep them all in environmental check once things are up and running.
This does cost more than doing it the un-eco-friendly way — about 15 per cent more — but Haughton has a green-minded backer in John Pontin, a property developer he met, appropriately, at a lecture Haughton was delivering on waste in restaurants.
And just when this is all beginning to sound a tad fundamentalist, Haughton says suddenly: “I’m not a bloody evangelist, you know. Plenty of good chefs are already doing some of what I’m doing and all of us are aware of the big challenges facing the industry. I’m just trying to prove that you can run a commercial operation in a sustainable way.”
There are chefs such as Henri Brosi at the The Dorchester hotel in London, whose new induction hobs keep the heat down in the kitchen and save 15 per cent energy; and The River Café, in Hammersmith, West London, which sorts and recycles all of its glass, sends used cooking oil to be recycled, and uses a wood oven with sustainable fuel, which reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
You can thank, in part, Alice Waters for Haughton’s zeal. The legendary Californian chef of the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, remains Haughton’s greatest source of inspiration. She claims that 85 per cent of good food is down to the art of the farmer. Her menus are littered with producer credits — from the variety of sweet peppers used in the salad, to the person who made the cheese — demonstrating that it is possible to base menus on seasonal, local and organic ingredients without gastronomic compromise.
Like Waters, Haughton is rightly proud of his pioneering efforts. “It’s not just about the food — restaurants also need to learn how to waste less energy, water and food. The industry is in a position of power and responsibility and I think that we should be leaders, not followers, in establishing values that people can really trust.”
ON YOUR DOORSTEP
Many restaurants around the country are making a commitment to source seasonal and local produce. Here’s a taste:
Norfolk Great Ryburgh organic eggs at Terroir, High Street, Cley next the Sea, Norfolk NR25 7RN, 01263 740336, www.terroir.org.uk
Cornwall Cornish brill and asparagus at The Seafood Restaurant, Riverside, Padstow, Cornwall, 01841 532700 www.rickstein.com
Yorkshire blue rarebit at The Star Inn, Harome, North Yorkshire, 01439 770397, www.thestaratharome.co.uk
Kent Rye Bay fish and Romney Marsh lamb at The Place, Camber Sands, New Lydd Road, Camber, Rye, Kent, 01797 225057, www.theplacecambersands.co.uk
Isle of Skye Smoked haddock at The Three Chimneys, Isle of Skye, Scotland, 01470 511258, www.threechimneys.co.uk
Monmouthshire Monmouthshire lamb at The Stonemill, Monmouth, 01600 716273, www.thestonemill.co.uk. Elvers from the River Wye at The Foxhunter, Nantyderry, Monmouthshire 01873 881101, www.thefoxhunter.com
Sussex Salads grown on an allotment up the road at Due South, 139 Kings Road Arches, Brighton Beach, Brighton, East Sussex, 01273 821218, www.duesouth.co.uk
Devon Home-reared loin of lamb at Percy’s Country Hotel & Restaurant, Virginstow, Devon, 01409 211236, www.percys.co.uk
London Chef Oliver Rowe promises ingredients sourced within the London Tube network at Konstam, which opens next month — fish from the Thames; eggs from Brick Lane; and herbs grown on Hampstead Heath. Konstam at The Prince Albert, 2 Acton Road, London WC1X 9NA, for details 020-7833 5040.
