The Source

Food is never just food. To mark Love British Food’s 25th anniversary, Love British Food and Future Countryside have commissioned a collection of essays exploring the role of food in Britain today. Bringing together diverse perspectives from across the food supply chain and beyond, the collection provides a snapshot of British food and society in 2026 – designed to inspire fresh thinking, worthwhile debate and positive action for the future. 

British Food Fortnight: An Ingredient Hunter’s Love Letter to British Food



British Food Fortnight will feel rather different for me this year.

Normally The Blue Bell would be in the middle of the celebrations, creating menus around British ingredients, talking to our suppliers and introducing customers to something produced a little closer to home.

Following the fire this summer, our doors remain closed while we work towards bringing The Blue Bell back to life. For the first time in many years, I will not be celebrating British Food Fortnight from my own kitchen.

But I will certainly still be involved.

On 10 October I will be visiting Tuppenny Barn’s Food Festival, and I am delighted to be helping Natasha at Hampshire Fare with primary school workshops, talking to children about seasonality, cooking and where the ingredients on their plates actually come from.

In many ways, that takes me back to what British Food Fortnight has always meant to me.

It is not simply about putting a Union Jack next to something on a menu. It is about community, education, farming, fishing and understanding where our food comes from.

I often describe myself as an ingredient hunter. I love finding the farmer producing exceptional meat, the grower with vegetables pulled from the ground that morning, the fisherman landing something from our waters or the small producer doing something brilliant a few miles away.

Emsworth is a wonderful place to do that. We have Chichester Harbour in front of us, the South Downs behind us and extraordinary farms and producers all around us.

Sometimes we spend so much time looking around the world for exciting ingredients that we forget to look out of the window.

When Emsworth embraced British food

Emsworth has a special relationship with British Food Fortnight.

In 2014, Emsworth won Love British Food’s national community competition. The following year we were national runners up.

For a small harbour town, that was a remarkable achievement, but what made me particularly proud was why Emsworth was recognised.

We made food something that connected an entire community.

Pubs, restaurants, shops, farmers, fishermen, schools, colleges, churches, charities, residents and producers all became involved.

Perhaps nothing captured it better than the open air Harvest Festival in St Peter’s Square. Led by Reverend Andrew, with the choirs of St James’ Primary School and Emsworth Primary School singing to the assembled crowd, it epitomised what our Fortnight was built upon.

Community, celebration and education.

People across the town also created a huge food mountain from donations collected through schools and other collection points, which was donated to the Beacon Food Bank.

There were tastings, dinners, demonstrations and educational programmes throughout the Fortnight.

At The Blue Bell we served our Steak, Ale and Oyster Pie. 36 on the Quay celebrated the seafood on our doorstep.

At The Brookfield Hotel, now The Ropemakers, and the very place where the idea for the original Emsworth Food Festival was born, students from Fareham College, Highbury College and South Downs College, where I trained myself, were given the opportunity to devise seasonal British menus before cooking and serving them in a professional hospitality environment.

That element was particularly important to me. I knew first hand how valuable that experience could be. There was something rather fitting about a venue that helped spark Emsworth’s original Food Festival helping to inspire another generation of chefs and hospitality professionals.

The highlight was The Big Feast Weekend, when British street food and local producers filled St Peter’s Square and the surrounding streets. Hampshire Farmers’ Market joined us alongside the Grape Escape Wine Village, with live music from Harbour Records.

It demonstrated something I have always believed.

Food is an international language which we can all interpret.

A town working together

None of this happened in isolation.

Emsworth’s British Food Fortnight was supported by businesses, volunteers, schools and producers, alongside partners including Southern Co op, Montezuma’s, Hampshire Farmers’ Markets, Hampshire Fare, Lewis Marquees, Harbour Records and South Downs Water.

Our media partners, The News, the Chichester Observer and Express FM, helped spread the message and celebrate the people and producers involved.

We also had a strong partnership with Havant Borough Council, Jeff Crate and local councillors, including the late Brendan Gibb Gray, and later Lulu Bowerman and Richard Kennett.

That combination of businesses, local government, media, schools, volunteers and residents was the secret to its success.

Nobody owns a town. We are simply custodians of it for a while, and we all have a part to play in leaving it stronger for the next generation.

From Farm in the Square to the Farmers’ Market

One of my favourite projects was Farm in the Square with Barfoots.

The idea was simple. If we want people to care about British farming, we need to reconnect them with it, particularly children.

Food does not begin wrapped in plastic on a supermarket shelf. Somebody has grown it, reared it, caught it, harvested it or made it.

If a child meets a farmer, plants something, pulls it from the soil, cooks it and tastes it, you can potentially change their relationship with food for life.

That is why working with Hampshire Fare and primary schools this year matters so much to me. Educating the next generation about food is every bit as important as cooking it for them.

When Emsworth later lost its Food Festival, I was determined we should not also lose our connection with local producers. That was one of the reasons I helped establish the regular Hampshire Farmers’ Market in Emsworth.

Working with Hampshire Farmers’ Markets and Hampshire Fare has been invaluable.

For an ingredient hunter, a farmers’ market is essentially my sweet shop.

You meet the person who grew or reared the food, ask what is particularly good that week and perhaps discover something you have never cooked before.

It reminds us just how many beautiful ingredients are sitting on our doorstep.

Let nature write the menu

Eating seasonally is not nostalgia. Produce harvested when it naturally wants to grow generally gives a chef a much better starting point.

British asparagus tells you spring has arrived. Summer brings berries and tomatoes. Autumn gives us apples, squash, mushrooms and game. Winter brings roots, brassicas and ingredients made for slow cooking.

Nature has already written a pretty good menu.

Buying British supports farmers, fishermen, producers, markets and independent businesses, helping keep more of our food spending within the British economy. Shorter supply chains can also reduce transport requirements, although genuine sustainability involves much more than food miles alone.

That is why I am so interested in regenerative farming.

We have examples close to home, including Downlands and Goodwood, where the health of soil, pasture, biodiversity and the long term future of the land are increasingly important parts of the conversation around food production.

For a chef, this is not an abstract environmental argument.

Healthy soil produces better ingredients.

The farmer and the chef are simply standing at opposite ends of the same process.

Why not try venison?

The same thinking applies to British game.

Venison is a fantastic alternative to beef. It is lean, rich in protein, versatile and packed with flavour. Where wild deer populations need responsible management, it also makes sense to value the resulting meat as food.

Venison does not have to mean a heavy casserole. It makes wonderful steaks, burgers, ragù and pies. Pheasant, partridge and other British game can be equally versatile.

That does not mean abandoning beef. Britain produces exceptional beef, particularly from well managed pasture and regenerative farms.

It is about widening our choices and allowing the seasons and countryside to influence what we eat.

The lobster pot Christmas tree

Not every great Emsworth idea involved eating something, although this one eventually involved a lobster.

I still remember Alistair Gibson suggesting we build a Christmas tree out of lobster pots.

I thought he had gone mad.

Of course, Alistair was right.

It was quirky, maritime and unmistakably Emsworth. People could support the tree by buying one of its lobster pots, with a lobster guaranteed as their gift afterwards.

So even the Christmas tree eventually came back to food.

I am delighted that Lulu Bowerman and Paul White continue Alistair’s legacy today, alongside the volunteers who make it happen.

That is what great community ideas do. Someone has the slightly mad idea, other people believe in it and eventually another generation picks it up.

Then it stops belonging to the person who thought of it.

It belongs to Emsworth.

A pie that tells Emsworth’s story

If one dish connects everything I believe about local food, it is our Steak, Ale and Oyster Pie.

Today we think of oysters as a luxury, but historically they were plentiful and inexpensive and were often combined with meat. Beef and oysters became a classic British pairing.

Few towns have a stronger connection with oysters than Emsworth.

Hundreds of local people once depended upon the oyster industry before the infamous 1902 Emsworth oyster scandal, when contaminated oysters served at a Winchester banquet were linked to a typhoid outbreak. The consequences devastated the local industry.

I wanted to put some of that history back on the plate.

Our Steak, Ale and Oyster Pie became part of our British Food Fortnight celebrations, and the recipe was subsequently included in Bobby Groves’ book Oyster Isles.

For me, that is what local food should do.

A dish should tell you where you are.

More than a fortnight

British Food Fortnight will undoubtedly feel strange this year.

I will miss having The Blue Bell open. I will miss writing menus, talking to suppliers and serving dishes that celebrate what is growing, swimming, grazing and being produced around us.

But I will still be ingredient hunting.

I will be at Tuppenny Barn. I will be working with Natasha and Hampshire Fare in primary schools. I will still be talking about our farmers, fishermen, growers and producers, and hopefully encouraging a few children to ask where their dinner came from.

Because British Food Fortnight was never really about two weeks.

It is about reconnecting people with food.

Eat with the seasons. Meet the farmer. Talk to the fisherman. Visit your farmers’ market. Try venison. Support independent producers. Teach children where their food comes from.

And never stop looking for that next great ingredient.

The doors of The Blue Bell may be closed for this year’s celebrations.

But the ingredient hunter certainly isn’t.