How hyperlocal dining is revolutionising the UK’s food scene
Across the dining spectrum, restaurants are choosing suppliers that are closer to home, but this movement is about much more than how far vegetables travel to the kitchen.
The sun is low in the sky and the ground underfoot brittle with frost as Sam Payne, co-director of Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD), treads the paths of Platt Fields Market Garden in Fallowfield. The community hub, a working market garden and cafe a few miles south of the city centre, was a bowling green in a previous life; it was left abandoned, before being taken over in 2017 by MUD, a community-interest company and non-profit. It now produces over a ton of fresh produce per year, the majority of which is sold at its cafe, alongside organic produce sourced from local farms, all served on site to volunteers and paying visitors.
Here, a column of steam rises from a pot cooking up the last of the season’s pumpkins into soup, as Sam reels off an endless inventory of produce that grows throughout the year. Varieties of beans so rich in colour and sheen, they could be mistaken for ceramics. In summer, garden tomatoes, gluts of green and yellow courgettes and squash, are smoked in a DIY smoker and dished out as part of artfully prepared salads laden with flowers and herbs.
Affordable menus and events at Platt Fields reflect the local community, from Caribbean cookouts to feasts ushering in Persian New Year. The site also attracts some of the city’s most prominent chefs. Sam Buckley of Stockport’s Where The Light Gets In and Mary-Ellen McTague of Manchester’s Pip both make regular cameos at a place where locality can be measured in metres. Platt Fields is one of many places across the UK food scene where dinner is rooted in the soil nearby.
A changing approach to local
While there’s no official definition of hyperlocal or local — although various organisations have their own understanding — the terms refer to restaurants and food businesses that source produce as close as physically possible to where it’s eaten. On-site gardens and farms as well as foraging practices are markers of this movement, with strong local supplier relationships filling the gaps. Chefs take a more active role outside the kitchen, getting their hands dirty in the garden and out in the wild, while playing an active part at the centre of food networks, replacing the anonymity of international wholesalers with local connection, measurable quality and an ethical, sustainability-forward approach to food. There’s nuance of course, calculations to be done. Local isn’t always better, let alone possible.
“One place that stands out is Cinderwood, a market garden set up by the chefs of Higher Ground in Manchester,” says Juliane Caillouette-Noble, managing director of the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA). “Beyond their own restaurants, they’ve begun supplying other local restaurants in the area, creating a hyperlocal supply chain.” It’s worth noting that the SRA usually avoids the term hyperlocal, considering the ‘hyper’ often used as an empty soundbite rather than a real point of difference. The SRA defines ‘local’ however, as 50km from a restaurant, or 100km for a restaurant in London.
“Flourish Farm Shop in Cambridgeshire is growing hyper-seasonal produce year-round to supply London restaurants,” says Juliane. “In terms of messaging, The Pig [boutique hotel chain] has become synonymous with its 25 Mile Menu. And of course, there are lots of examples of high-end farm-to-table experiences, from Simon Rogan’s Our Farm in Cumbria to Merlin Labron-Johnson’s Osip in Somerset and Sussex’s Knepp Wilding Kitchen.”
Taste is key
While sustainability is inseparable from discussions of hyperlocal food, taste is the priority. At Knepp Wilding Kitchen, produce straight out of the soil nearby provides an opportunity to optimise ingredients. The 3,500-acre rewilding project is complete with an organic market garden, a Michelin-recognised restaurant, farm shop and a self-sufficient butcher that processes animals that graze the land as part of its mission.
“When you have your own market garden, you can choose when to pick and how to grow things,” says Ned Burrell, chef and director of Knepp’s Wilding Kitchen. “For example, we grow our leeks to be thicker to suit our cooking style over charcoal. It develops lovely, steamed cores of the leeks. You can design bespoke veg, essentially. Brassicas are sweetest just after a frost because they send their sugars out to save themselves, so you get really sweet cabbages and sprouts, which you can use to tailor your menus.”
James Wood is founder of Totally Wild UK, a foraging and cookery-course business, which provides the opportunity for food enthusiasts to discover life-affirming local tastes, albeit outside the restaurant. It hosts foraging courses in forests, parks and coastal sites across the UK, many with optional wild-cooking sessions. A typical day’s foraging on a picturesque Norfolk coastal hamlet or in Cheshire’s Delamere Forest might be capped off with a dandelion and dulse noodle salad, summer rolls with wild garlic and rehydrated mushroom or an elderflower Eton mess.
“We do an event at Tegg’s Nose Country Park in Macclesfield. People who have walked around Tegg’s Nose their entire life will come along and we’ll show them bilberries,” James says. “People are just in awe that they can get [an alternative to] blueberries that taste unbelievable, because bilberries are much better, and they’re just there, in a bush they walk past every day.”
Closer ties to the community
Foraging and championing hyperlocal produce to create standout flavours has elevated Restaurant Pine in Northumberland to Michelin star and Michelin green star status. But it’s the restaurant’s position within the local community, an arrangement of hyperlocal relationships, that’s contributed to them thriving.
“We’ve got this big chain of regular guests that bring us things and that’s really important,” Ian says, describing the restaurant’s back door as if it were a portal to another world. “We get surprise ingredients and we never say no.” Ian couldn’t believe it when apricots, grown in Northumberland, were donated. The team is notified when, say, peach trees in local back gardens are set to shed fruit. Locals are more than happy to empty entire harvests from allotments, filling up Ian’s estate car with jasmine (which tastes like pickled sushi ginger), ‘weird roots’ and clover-like edible oxalis plants in exchange for a meal or drinks.
This hyperlocal sensibility goes beyond food, too. The chef’s table which stands proudly in the restaurant’s dining room is made from a storm-damaged walnut tree felled by Storm Arwen in November 2021, 50 miles from the restaurant. A local tree surgeon donated the wood, which would ordinarily cost the restaurant an impossible amount. The wine cabinet is a work by a local artisan, as are the ceramics. All of which contribute to making the dining experience unique. “It’s about talking to people. Relationships are so important,” Ian says. “It’s just amazing that all these people want to help.”
Where to eat hyperlocal
Glebe House, Devon
Inspired in part by the agriturismo movement — a form of tourism originating in Italy where guests stay and experience life on the farm — Glebe House is an art-laden guesthouse, restaurant and 15-acre smallholding in the heart of East Devon. The restaurant prides itself on craft cooking and making ingredients from scratch, notably its salami, taking a nose-to-tail approach to Lop pigs reared on site. A range of bookable food and drink experiences includes summer mackerel fishing and a twilight dinner on a picturesque nearby beach, weather permitting.
Annwn, Pembrokeshire, Wales
A single seasonal menu and a small restaurant in Narberth is all chef Matt Powell needs to showcase the wild produce foraged on his beloved coastal Pembrokeshire doorstep. Powell’s award-winning dishes are akin to culinary artworks and celebrate, among other ingredients, world-class local lamb, lobster and seaweed. Foraging experiences are also available for those wanting to delve deeper into the surrounding natural larder.
Coombeshead Farm, Cornwall
Set in blissful Cornish isolation in the quaint village of Lewannick, Coombeshead comprises a restaurant, guesthouse, bakery, working farm and an on-site butcher. The site’s 66 acres provide ample space for an impressive level of self-sufficiency with an emphasis on soil regeneration and increasing biodiversity. Mangalitsa pork and dexter beef are menu staples, as is sourdough bread made from heritage grains ground on site. A cookery workshop and events calendar runs throughout the year.
Groobarb’s Farm, Cheshire
Known across the Northwest for its vegetable box subscription service, Groobarb’s Farm is also home to the Field Kitchen restaurant, serving seasonal, pesticide-free produce grown metres from the dining room tables. Menus burst with colour and flavour. Think golden and ruby beetroot, rainbow chard or braised pointed cabbage with garlic and breadcrumbs, alongside a drinks menu championing artisan local suppliers. It’s an affordable, family-friendly option that can be boosted as a day out with a jaunt through the on-site kitchen garden.
L’Enclume, Cumbria
A pioneer of hyperlocal and one of its most notable successes, Simon Rogan’s three-Michelin-starred L’Enclume in the Cumbrian town of Cartmel is an icon of the North. Its dedicated growing space, Our Farm, was established in 2011 to supply the restaurant in a closed loop, where chefs work symbiotically side-by-side with growers. L’Enclume’s core mission remains simple — elevating humble ingredients from the local area. Brassicas and ibis celeriac served with buttermilk and smoked pike perch roe are in-house favourites, as are the Cartmel Valley roe deer and Gaythorne Hall Farm pigs, which are given the nose-to-tail treatment.
Inver, Loch Fyne, Scotland
Located on the rugged shores of Loch Fyne, Inver is Pam Brunton and Rob Latimer’s love letter to modern Scottish food, and a journey through the nearby landscape. Loch Fyne shellfish takes pride of place on the menu, as do seashore greens, Highland beef and sustainably sourced chocolate. Each ingredient has been carefully considered for its locality. Pam’s award-winning book, Between Two Waters: Heritage, landscape and the modern cook, is an essential primer on the past, present and future of Scottish food and a must-read before visiting.
Hampton Manor, Warwickshire
Hampton Manor’s estate radiates a sustainable ethos across its two restaurants, boutique hotel and cookery school. Fruit and veg is sourced from its kitchen garden and a biodynamic farm five miles away, and Hampton Manor’s passionate approach to sourcing favours those suppliers who aim to tread lightly on land and sea, with significant emphasis on soil regeneration. Chef and restaurant director David Taylor was inspired by his Norwegian training at three-Michelin-star Maaemo when he came up with Hampton Manor’s Grace & Savour — the manor’s chic, immersive Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s set within its Victorian walled kitchen garden, where you’ll find additional suites for overnight stays overlooking the leafy plots.
