Anticlockwise from here: hand-dived Orkney scallops with garden peas and pickled walnut at the Fordwich Arms; Where There’s Smoke chef Jon Atashroo at work; braised lamb tongues and butterbeans in salmoriglio sauce at Emilia; Updown’s redbrick façade; Argoe head chef Ben Coombs; Laura Christie and Chris Boustead of Linden Stores; celeriac with seaweed bearnaise at Holm; Ox Barn chef Charlie Hibbert PHOTO 62 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
THE GREAT ESCAPE THE SIGHTS, SOUNDS AND, IMPORTANTLY, THE TASTES OF THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE HAVE INSPIRED AN EXODUS OF WORLD-CLASS CHEFS FROM LONDON TO MORE RURAL CLIMES, RESULTING IN A MOUTHWATERING CLUTCH OF LITTLE CULINARY TEMPLES THAT HERALD FARM-FRESH INGREDIENTS BY BILL KNOTT F or a chef, London’s attractions as a gastronomic powerhouse are numerous. It is not just a question of quantity – with around 15,000 restaurants, it dwarfs every other UK city – but of quality: the capital attracts chefs and cuisines from all over the world, sharing knowledge, techniques and recipes, and offering a breadth of expertise and diversity that not even Paris can rival. The capital can also claim an affluent restaurantgoing public that has boomed over the last decade or two; unrivalled access to ingredients from all over the world; and the possibility for a young chef to move from restaurant to restaurant more or less at will, all under the dazzling spotlight of critics and gourmets. Like any large city, however, it has its drawbacks, many of them driven by the fact that London is both vast and expensive. The catering industry rarely offers huge salaries, so very few chefs in Mayfair, Soho or the City can afford to live anywhere close to their workplaces. Even renting a flat an hour’s travel away is not cheap, forcing many chefs to work long and unsociable hours just to keep their heads above water. As a result, the possibility of starting your own business is, for most chefs, just a pipe dream. But change is afoot. The pandemic forced many London chefs to re-evaluate their ways of life. With their premises shuttered and uncertainty rife, some started dreaming of new pastures: literally, in many cases. Perhaps London’s incessant treadmill was not the only way to develop personally and professionally. Maybe upping sticks from the Smoke was the way forward. Take Ruth Leigh and her partner Oli Brown, for example. Leigh, daughter of chef and writer Rowley Leigh, and Brown, who cooked with Ruth’s father at Le Café Anglais, “had been mulling a move for a few years,” she says. “But in the second week of lockdown, looking at our concrete Shepherd’s Bush garden with a six-month-old baby in my arms, that gave us a push.” For the following year, they looked at potential properties in Somerset, Norfolk and Sussex, before settling on Updown, a 17th-century farmhouse near Deal, on the Kent coast. “There are some amazing places around here,” says Leigh, “but it’s not oversaturated, and there is plenty of local demand. And, in property terms, you get more bang for your buck than you do in Somerset.” Despite higher prices, the southwest – Somerset, Devon and Cornwall – has seen the greatest influx of London chefs and restaurateurs. With a guaranteed summer trade from holidaymakers, plenty of second-home owners, a (usually) gentle climate, a stunning coastline and a plethora of good produce, it has proved hugely attractive to those seeking respite from London’s hurly-burly. Holm, in Somerset, is a good example. Chef and co-owner Nick Balfe admits he had “never even heard” of South Petherton, the village just west of Yeovil that he now calls home. Most recently head chef of Brixton restaurant Salon, Balfe had spent a decade running restaurants in London before stumbling across the building that was to become Holm. “It really just landed in our lap,” he recalls. “We met the owners of the building and they turned up with a picnic hamper with bread, wine, a Thermos of tea, venison sausages and a whole Baron Bigod cheese.” These, he thought, are people he could do business with. This was August 2021, and the building was “full of rubble. It was a big project. We managed to open that November, but – to be honest – we massively CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 63
