“The main incentive of Native is to provide guests with an original dining experience using the country’s best wild food that is native to the UK. Our aim is to be as sustainable and resourceful as possible while creating something amazing. This goes for our food as well as the way we run the restaurant from a business perspective. We’re passionate about trying to use entirely British produce, using local producers and micro farms; our dishes intend to reflect indigenous Britain. We enjoy going foraging and incorporating our finds into the menu. In the past, we’ve pickled fruit from a tree that fell over in Ivan’s mum’s garden to use in the restaurant too."
Fallow deer with caramelized cauliflower and carrot top salsa verde; fish from the market with parsnip, wild garlic, and smoked lardo; and bone marrow fudge with ants.
Native is a true labour of love. For their new site they crowdfunded £50,000 on Kickstarter – so that is some seriously committed supporters. The whole team mucked in to clean up and redecorate the site to make it fit for opening. They made their own tables with cement and plywood, chairs were kindly donated, and everything in the kitchen was found on eBay. They were recently crowned champions at the Rude Health Porridge Championships (using only real ingredients – no additives, preservatives, colourants, or synthetics) with their parsnip, bone marrow, and sea buckthorn porridge.
A wild food restaurant that uses locally sourced British produce with a zero waste initiative