Richard Buckley was born and raised a vegetarian and has never eaten meat. He fell in love with fine dining, wine and produce whilst at university, and dreamt of creating a great restaurant. Food for Richard was made from plants; it is his culinary heritage. That his restaurant would serve only vegetables, fungi and fruits was a given, but it wasn't until he began trying to obtain the experience needed that he discovered there was no one to follow. The meat chefs and restaurants couldn't make the food he wanted, and the vegetarian restaurants were nowhere near the level needed. Richard spent the next twelve years, researching, cooking, working and learning and slowly created a cuisine that reflected the refinement and connection to the ingredient that he craved. Today Richard is proud to have a restaurant that does a little good in the world, that shows that eating ethically doesn't need to be hair shirts and sandals, and demonstrates that you can eat environmentally and ethically whilst enjoying a little luxury.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Walking In the woods and hills with my family.

What was your first experience with sustainable eating? I had a meal at CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) in Wales when I was about five. I can still remember having my mind blown that all the produce had been grown on-site; I had never thought of food as being grown before. I had my first nasturtium leaf there and I’ve had a love affair with them ever since.

What do you love most about what you do? Food is real, it connects you to the land and to the people who farm and live on it. Working everyday with these connections is the perfect antidote to the increasingly abstract worlds of social media and modern business.

What do you consider the most overrated ingredient? Butter – It’s too easy to make food taste great if you just add butter. Going vegan has super-charged our creativity because we’ve had to find more interesting, natural and creative routes to create depth of flavour and not just throw in the fat.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever been taught? Be consistent, it is better to work steadily and well than shine bright and burn out.

Is there anything you don’t particularly care to eat? Aside from meat… cauliflower, which is odd because our whole cauliflower dish is one of our most popular and talked about. I often find I create the best dishes from ingredients I don’t much care for, because I have to work extra hard to create something I enjoy.

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? An old chipped coffee mug in a cabin in the mountains.

When was the last time you ate out, and where? At the Trencherman Awards in Devon. A different amazing chef cooked each course, but they obviously didn’t talk about the vegan option with each other as we ended up with roast cauliflower for every plate. I was so hungry when we finished!

What are your favourite books or cookbooks? I couldn’t live without Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, but beyond that The French Laundry Cookbook was the first book that inspired me to cook beautifully and I still flick through it to remind myself of that feeling that first started me on this journey.

What does success mean to you? Success is purity, when every dish is clean and a perfect expression of the ingredient.

What is your current obsession, the thing you think about at 3am? Ferments – we’ve been messing with them for a few years now but we’ve finally finished our fermenting kitchen so we can make more of the seasonal ingredients for longer. Creating recipes for fermentation rather than just preserving a single ingredient has my brain spinning at the moment.

What are the qualities you most admire in others? Calm.

Which three words best describe your cooking style? Clean, innovative, plants.

If you could eat only one thing today, what would it be? Sourdough bread with Marmite.

What do you see when you think of the cuisine of your own country? I see a few bright spots shining brightly.

Which producer or supplier really brightens your day? Jo Edwards at Castle Farm Organics. She’s mad as a box of frogs but her produce is always interesting and delicious. I always come away from a visit with my head swimming with ideas.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? What if…

What do you think the food of the future will look like? We will inevitably be eating plants, or mostly plants. The ecological and ethical horrors of industrial farming will be looked back on by future generations in the same way we look back on the slave trade today.

What is your number one sustainability tip or trick? Eat better food and less of it. Local and organic should be the norm, not a novelty.