“When our customers ask where their meat or game is from, I can often point out the window or they can visit close by. I strongly believe you can taste the landscape in a dish; the weather, the animal, the grass, the soil all contribute to the final product. We have our ‘garden’ of produce and it is our job to best represent it. We also focus on game (seasonally), which comes to us in abundance, and makes good use of a by-product of another local industry. Locally, we use a lot of fruit and veg grown by domestic gardeners, allotments, etc. We use fresh, and preserve what we can as it hits the peak of its season.”

Hare leg with Alexanders, celeriac, new season asparagus, and blood cake; wild sea trout with white asparagus, heritage potato, sea spinach, and verbena; and beetroot mousse with sweet cicely, gingerbread, and blood orange.

Few embarked on our survey with the application to detail of James Ratcliffe and Nina Matsunaga. On beef, they wrote: “Our favourite beef producer grows his own cereal, meaning no need for ‘man-made cake’ to finish the animal, so his farm runs a rotation system of grazing and growing, which is much better for the environment. Unfortunately purely ‘grass-fed beef’ does not quite work here – the quality of grass in parts of the North of England just isn’t good enough.” And so we learn a little something new.