Tasty England

Tasty England: or the Oscars of English tourism.

According to timesonline.co.uk (read on 25th April) the winner of The Enjoy England Awards for Excellency was announced on Apr 23rd and turned out to be Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen at the surf in Cornwall. This is a relatively new category in the nineteen year old awards, whereby the restaurants were judged not only on excellence of service and customer care, but on their food sourcing and environmental policies.

The rise and rise of the restaurant scene in London has been well-documented, but are we now in danger of being over-run by countryside imitations of these hip capital tratts? And the answer looks very much like yes, if the short-list of restaurants in this year’s competition are any indication. As it turns out, their degrees of commitment in sourcing local, seasonal produce, lowering carbon emissions and reducing waste puts our capital’s glamorous restaurants to shame.

London-based restaurant critics can hype up the city’s pitifully few ‘eco-restaurants’ as much as they like, but media attention in the country, where the real progress is being made, is still as rare as spotted flycatchers.

Take the family-run Strattons Hotel in Norfolk, for instance, where the rare spotted flycatcher really does nest every spring in the rambling rose bushes of the bird-friendly gardens; a lovely thing to spot as you down your breakfast kedgeree of locally smoked fish with poached bantam egg. Or dine in a majestic 30-bedroom castle at Swinton Park near Ripon in Yorkshire, where the Cunliffe-Lister family has installed a carbon-neutral woodchip boiler and eco-friendly laundry.

For an ever-increasing number of foodies the carbon footprint is taking on an important aspect when choosing where to eat next so it is always good to hear that they have restored the original 4-acre walled kitchen garden with its 62 varieties of fruit, vegetables and herbs, and that all venison, rabbit, trout and game come from their own estate.

Or the cute-as-a-button Parrott Inn, a country pub in the Surrey hills run by Charles and Linda Gotto with lashings of humour, self-belief and wine. Their veggie garden is pillaged for the pub kitchen and the farm shop is stocked with meats and eggs from their own farm.

This would seem to be the aim of an enlarged number of restauranteurs and their afficiados. To check out who nearly made it view travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/holiday_type/food_and_travel/article3767242.ece.

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