Fowlescombe Farm is set on a centuries’ old estate. Photography. Fisho Underwood
Farm-to-table is one of the most overused phrases in food, but at Fowlescombe Farm, it is also the most literal. Dinner here begins before you sit down. It begins in the garden, where the herbs for your broth are still growing. It begins in the salt chamber, where the beef has been resting for weeks. It begins, really, in the soil. By the time the food reaches the table, it has already travelled a long way, and yet not very far.
The day starts before the kitchen does. By the time Executive Head Chef Elly Wentworth arrives at nine, she has already been on her phone for hours: not dealing with emails and reservations, but in early morning conversations with Shelley Hutcheon, the Head Gardener, working out what was picked overnight and what needs to come in before service. The menu does not exist yet. It will by the time guests sit down. That, at Fowlescombe, is entirely the point.
Left. Head Gardener Shelley Hutcheon Right. British Longhorn cattle. Photography. Jon Tonks
Fowlescombe is a luxury boutique hotel in Devon, close to the wild landscapes of Dartmoor national park and not far from the sandy beaches of Southwest England, but it’s also been a working farm for centuries and, today, a regenerative farm as well. Guests stay on the farm itself, in the middle of working land, kitchen gardens and open countryside. At the centre of the experience is The Refectory, the dining space headed by Wentworth, whom you might recognise from television shows like ‘MasterChef’ and ‘Great British Menu’.
Left. Produce from the kitchen garden Right. Elly Wentworth in The Refectory kitchen. Photography. Jon Tonks
Wentworth came to Fowlescombe from a background in Michelin-level fine dining: white tablecloths, tasting menus, the kind of kitchens where every element is controlled, anticipated, known in advance. What Fowlescombe asked of her was almost the opposite. “We change the menu daily,” she says, “which back in the day wasn’t such a thing.” The tasting menu was a thing, à la carte was a thing, but a kitchen that built its entire offering around whatever the farm and garden produced that morning was something else entirely. “I wasn’t too sure it was going to work,” Wentworth admits, “but it’s been amazing.”
Goats are not farmed at Fowlescombe but help to keep weeds and brush at bay, eliminating the need for pesticides. Photography. Jon Tonks
Her finesse and Michelin-starred training are not wasted here but simply applied differently. She cannot put salmon on the menu. She will not use avocado. If an ingredient cannot meet the same standard of provenance as the farm meat, it does not belong. “It means you’re really focusing heavily on the garden,” she says, “what we have in, when it’s going to be growing, when we need it”. The constraint has become the creative engine.
Planning a menu at Fowlescombe is less a fixed process than an ongoing conversation. Wentworth knows when the beef is sent to dry age for 21 days and that it will spend longer still in the salt chamber before the prime cuts reach the kitchen. The fish, sourced through a free diver who is the only person in the UK diving to 40 feet without equipment, arrives according to what is in season that particular month. Seabass disappears for five months of the year and the menu moves with it. “The ethos of the fish needs to be the same as with the meat,” Wentworth explains, “the same principles, the same regenerative story.”
Fish is sourced from a free diver and the farm produces its own meat. Photography. Jon Tonks
What this means in practice is a kitchen that thinks in systems rather than in dishes. Trimmings from the globe artichokes go to the compost. Scallop shells are dried in the sun and laid across the farm. Coffee grounds from service, eggshells ground to powder, bones simmered for stock and then burned are all used by Hutcheon to feed the soil. Seaweed from the scallop supplier is steeped for two weeks to make a nutrient tea for the herb beds. “Anything that can be put onto the waste, we put into the compost,” Wentworth says. It is not a talking point for the menu. It is just how things work.
A harvest from the kitchen garden. Photography. Jon Tonks
The seasonal gaps are where things get even more interesting. Spring and summer bring a kind of abundance that can feel almost overwhelming. The beans, the new potatoes, the elderflower and wild garlic arrive all at once, faster than the kitchen can use them. Wentworth has been building reserves: apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, sweet cicely, oils made from flowers that last only five weeks of the year. “When it comes to winter,” she says, “and you have turnips, leeks, beetroot and a very limited amount of food, these pickles and preserves and oils take you through.” It is the logic of preservation applied to a fine dining context: you bank what you have when you have it, so the menu does not hollow out when the land goes quiet.
The menu at The Refectory changes daily. Photography. Jon Tonks
Some of the ingredients that have surprised her most are the ones she grew herself. Globe artichokes came at Hutcheon’s suggestion. Wentworth tried them, committed, and now has more than she expected, although they are still a luxury: “There are only five at a time, so we serve those five, and then we wait a couple more weeks for the next five.” The guests who happen to be in the house at the right moment are the only ones who get them. Perennial kiwis have just gone in. The English wasabi is growing. Padrón peppers will be dried and brined and dehydrated into chilli powder used throughout the year. These are, Wentworth says, the “little things that tell the story of what we’re trying to achieve at the farm”.
The dish that has come to define the kitchen is the Fowlescombe Broth. It has been on the menu for two months and Wentworth does not think it is coming off. Made over two days from everything coming out of the garden, vegetable trimmings pressed and cooked off and burned, vegetables added for depth and colour, it is entirely plant based and, by all accounts, one of the most requested things on the table. Chefs pick the herbs they want to infuse it with each night: one evening Vietnamese coriander and lemon verbena, the next, geranium and basil chosen from five varieties growing in the kitchen garden. Guests who stay for several nights find themselves part of the rotation, the chefs explaining each night why they chose what they chose. “The [guests] almost become part of the story at the same time,” Wentworth tells us.
The Refectory. Photography. Jon Tonks
The Refectory is an intimate space seating a maximum of 18 guests, with the kitchen opening directly into the room. There is no separation between the people cooking and the people eating, which changes something fundamental about the experience, both for the diners and the chefs. As the diners watch the chefs adding the herbs that they picked before service to the broths, the butter, the bread, “The guests can really see the chefs’ love,” Wentworth says. She describes guests asking questions, chefs answering them and evenings that end with something resembling familiarity: “By the time they leave, it’s almost family.”
The Refectory. Photography. Jon Tonks
Fowlescombe has been open for a year. It has the quality of somewhere that knows what it is but is still discovering how far that goes. Wentworth is already thinking about the winter, about what she is preserving now so that January still has something to say. The kiwis should be ready by the end of summer. The bones will start going back into the soil.
The guests, for their part, tend to leave having understood something they did not arrive knowing: not just that food can be seasonal, but what that actually means when the person who grew the ingredient and the person who cooked it are in the same room, pouring your broth and explaining why tonight’s herb is different from last night’s. “I just hope they understand our story,” Wentworth says, “that we take care and pride in what we do.” She does not need them to remember every dish, only that the care was there, and that they felt it.
Grazing patterns are used to regulate the soil, as seen here with Tamworth pigs. Photography. Jon Tonks
Read more about Fowlescombe Farm here.
words. Lola Carron
edit. Huma Humayun
photography. Jon Tonks and Fisho Underwood
