Keeping (and cooking) it local

My oh my, where do I start? I finished my last blog (in February!) with a photo from inside the Pitchcott Kitchen, at that time still an empty shell. Now, the same view looks like this:

It has been a long time, and a lot of work, to get here. And there are so many stories to tell. But for now I want to tell the story of how I met our chef, Kevin Close. It was well over 3 years ago when I first tasted one of Kev's quiches. It was a melt-in-the-mouth kind of taste that I hadn't experienced from a quiche before. At the time Kevin was running the shop at local dairy farm Udderly Fresh, and as well as buying his quiches for some of the retreats and other events at Pitchcott, I got chatting to him about my plans to open a cafe.

For many years Kevin was chef at the Betsey Wynne pub in Swanbourne, and his input and experience has been invaluable in helping me set up the kitchen and cafe here at Pitchcott. We had many meetings on site both before and during the building works. We discussed menus. Kevin is a local chef and knows local suppliers. We set up an account with the butchers in Whitchurch, Parrott Brothers, who provide quality meats from local farms. Kevin came up with the idea of a 'Breakfast Croissant', using the tastiest sausage, bacon and eggs, all sourced locally.

We had planned to open the cafe in May but building work delays were compounded by problems with connecting 3 phase power to the new development. By June, we were essentially ready, but could not turn the lights (or oven, coffee machine, or anything else) on. It was a stressful time. Fortunately it was resolved, but only after a planned power cut that took out power for the day in the whole village.

A week later, the lights were on, the oven was on, the coffee machine was on. We were on. We opened our doors. And local people came. We decided to open from Friday to Sunday, anything more than that would be beyond what the kitchen could handle in these early days. In the first two weekends Kevin cooked up 150 covers, all on his own in the kitchen, and many of them Breakfast Croissants, which were quickly becoming legendary. Here's one that I couldn't stop myself from half eating before photographing it.

And what does every quality cafe need to go alongside that? Quality coffee, of course. I have friends who know a thing or two about coffee and had been considering the options for a while. It quickly became clear I needed to find a roastery that was local and could deliver the freshest and most sustainably-sourced coffee beans. Back in March I walked into Doe&Fawn's roastery on Buckinghamshire's border with Milton Keynes. One sip of their Pocos de Caldas sourced from the Minas Gerais region of Brazil, and I sensed that this was something special. They are putting the special into speciality coffee.

Soon after the cafe opened the temperature started to climb - we have after all just had the hottest summer on record. Mid July is also the time of our annual Menagerie festival, and I quickly realised we needed an ice cream option for people looking for a post-brunch alternative to coffee and cake. I managed to pick up a bargain display freezer and struck a deal with Arthur from Chiltern Ice Cream to serve 9 of their delicious flavours, with Honeycomb Swirl being a clear (and personal) favourite.

Another local business, Two Spoons Tea now supplies our selection of teas, including the very popular Bucks Blend. I first met Giles from Two Spoons a few years ago at a local business networking event, and he connected me with Judith from Lovely Bit of Crumpet, a bakery now based in Long Crendon. Judith herself is from Quainton, even closer, and her crumpets are now an integral part of the Pitchcott menu. The Breakfast Croissant has been superseded by a Crumpet.

It is great to be working with and supporting all these local businesses and suppliers. We are sourcing our salad (as well as other seasonal produce) from local market garden Bucksum, and I have already written about their Growing the Growers project to incentivise more farms to grow food for their local communities. That's exactly what we intend to do next year once our plans for the kitchen garden develop.

Ultimately we all want to support the local community, local people. And from the feedback we have received so far, it would seem people are thankful for this beautiful location where they can come together for breakfast, lunch and all things in between. As well as the quality local food, coffee and ice cream, they are appreciative of the warm welcome from our staff - who are also themselves all from the local area. Our cafe manager Lucy-Jo has established herself as a firm favourite and her friendly welcome is one of the many reasons that we have such a high proportion of returning visitors. She lives in the nearby village of Hardwick and is also well connected with residents from other surrounding villages. All of our wonderful front of house staff are from the local area. Our site manager Christina is from even closer than that - she lives on-site. She also has the broadest smile and warmest welcome for visitors, including all the campers that we hosted in our meadow this year, many more of them now that we have a cafe to satisfy their breakfast needs.

I myself am very appreciative of all of the team. We came together in challenging circumstances and it has taken time to acquire equipment and develop systems to ensure the smooth-running of the cafe experience. The team have really stepped up when they needed to and I am hugely grateful. I would like to extend special thanks to Kevin who will be working his last full day in the kitchen this Sunday. He has done such an amazing job in getting us off the ground, producing consistently high quality plates of food. Here he is serving exactly that at an evening last month that we hosted for the River Ray Farmer Cluster.

So from next month we have a new chef, and you will start to see some exciting new dishes on the menu. I won't give away any secrets for now, suffice to say that her surname is Baker and she most certainly lives up to her name. Oh... and she lives in the nextdoor village of Quainton - and you can't get much more local than that.

Tony