Why? Well, one clue would be that the world of Big Chicken is normally dominated by pressures to rear chicken as fast as possible, as cheap as possible.

But, rather than an outsider peering in, I was interested to hear from someone inside this world, and so invited Somerset resident and poultry man Tom Woolman — who among other things works with UK-based hatchery Annyalla Chicks and co-hosts the Poultry Network Podcast — to untangle some of the nuance surrounding chicken before it gets to our plate.

Said nuance has something to do with the genetic make up of various chicken breeds – their names, as you’ll find, more befitting WW2 bomber aircraft or something astronomers would call a new constellation than what you might label a category of animal.

The nature of the debate is also curious to me — down the butcher, one might talk breeds of pigs (Middle White! Gloucester Old Spot!), cattle (Belted Galloway! Longhorn!), and sheep (Herdwick! Dorset Down!) – especially as each has their specific purpose, whether yield, flavour in their meat, temperament, minimising strain on the land, and so on. The breed of four-legged animal a farmer chooses gives us a strong hint as to how sustainably they farm. What I want to know is: is this true of chicken too?

Apparently, we are a nation of chicken lovers. We love to eat them but we don’t love to talk about them. With 20 million grown and slaughtered in the UK every week, the numbers can feel overwhelming.

Enter the Better Chicken Commitment, or BCC. Created in 2016 as a set of rules for major retail and hospitality chains to follow when sourcing higher welfare birds, one of the BCC’s five stipulations is the adoption of slower growing breeds that “demonstrate higher animal welfare outcomes” (editor’s note: In other words, breeds much less susceptible to lameness, limb deformities, and organ failure, while generally requiring fewer antibiotics).

Converting to a slower growing breed, however, hasn’t been easy – earlier this year, a number of large food businesses and restaurants, including KFC, Wagamama, and Nandos, publicly announced that although they had signed up to the BCC when it was launched, they were now unable to follow through because of “the requirement to source only slower-growing breeds”.

Why is the breed of chicken such a problem then, and why exactly would someone – whether farms supplying M&S or those selling at local farmers’ markets – choose one breed of broiler (a chicken raised for meat rather than eggs) over another?

The main players

The Ross 308 dominates poultry meat production in this country, making up 95% of all chicken produced. The Ross is bred to be an all-round performer, producing lean meat which doesn’t have a strong flavour and is versatile in the kitchen. Ross birds will be ready for slaughter as early as 28 days, with between 36 and 42 being the norm. They grow at around 65g per day over the course of their life.

Across Somerset, birds like this are grown for a number of different chicken processors, including 2Sisters, IHP, and Avara Foods.

Other breeds are typically slower growing and are supplied by a business called Hubbard. Hubbard has many of its farms and hatcheries in France, where free-range chicken has a well-established following.

The most popular bird for free-range systems is the Hubbard JA87, which tends to be ready for slaughter at 56 days old. For a chicken to be legally classed as free-range, it must spend at least half its life with access to an outdoor range. 28 days is the typical brooding period where chickens will go from a fluffy chick to a fully feathered forager, with a further 28 days out on the range to allow it to be labelled as free-range.

Examples of Somerset producers utilising 87s for free-range are Beech Ridge Farm at Wellington, run by Chris and Holly Dibble; Kevin and Claire at Gather Ground in Bruton; and Nempnett Pastures in the Chew Valley, where birds are pasture-raised by George Ford and live outside full time once they are finished brooding.

With the JA87 the carcass will be less well fleshed than a Ross 308. The meat will also be darker and have more texture. Other extensively-used breeds such as the JA57 are used in organic systems, where these characteristics are even more pronounced and they have to live for a minimum of 81 days.

Beware free-range labels

Some chicken producers will use a Ross 308 in a free-range system. These birds will deliver a hefty carcass at 56 days and convert feed more efficiently than their Hubbard counterparts, lowering input costs. Because of that, shoppers may feel that they are getting very good value compared to the slower growing breeds. In reality, these birds might not actually go outside much, as the Ross 308’s priorities are to eat, drink, and rest.

Suppliers who successfully utilise a Ross 308 in a free-range system include Creedy Carver in Devon. Their website describes producing a ‘conventional breed’, which is fairly meaningless unless you know what that terminology refers to. Likewise, chicken for sale in a farm shop without any information about how it is produced is likely to be a standard broiler. There is sometimes more transparency around how a chicken is produced from a supermarket than from a small-scale supplier.

When you choose to buy eggs, there is a clear difference between a chicken being in a cage and a chicken having access to the outside. The cost difference is negligible. With chicken meat however, both BCC and standard birds are kept indoors, in barns with windows, perches, and bales. The differences are subtle, down to grams per day of carcass growth, and quite frankly if you took someone off the street to look at a shed of chickens I’m not sure they could easily tell the difference.

One way of knowing for sure if a bird is slow-grown is whether it’s certified by the RSPCA or organic, as these assurance schemes permit a slower growing breed as part of their standard.

Breeding for the future

Coming back to the Better Chicken Commitment, how are the options laid out so far?

With the Ross 308 not included in the BCC, producers have scrambled and struggled to implement other breeds that are approved, such as the JA87 and JA57.

Meanwhile, a breed called Redbro has been specifically created by Hubbard for the BCC market, reaching slaughter weight at 49 days. It was designed to fit between the production characteristics of a Ross and a JA87.

Here lies the problem, for the breed tries to be all things to all men but ends up coming up short in many respects. The Redbro doesn’t deliver the efficiency and value of a Ross 308, yet it doesn’t represent the sort of free ranging lifestyle that the JA57 and 87 are famous for.

From a supply chain point of view it doesn’t work either. If the UK requires 20 million chickens per week, switching to a breed which takes another ten days to reach slaughter weight means we need another 20% more poultry houses to produce the same volume of product. And who wants more chicken sheds built in their parish?

Chicken farming decisions

Ultimately, the production system and breed of chicken a farmer chooses is likely to reflect their business needs. Farms that have other livestock may choose free-range or organic birds, as they require less attention and allow the farmer to focus on other enterprises.

By contrast, Ross 308 birds are often demanding in terms of management and will often be run as a larger specialised enterprise. Farmers who see their role as promoting food security will tend to favour intensive production.

So, is there any hope of the Better Chicken Commitment gaining further traction? Probably not. M&S and Waitrose have fully embraced the BCC, but they have discerning and affluent customers willing to pay for a product with easy to understand ethical credentials. You might find higher welfare chicken on small, local farms. Or you might find worse. For other shoppers, the lean and affordable qualities of poultry are the most important.

It would seem that as food citizens and farmers everyone would like to do the right thing, but we still remain split on how to produce chicken.

On to it, then.

The Mint Room in Bath is a pivotal part of the history of Indian food in the South West. Or rather, its owner is. Or rather, he claims to be. Let’s put it this way – I had a chat with Lufthur Rahman, who opened The Mint Room in 2011 but started out with a restaurant in Yeovil in the ‘90s, and some of the stories he came out with were compelling enough to entertain the idea that he has significantly influenced how Indian food developed in this part of the country. So, any Yeovil folk out there who’d like to corroborate this? Do you have memories (fond or otherwise) of his restaurant Viceroy, or an opinion on Indian food in and around Yeovil of the time? I’d love to know. Interview with Lufthur coming all subscribers’ way in June or July.

Below the paywall: Exploring a nascent food network in Yeovil; London’s most hyped restaurant can’t get enough of Somerset pork; where are the Somersetian street food traders?; controversy at The Newt (again); and more scuttlebut besides.

Also with a £ subscription: Access to a Somerset producer directory and local eating out guides.

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To try make sense of it – and what it means within this little part of the country – are David Bailey, co-owner of Somerset’s oldest vineyard (52 years and counting) and Adam Collins, Somerset’s newest winemaker. Though the newness is technically true – his winery Saddle Goose opened in Frome 13 months ago – Adam’s also spent the last decade or so making or learning to make wine in France, Portugal, Chile, New Zealand, Buckinghamshire, and Essex, among others. “But I always felt like I was drawn to the South West more,” he says. “The vineyards round here are smaller and more eclectic than the huge, generic, and conventional production of the South East.”

David and wife Lexa, meanwhile, have been firmly in the world of wine since they bought Wraxall Vineyard 2021. “In that year,” David says, “we had about 600 people ring up and say, ‘Can we do a tour and tasting?’ We said, ‘Well, okay. Give us five minutes and we’ll learn something about it first.’” In 2025, David and Lexa had 12,500 visitors to the vineyard, and this year are expecting 18,000.

There are at least 11 wineries in Somerset, which includes vineyards contracting out the making of their wine, as David does with Hampshire-based Itasca, and winemakers – like Adam – sourcing grapes from elsewhere. They all vary also in how they select their grapes (Adam only from regenerative growers such as Coombe Hay outside Bath and Avonleigh Orchards near Bradford-on-Avon), how they ferment their wine (David’s winemakers use a stock yeast which offers cleaner flavours, while Adam prefers the complexity of wild yeasts from their local natural environments), and starting price per bottle (Wraxall: £18, Saddle Goose: £25).

In that sense, the following dialogue is between a more traditional wine producer and one much less so; both providing some sort of expression of the locality whether via their own grapes (David), or yeast cultures from the land (Adam). Conversation took place around an upturned wine barrel at Saddle Goose’s cellar door in Frome, and is presented here edited for clarity and brevity.

Hugh: Would either of you say there’s a particular character about wine in Somerset or the South West? I mean, thinking about the wet albeit lush climate, or the soil type we have down here – which tends to be quite clayey, right?

Adam: Clay holds water better, which means it also holds nutrients better, which benefits some root stocks and some vines prefer it. But you want heat for that. In the future, if it continues to get warmer, I think Somerset soils will be brilliant especially for still wines. Then we can be more selective on grape types and clones – like Burgundy-style – that will do brilliantly here. Because in all of the UK, apart from probably the Crouch Vale [in Essex] and a couple of other places, we’re a marginal climate still – we just had frost recently, which can wipe out a percentage of your growth.

David: A lot of people are being frosted.

Adam: Yeah, because a lot of people planted in the wrong places. We’re still learning where’s the best plot. I say it’s less about soil type in England. It’s so much more important to get your aspect [a slope’s orientation in relation to sunlight] and your altitude, because if you’re not on at least a bit of a slope, you’re probably going to have some issues.

David: There’s a vineyard in Essex that went down to minus four [°C] and lost everything.

Adam: I read a study looking at the amount of money you have to pay to protect against frost, because it’s in the middle of the night with labour, candles, sprays, heaters, fans. What you can spend protecting it versus the average of what’s lost to frost – it actually works out about the same cost. Which is why, again, site is so important. If you’re on a slope, near some water that draws frost down the hill, the frost won’t stay.

David: We’re south-facing on a hill and you’re absolutely right, but our vines are high up as well, so the frost rolls under the vines and you see it go down the hill and it goes over the fields. You never can tell from historic records on vineyards, but rumour has it Wraxall’s never been frosted. And this year we got down to plus 1.9°C and that was our lowest.

Hugh: I’m guessing the frosts are likely to change with the changing climate?

David: We don’t quite know where it’s going. I mean, I don’t know what your vines are like, but ours are about a month ahead of where they were in previous years.

Adam: Warmth helps, but if they warm and come out too early, you can still get the risk of frost. So everyone is going, woah, last year was the earliest we’ve seen, and now this year was even earlier. But then we all go, hang on a minute, if frost comes along, we can still all be fucked.

David: You see what’s going on in Spain and Portugal with the heat and the lack of water, the fact that we’ve got clay and it retains moisture. Vines will go down about seven metres. We have wet, wet winters – what, three months of rain every single day. Everything is soaked into that clay. It’s all down there. They’ll go find it.

Hugh: Does that say something about the unpredictability with extreme weather events? Do they make you a bit more anxious?

Adam: That’s the thing with climate change. In Portugal and France, they’re getting hit more with the opposite of our problems. We’re a bit more wet, and there’s more disease. But when in Chile, a person I was supposed to be making wine with – his house got burnt down, with his vineyard and winery.

Hugh: From forest fires?

Adam: Exactly.

David: And they’ve had that in France and Spain.

Adam: The main thing for me is it’s more unpredictable. We are making consistently better wines, but it’s hotter, there’s more rain, and it’s raining when it shouldn’t be. I was in Beaujolais recently with a friend’s winery and two years ago they lost 70 percent of their crop to hail just when they were about to pick their grapes. And that was in summer.

Hugh: You said we’re making better wine in the UK and that’s partly because of climate. What other reasons are there?

Adam: In the ‘70s, there were a few German hippies who came over, planting some vines in the UK. Before that, we hadn’t made wine since pretty much the Roman times. So we didn’t have the knowledge of our own land.

David: Even now, 20 percent of English vineyards are less than one acre. They’re big back gardens essentially.

Adam: Some of the bigger English producers have then been winning awards and making noise about English wine. And then you’ve got people doing a Master’s in it, or working in other countries, or wine makers from other countries who’ve studied it coming over. With that, I think the knowledge, the sharing of knowledge, and the quality of people making it got better and better.

Hugh: On the farming side, is there much difference in the way you two do things? Would you say you’re slightly more conventional, David?

David: We’ve taken over a vineyard that’s 50 years old. We’ve cut out massively the volume of weed killers and all the other stuff. I mean, they used to spray every ten days. What’s fascinating is seeing all the wildlife come back. Our place is full of mice and voles and hawks and all sorts of things. I mean, you go around some of the vineyards in Europe… matter of fact, we were in Italy and I said to the winemaker, “I can’t hear any birds.” It was just–

Adam: Dead.

David: Dead. Dead earth underneath those vines. No insects and no bird life. It’s horrendous. At the same time, we’re not organic, we’re never going to be organic. Because at the end of the day, we’ve got to be a commercial enterprise.

Hugh: Are there many organic vineyards in the UK?

Adam: It’s about 15%.1 We only work organically, but then we’re very small. I can do everything by hand.

Hugh: Does that mean the vineyards you use are organic or organically certified?

Adam: I don’t believe in certification. I don’t like paying for someone to come and tick a box. And it’s more money again. I’m big on the most biodiversity you can have, the more biodiversity, the healthier your vineyard. You actually get less problems with mildews and insects when you’ve got a greater level of biodiversity. If you can plant plants that attract predator insects, that eat the bad insects, there’s a natural… [balance].

David: How many bottles do you make?

Adam: I normally make around 6–8,000, but last year I got enough to make about 12,000.

David: Similar to us, we make about 12. We’ve got new wines that’ll take us to 15-20,000 depending on the harvest. There’s no point doing loads and loads if the market’s not out there. It’s still an immature industry but in 20 years’ time it’ll be different.

Hugh: Talking about raising the profile, what should be done? Last time we spoke, David, you were talking about how we might link up all these vineyards in the South West, whether with a tour bus or something.

David: It’s almost impossible in the South West. They’re too diverse and spread out. And as I said to someone the other day, I can’t think of anything more boring than going to see five vineyards in a day. Once you’ve seen a vineyard, and – no disrespect – once you’ve seen a winery, you’ve seen a winery.

Hugh: Even the ones in Somerset are fairly far apart.

David: The thing is that we all have to latch onto something else, like other food and drink here in Frome or wherever, so that you’re part of a community.

Hugh: The other thing is, you both have got a very different story. But do you think that vineyards and winemakers across the South West produce enough character, enough difference in flavour, for people like me – who’re not so au fait in wine – to notice?

Adam [pouring three glasses]: This is pinot noir, but with 36 days contact. I’m not afraid of the colour, and I think you’re essentially getting more flavour in the aroma compounds extracted.

Hugh: [sips]: Strawberry?

Adam: Strawberry, raspberry, which I quite like. To answer your question, there are different people doing it in different ways in Somerset. Limeburn Hill in Chew Magna – they’re probably the most representative of Demeter in the whole UK. Demeter being the governing body of biodynamics.

David: Somerset is a big county. It’s got different soils and all the rest of it, and that in itself is going to produce different grapes off different locations. I mean, even though you and I are 30 minutes apart, the juice will taste different. It’s back to that geography.

Adam: There’s this really cool map I found recently that lays out the age of all the different borders and soils that have happened over the years to create different formations under the earth underneath. It’s the magic of wine, because there’s such difference in wine – so much complexity versus a beer or a cider.

Hugh: So all those things, what do they add up to? If you were to give someone not massively educated on wine an elevator pitch about how your wine tastes more like this and David’s wine tastes more like that, what would you say?

Adam: Here’s the thing – I’m running a little art and wine fair, because I used to be in arts before I got into wine full time. For me, there’s a big crossover between wine making and producing a piece of art. You’re affected by your surroundings. It’s about your touch – every stroke, every decision you make. It’s what you’re creating, and how that has an impact on someone.

Hugh: When two people have exactly the same materials, but what they create is always going to be different. Would I be right in saying your grapes, Adam, have quite a bit of skin contact, and the flavour that that produces is quite funky?

Adam: I would argue against that.

Hugh: Funky, I mean, in a good way.

Adam: I would argue we’re very clean.

Hugh: This is my lack of reference point, I think. Because the first one you poured [solaris and bacchus] reminded me of lambic beer — in a similar way to lambic you use spontaneous fermentation instead of using yeast made in a lab or whatever. To me that’s what gives that funk. Maybe ‘funk’ is not the right word,2 but the flavour profile is up and down and unpredictable and complex, whereas generally a lab yeast will produce something much flatter, no?

Adam: Well, yeasts are developed to promote certain aromas and flavours. I like to let the wild yeast do its thing. Because in my mind, whether it be true or not, it allows the grape and the vineyard to have a bit more of its own identity.

David: Whereas our drinkers want consistency. They want to be able to come up to the vineyard and have our rosé, because they liked last year’s rosé, and they want to like this year’s rosé, and they want it there or thereabouts. So if you buy a bottle of [Whispering] Angel or whatever it is, they’re producing X million bottles a year and they’re all the same, because people buy the brand and the name and they like it. So there’s two ways of buying things, isn’t there? You’ll buy something and it doesn’t matter whether it’s baked beans or whatever else – you’ll buy Heinz baked beans because you like Heinz baked beans, but then one day you might go, well, maybe I’ll have a bit of an experiment.

Adam: I find [my drinkers] want consistency, but they’re more open if it’s a little different. Because they’ll buy into that nature’s different. We should be buying a reflection of what happens rather than forcing something to be natural.

David: Exactly. The grapes are natural. The harvest is a natural thing. It’s a reflection on the year and the weather and what’s happened.

Adam: When I was abroad, I used a contract winemaker. They had just started out then. And I said to them I use wild fermentation, and they were really uncomfortable with it. And I’m like, no, this is a part of me – it’s what I do as a winemaker and a brand. There’s a chance with wild yeasts of off flavours or aromas. I’m fine with that risk, but they were heavily against it. Long story short, it was arguments all the way. They didn’t want to do any of it. And then when the wine was finished, they had a bunch of new PR people come in [to represent them] and they said, “Oh, do you mind if we use your baccus as the showcase of the baccus for the winery?” And they were showing it off as what they can do in wine and now they do that with loads of people.

Hugh: Is that because at the time there were so few winemakers using wild fermentation?

Adam: A lot of people who’ve been trained at a university have gone to work in big, big winery production for cheap supermarket wines. When you then have someone who comes along and goes, “Well, I don’t want to do any of that. We’ll rip up the rulebook and do it in a wild way with the yeast and we don’t know [how it’ll turn out],” they shit themselves. Making wine is an art. But so many people are trying to make it into a science.

Hugh: Maybe we can touch on the future of UK wine. I mean, we mentioned climate, and other things, but…

David: The future of English wine is very exciting. Thanks to climate, people understanding it, and these experiences we talked about. The industry itself is still really immature. It’s got a long way to develop, but it’s maturing really quickly.

Adam: It’s emerging because we can get naturally high acidity. When you make wine in another country, you have to adjust, adding a lot of tartaric acid and things like that. We naturally are getting to a point where we’re getting more consistent, high quality grapes like chardonnays and pinots that people really want. I think we’ve got our own character with bacchus grapes, and we should retain some of that character. But the main barrier is price – it’s been really hard for me to keep going because of how expensive it is.

Hugh: So there’s a bit of a reputation for UK wines like yours outside the country? Despite what it costs?

Adam: I was just in Italy for a month, visiting producers. I took my wines with me for them to try. Sometimes they were like, “Oh, English wine.” And then they tried it: “Wow, that’s actually really interesting.” So there was a level of respect and delight that the English can make interesting wines. There’s a buzz for a reason.

A world-class pork producer? A burgeoning wine scene? An accumulation of small market gardens able and willing to serve their communities hyperfresh chemical-free veg?

You might not believe it, but there’s a heck of a lot more to Somerset than cheese and cider.

All this is reflected in this here directory, put together for people seeking to lower their food miles, better connect with the people making their food, and help regenerate their local economies. And as it comes from me — farmers’ market manager, food journalist, food network founder, and regular local food buyer. I’ve tried the things (not all them, mind), I have a decent idea of what’s good, I trust the people who make it.

On that note, there’s a bit of ‘curation’ involved with the following. To give you an example or two, the cheddar maker Barber’s — a huge presence in Somerset and the rest of the UK — makes a respectable cheese by normal standards, but it’s pasteurised, made on an industrial scale, and as such doesn’t offer anything extraordinary in terms of flavour, nature-friendliness, or story. In the same vein, Thatcher’s (based outside Weston) makes the biggest-selling cider in the country. But that doesn’t make it the best, nor among the most representative of traditional Somerset ciders.

Also bear in mind this directory is the very start of something living, and will be updated every few months. I expect it’ll never really be complete. If you’d like to make a suggestion, paid subs can do just that at the foot of this post. Where reasonable, I will update accordingly.

Starting with a focus on primary (raw) producers, then moving onto not-so-essential categories such as wine, cheese, kimchi, and vinegar, I give to you the first iteration of what’s already amounting to a comprehensive catalogue of food and drink producers in Somerset.

Quick find:

Fruit & Veg:
Veg, Fruit, Nuts, Apple Juice

Meat, Fish & Eggs:
Beef, Lamb, Pork, Poultry, Venison, Fish, Goat, Cured Meat, Eggs

Bread

Dairy:
Butter, Cow’s Milk, Cream, Cheese, Yoghurt

Honey

Condiments, Ferments & Preserves

Vinegar

Alcohol:
Beer, Cider, Wine, Sprits

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Sign up for a paid subscription to get all the below, plus access to seasonally-updating guides on where to eat in Somerset.

Let’s get to it, then:

The first edition of a new, continually-updating Somerset producer directory took me the best part of three days to compile. Was it worth it? I dunno. You tell me:

This, by the way, isn’t a simple list of food producers in Somerset. It’s a list of (currently 96) producers in Somerset who tend to care more about things like provenance and flavour (i.e. not sanitised by pasteurisation, aseasonal ingredients, or other methods of standardisation) while farming or processing at a scale not overly impinging on nature, but rather – as in many cases – helping regenerate it.

Happily, there were some surprises when putting together this list, such as there being a growing and seemingly healthy number of market gardens servicing their local communities with chemical-free veg, and that, for some reason, the area of North Somerset including the villages of Blagdon and Wrington doesn’t get the credit it should as a fairly major food-producing region.

Anyway! Paid subscribers get access to the whole darned thing, and updates to it every few months. Plus seasonally-updating WFJ guides including Somerset’s best restaurants and Where to eat in Frome – both these, incidentally, I updated in the last few weeks.

And in other news:

Dining at one of Somerset’s best restaurants just got a tad more realistic, as, from this month, Bruton restaurant Osip is bringing in its new Table d’Hôte menu. It’s a three-courser only available in the evenings, but it’s also priced at £75 a head, which is the real news here – those already wanting to visit Osip (especially since it moved to even more salubrious settings down the road) will know that doing so would have previously set one back at least £165.

Below the paywall: A flashy new restaurant in an unexpected part of Somerset; notes on a pop-up headed by one of the South West’s best chefs; good news for those looking to eat out in Castle Cary; and more besides.

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Saunter on down to your nearest Tesco branch, and you may find honey in a squeezy bottle for £1.19. Head to your local farmers’ market, and you’ll see a beekeeper selling the same grammage of honey for something in the region of £8.50.

Though extortion may first come to mind, the difference – other than the price tag – is that one of these is genuine honey supporting local ecosystems, offering some kind of therapeutic benefit, and harbouring a diversity of complex flavours and textures. The other’s likely sugar syrup, even if it assures you it’s ‘pure and natural’ on the bottle.

This was demonstrated earlier this year, in fact, when beekeepers in Sweden analysed jars of shop-bought Hilltop Honey (Britain’s second largest honey brand). They found the products contained ‘sugar’, ‘foreign enzymes’, and a ‘very low’ amount of the properties required to be legitimately considered ‘honey’.

Ultimately, these particular Hilltop products (others you can pick up in the UK for as little at £1.88) were deemed misleading to the public – if it didn’t reach the bare minimum for what should be called honey, then it shouldn’t be labelled as such.

Some might say this incident is a fault of the albeit rigorous methods in testing honey, or overly stringent EU regulations (honey sold in the EU for example must show its country of origin). Others might call it deliberately fraudulent.

Whichever it is, it’s far from the first time shoppers have been misled. In 2024, the Honey Authenticity Network (HAN) inspected 25 jars of honey from major retailers in the UK. 24 of those jars were flagged as ‘suspicious’. “A lot of the stuff that’s [imported] in could just be honey-flavoured syrup,” Lynne Ingram, a Somerset-based beekeeper and UK chairwoman of HAN, recently told The Grocer.

This is most tangible when you actually taste the stuff. Squeezy honey has that one-dimensional essence of honey we’ve come to expect, and pasteurised and filtered to get that oh so convenient runny texture. A jar of genuine honey, meanwhile, can mean virtually anything from a thick ink-black honey tasting like licorice, to a bright, herbaceous, and delicate honey – all depending on how its bees have foraged.

“My Ling Heather honey bees are transported to the heather in September for the four week flowering period,” Louise (Howell, beekeeper and founder of honey merchant Louisebees), tells me. “The honey is like a jelly and really strong in taste – almost chewy.”

Louise borders Somerset and Wiltshire, and says her honey reflects much of the local landscape. “We are lucky Somerset Council don’t mow our dandelions on verges. That makes fantastic honey and the pollinators love them – it’s very nectar-rich. In Rode we also have lots of Fussels’ rapeseed around us. Many beekeepers don’t like this because it sets solid very quickly in the hive, but I think it’s great and I make my soft creamed honey out of it.

“We’re also really lucky to be so close to Salisbury Plain. It’s an incredible habitat and provides such a wide variety of unusual forage, like wild sainfoin – the honey from that is delicate and herbal.” Others of note include apple blossom honey – rare, but as you’d expect does make the odd appearance in Somerset – which is loose, delicate, and complex, with subtle apple notes.

These kinds of honeys also tend to contain enzymes good for us. Dandelion honey, for instance, is restorative to the kidneys, stomach, gall bladder, and liver. Honey from heather, loaded with antioxidants and antibacterial properties, can help treat infections and digestive disorders. Ivy honey, not unlike that from the manuka plant in its remedial effects, can boost the immune system or, more simply, soothe a sore throat. Though the word ‘superfood’ gets thrown around with too much abandon these days, raw honey certainly fits into that category. But only when it’s not pasteurised – commercial honeys are often if not always heat-treated to 63-80ºC to make them clear and shelf stable, but this cooks off much of the good stuff, ergo reducing honey to little else but glucose (80%) and water (20%).1

Nothing about all that comes close to raw honey’s most important facet, however – its indirect role in maintaining biodiversity, if not the food system at large. Up to 75% of all food produced relies on pollinators – such as honeybees – in moving pollen from plant to plant, therefore aiding fertilisation, and therefore increasing propagation and productivity. In the same way, local biodiversity is highly dependent on flower-visiting insects. I’ve always thought there’s not a single ecosystem in which humans naturally contribute, but beekeepers may well be a rare exception – buying honey from a beekeeper supports that beekeeper, who supports their bee colonies, who in turn support the wider local flora and fauna. “Disease and climate change have made it very difficult for honeybees to survive in the wild for very long,” says Louise. “So their survival and success is very much down to beekeepers.”

This has been particularly true of late – beekeepers across the South West witnessed “devastating” losses among their bee colonies, owing to the weather this winter. “The wet January and February was awful for bees, as this is when they need to get out and access the first nectar and pollen of the year,” Louise says. “I lost two colonies that had managed to come through the cold months OK.”

Despite changing climates posing an increasing danger to bees, and the commonly-held belief that pesticides are the leading offenders of their demise, the biggest existential threat is neither of these. Rather, it’s cheap honey. If your local beekeepers are priced out of the market by competitors the other side of the world (China is the world’s leading producer of honey), your local hives cannot be sustained and your local biodiversity suffers.

Why then, you might ask, are there not regulations over what can and can’t be labelled as honey? There are, after all, constraints surrounding other foods, such as cider, Cornish clotted cream, and Stilton.2 Meanwhile, syrups deriving from rice, wheat, and potatoes can and have fooled tests designed to prove whether a product is real honey. The reality is, while things like an International Organisation of Standardisation are currently in the works, and other regulations around honey already exist, loopholes will inevitably be found, or new standards likely won’t be sufficiently strict or enforced.

Like much other food, if there’s not enough in place to help people build trust in the honey they buy, then it ultimately comes down to trusting who they buy it from. That’s why we have things like the organic label or, failing that, farmers’ markets designed to put shoppers face-to-face with the people who produce their food.

Unfortunately, there remains no definitive way of fully knowing what you’re feeding your body and whether it has any positive or negative effects on the environment. But the human element of our understanding, via the real-world conversations we have, might be the closest we’ll get.

Honey producers in and around Somerset include:

Black Bee
Louisebees
Wainwright's Bee Farm
Magee's Bees
Sedgemoor Honey Farm

We can’t blame them too much – constantly keeping one’s finger on the pulse in terms of eating out options in this part of the world is a task beyond even the most agile magazines, to the point where most lists are either out of date, incomplete, or built more for clicks than useful content.

Enter the next attempt – which may be no better, however confident I am that it is: an ‘essential’ guide, if you will, to the best restaurants in Somerset.

What do I mean by that? These aren’t restaurants of the ‘to perhaps visit if you’re in the general vicinity’ sort. They are destinations in themselves, that have become part of the local furniture (the good kind, like a delicately-embroidered chaise longue), and speak to why they are where they are in some way or another.

Put it this way: A local restaurateur once told me it’s not worth serving to people in the South West anything more than what they’re generally used to – why try and sell them a £7 wedge of Westcombe cheddar when, to your average Somerset punter, a £3 slice of Davidstow would suffice?

The restaurants listed below don’t particularly care about that. They’re here for what’s local and what’s extraordinary. So, I expect, are you.

This guide is a work in progress and will be updated every six months or so – bookmark it or whatever and you can be assured it will remain at least somewhat up to date by the time you need it again.

Castle Farm

Home to probably the best Sunday roast in Somerset (fluffy yet shatteringly-crisp roasties, 42-day-aged beef rump from Hereford and Aberdeen Angus cattle reared down the road, veg from their own garden), Castle Farm is the also place-to-be for brunch, curry nights, and weekend suppers inspired by chef Pravin’s Malaysian and Swedish background. Booking ahead essential.

Address: Midford Ln, Midford, Bath, BA2 7BD
Website: castlefarmmidford.co.uk

Briar

Those who visited Osip’s former lodgings will recognise some of the furniture at Briar, No.1’s newest tenants. But that’s about all that’s familiar – the food here is reassuringly homely, and without many frilly bits: think of beef shin with butter beans; grilled aubergines; braised lamb shoulders; things on toast; and pollack with potato, anchovies, and cream.

Address: 1 High St, Bruton, Somerset, BA10 0AB
Website: numberonebruton.com/briar

Below the paywall: The full, up-to-date list of the best restaurants in Somerset, featuring must-try dishes. As picked by local food journalist Hugh Thomas.

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Sign up for a paid subscription to get the below, plus access to seasonally-updating guides on where to eat in Somerset.

On with it, then:

BrewDog has closed six of its bars in the South West – including those in Bristol and Bath. This being among dozens of others across the country, as the brand sinks deeper and deeper down the pan, with some saying Britain’s largest craft brewery (depending on your personal definition of ‘craft’) is all but dead. So, who killed it? And, should you care? The founders – Martin Dickie and James Watt, whose reputation had deteriorated and only have themselves to blame for it – have sold off the brand as it enters administration and after a catalogue of poorly-handled events and business decisions. That’s the short story, anyway. There are many – including former employees at the sharp end of its ‘toxic’ work culture, and those like myself who watched its corruption from irreverent boundary-pushing brewery circa 2014 to corporate misanthropic punk pretenders – who won’t miss it. Pour one out for the BrewDog fans who invested in their ‘Equity for Punks’ scheme, as their money has, apparently, been lost to the void.

What do you eat for Easter? If lamb, then it’s either been imported from the other side of the world, or derived from an animal kept on very little pasture (it’s easy to forget, but meat can be seasonal). Hogget or mutton, I suggest to you, is where it’s at: meat from a more mature animal tends to hold more flavour. Trouble is, it isn’t as marketed, therefore doesn’t sell as well, as lamb. So, ask your local butcher if the ‘lamb’ they’re selling is in fact hogget or mutton. Because to ask your butcher for ‘spring lamb’ is to ask your butcher for the insipid.

Below the paywall: A critic pans a Somerset restaurant; What happened to Frome’s Coop Kitchen?; Possibly the end of cheap food (and the world) as we know it; King Charles III eats an English oyster that’s actually French; and more besides.

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Very much behind the scenes, PRs (shorthand for public relations agents) are not dissimilar to brand ambassadors. They form relationships with influential people. They invite said influential people to come dine at a restaurant they represent, or sample a product from a brand in their books – all free of charge. Way I see it, they’re the OG tastemakers, and are where a lot of so-called tastemakers get their ideas from.

Yes, some see the PR profession as a bit clandestine. But PRs have a valuable role in the food world. They are often a journalist’s first point of contact, where otherwise he or she may not have one at all. I’ve accosted, been accosted by, and worked with dozens – maybe even hundreds – of PRs, but Jess and Alice are up there among the better ones.

They joined forces after Jess left her marketing and PR role at The Newt, and Alice after ending an eight-year stint at Gemma Bell (one of London’s top restaurant PR agencies) to go solo and move down to Dorset. Now they form Yarrow, a PR agency based in the South West (Jess lives in Shepton Mallet; Alice near Gillingham) specialising in food, restaurants, chefs, and hotels. Without them I may not have come across such gems as Pennard Hill Farm, or Horrell & Horrell – easily among the best places to eat in Somerset (others they represent or have represented include Da Costa and Roth Bar in Bruton, The Pony Restaurant Group, The Beckford Group, Wraxall Vineyard, Bokman and Dongnae in Bristol, and The Chickpea Group).

This being quite the different experience to what I’ve had with the majority of PR professionals, who send me daily press releases about a new tumble dryer, or Waitrose stocking a company’s gluten-free baby food pouches.

Over morning coffee at Little Walcot in Frome, the following exchange — intended to at least start to demistify the inner workings of PR — is close to verbatim, but edited for clarity and brevity.

Hugh: When a review for one of your clients lands in the national press, is there some sort of pandemonium?

Alice: It varies on who the critic is. When Giles Coren did Beckford Canteen, they were full for quite a long time after that.

Jess: Dongae saw that after Grace [Dent].

Alice: It does definitely help, but it’s one piece in the puzzle. Unlike London, when you launch something down here you need to realise it will take longer. You’ll still get the critics and you’ll still get the press, but they’re not all going to come in that opening month as they’ve got to travel.

Hugh: At the same time, I’ve seen various restaurants open up down here not getting covered even in the local press.

Jess: With an opening, it’s not just press but also people you want to know generally in the scene [such as chefs, restaurateurs, and so on].

Alice: Industry invites like that are hugely important.

Hugh: How do you decide which restaurants you want to work with?

Alice: When you walk into a good restaurant or you meet people and they’re inspiring or they’ve got an amazing story. When the look and the feel of the restaurant is a lovely place to be. It’s like, yes, I want to work for these people.

Hugh: I mean, that makes your job significantly easier, no?

Jess: But also the food’s got to be good. We’ll always eat somewhere [we’re interested in]. If we approach someone, they’ve got to be loving what they’re doing.

Alice: It might be that there’s a chef with a profile that’s going to perk people’s interest, or they don’t have any profile but they’re really cool and we could get people talking about them. So you’re always looking for what’s going to get the journalists interested. You’ve almost got to think like you’re a journalist yourself.

Hugh: What is PR to you? I think a lot of people don’t really know what it is.

Jess: We were just talking about this. A couple of weeks ago, the PRCA [Public Relations and Communications Association], recently tweaked their definition of it. I think because conversations over what PR is have changed in the last 10 years. Jess reads from phone: “Public relations is the strategic management discipline that builds trust, enhances reputation, and helps leaders interpret complexity and manage volatility, delivering measurable outcomes including stakeholder confidence, long-term value creation and commercial growth.” It’s kind of saying we are not just talking to press. It’s not just how to get into publications, but how do you actually own long-term credibility. Counselling services are a part of it and then also that engagement between audience, consumer, and the restaurant. Seeing what people are talking about, and thinking how we can bring that back to our clients.

Alice: It’s not always jumping on trends for trends sake, but there might be something we try in London or we witness in London and we’re like, [our client] should be doing that.

Jess: Another thing when working with a client is they’re really into that feedback from us because we’re honest. Even before we come on board with a client, we might say, oh, you could do this with your messaging, because often they’re not shouting about it.

Alice: We always see that. Restaurants doing so much amazing stuff and they’re not putting it out there so nobody would know.

Jess: Sometimes they’re not seeing it because they’re in the churn of the day-to-day.

Hugh: I feel like this is all probably a bit different to most people’s idea of PR that tends to manifest in extreme circumstances where someone might whisper in a CEO’s ear, saying “don’t say that,” or “keep that off the record”. Obviously you don’t have those things to worry about.

Jess: It comes down to storytelling. Anyone that loves what they do in PR, that’s what they’re interested in. And from that you think about characters because that’s what we’re looking for as well. Like The Cheese Lord – we didn’t get a telly show, but he would be able to. People buy into real stories, real personalities. And it’s a very visual thing these days as well.

Alice: Good photography of clients is step one. When we come on, we’ll look at how you’re talking about yourself if there’s any way we can improve that. And then invest in a day shoot and get some really amazing photography.

Jess: Sometimes that’s about basic stuff like filters and clean light, but you’re also going to get more space for an article in a publication if you’ve got pictures to go with it.

Hugh: Presumably the cost of all that might put potential clients off, or restrict press coverage to restaurants that can afford it?

Alice: If it feels like an additional cost, clients can cost us up as another supplier. And if they’re having to factor in a monthly retainer, the longer they work for us the better it is for them. We become brand ambassadors for them as much as anything else. I’ve worked with Chickpea [Group] since 2022 and Anna and Tom at Firemade and Art Farm since 2023. Committing to that long-term PR is so worth it because there’s always more things you can talk about and you just keep building that brand recognition for the press and the public.

Hugh: Are any new clients mostly approaching you or is it the other way around?

Alice: They’re exclusively approaching us. We don’t go after business. My feeling is if you approach people, then you’re trying to get them to do PR they don’t want. You want them to be on board with it.

Hugh: Do they actually know what they’re asking for?

Alice: Not always.

Jess: And actually it might be that they need more than just marketing. In my previous role at The Newt, we’d do a lot in-house, but you might bring in a PR agency to help with strategy. I think that’s what’s really great – the network of those other services that we can bring people as well as PR. It’s a surprisingly generous community network.

Alice: The freelance PR scene has never been this strong. It’s more viable for any size of business. They can’t always afford big agency fees.

Hugh: Do restaurants ever defect from one agency to another?

Alice: All the time. They’ll stay with an agency or a PR representative for a couple of years and then they’ll think they want a fresh pair of eyes. As a PR you shouldn’t necessarily see that as you’ve failed. But hopefully they stay with you longer, as you can build a good relationship with them and know them inside out. Then when you meet press and you talk about those restaurants, chefs, or hotels, you have that real knowledge, and journalists can feel that passion when you talk about these places.

Jess: At that stage it might be that they’ll WhatsApp us a picture of a rhubarb dish they’ve come up with that day. And then it’s more in-the-moment and reactive.

Hugh: How do you then use that information?

Alice: We might know someone who’s looking for a round-up on rhubarb dishes.

Jess: A few of our clients have started sending us celeriac dishes. Root does a celeriac pastrami. [Bristol restaurant] OTHER smoke theirs for four hours, topping it with melty lardo. The Pony were doing a celeriac and apple soup with Westcombe cheddar puffs. So then we’ll package that up and pitch the press with it.

Hugh: Do you find you are mostly pitching to bloggers these days or influencers or journalists?

Jess: You need everybody and it’s about picking the right creators for the right clients. Traditional press is still a thing [clients want], but sometimes space is so small and food mags are closing down.

Alice: I’m old school. I love print media, but you have to acknowledge sometimes the digital version of a piece will get them more room bookings for example than the piece that ran in the paper. Jess is much more on the Instagram hype. I’ve had to get hyped about it and I am now I understand the benefit of it.

Hugh: It seems to have been made a lot more obvious recently, with how many bums Topjaw manage to put on seats after one of their reels.

Alice: They’re very powerful, those guys.

Jess: I like the niche worlds you can find on Instagram. You might find a creator really into history, and be interested in the building a restaurant’s in.

Hugh: Presuming they often have a small audience, but an engaged one?

Alice: Sometimes the micro influences are more impactful. Definitely increasingly so. We’re always thinking who’s the client, who do we want to attract, and how do we achieve that.

Hugh: I’m thinking of Wraxall [Vineyard] as an example. Is it that they’re set up to appeal to visitors more than locals?

Jess: They can appeal to both. Journalists tend to gravitate to the South East for vineyards, but there’s a lot more of that happening here.

Hugh: What do you make of the food scene here in Somerset?

Alice: There used to be no good restaurants at all. When I moved back down here in 2020, I thought I’d have to compromise, but now we’ve worked with people like Brickell’s who are making the best ice cream, and Anna and Tom who’re making their equipment out of their little workshop in Wincanton that chefs all over London and the UK are using.

Jess: There’s a certain energy here. People are actually looking at Somerset globally, but it’s hard to see what connects all these things really.

Hugh: I think one of the commonalities is people being shaped by food in London, honing their talent there, then moving to Somerset, maybe because they have family here. Though I don’t fully know why.

Jess: It’s experimental. People want to give things a go. Frome’s a good example of that. There’s a lot of creative people here, and you can feel that creativity in the way they set their restaurants up.

Hugh: Do you notice that about neighbouring counties?

Alice: We’ve been peddling Wiltshire for quite a while because it’s about to have a moment. People tend to bypass it, similarly to Dorset, but there’s a lot going on.

Hugh: Do you say that because Chickpea’s in Wiltshire?

Alice: They were but now have branched out. Beckford Group also – they’ve got four openings in Wiltshire this year, including a British Brasserie and a couple of pubs.

Jess: It would be nice to also see other bits of Somerset get some love.

Hugh: I want to ask about transparency. At the bottom of certain collaborations on Instagram you might see #ad, or it might generally be more explicit [that a creator has got a meal for free then covered it]. Whereas in journalism, you don’t have that. Sometimes I wonder if I should declare that a PR has influenced me to go to a place.

Alice: If you’re reading a newspaper review on a hotel, you know the writer has been hosted by that hotel. That’s just a given.

Hugh: I think a lot of people don’t think like that.

Alice: It’s kind of acknowledged that if a journalist goes somewhere and you’ve sent them and they have rubbish time, they’re not going to write about it. And that’s fair enough. So it’s like we’ve introduced them somewhere, not forced their hand. What I wouldn’t like is when journalists cover places they haven’t been. That feels less genuine.

Jess: If I’m reading recommendations on places to go, I want to know why I’m trusting the writer. It’s that kind of transparency. Where it’s changing is where journalists and other creators have their own platforms – it’s then their choice on whether they share that.

Hugh: Creator – is that now the catchall for writers, influencers, bloggers, so on?

Jess: We chose it because it does a bit more service to the people we work with.

Alice: ‘Influencer’ has a bit of a negative connotation.

Hugh: So if a creator goes to a restaurant that you represent or as part of a press trip or whatever and they publish something negative about it, would that damage your relationship with them?

Jess: We’re lucky with the places we have and the people we send to them, in that we know they’re going to like it.

Alice: That’s the skill of knowing the journalists or content creators, which isn’t always realised by people. Some I’ve worked with for 15 years. There’s a lot of work that goes into it and us consuming a lot of media to make sure we’re seeing who’s writing what, and making sure there are any new sections in magazines because there’s nothing more embarrassing than contacting a journalist and they’re like, “that section doesn’t exist anymore.” You need to be with your finger on the pulse all the time.

Hugh: Is rotisserie chicken still having a moment?

Alice: There was actually a piece not long ago on rotisserie chicken.

Hugh: Bistro Lotte will be doing it, I noticed. They’re opening up a deli with a rotisserie.

Alice: The Farm Shop in their London farm shop do rotisserie chicken. It’s always going to be a thing, isn’t it? Certain things. Good sandwiches, good pizzas.

Hugh: Anything involving flour and water, right? That’s where the margin is. One more question – Anna Tobias, one of my favourite chefs, said she wasn’t getting bums on seats, and felt a bit uncomfortable and desperate going to a PR agency to ask for help. It worked, and she still felt a bit dirty when it worked. What do you make of that?

Jess: Again, she may not have known what PR is and she probably had a lot of cultural advice from that agency she worked with that maybe she hadn’t expected to get.

Alice: Ultimately we’re there to support and champion these places. So it almost feels sad when people don’t get that we’re there to help.

Hugh: You don’t like promoting yourself. Is that a good thing? Would you rather you and the PR profession was not shrouded in mystery?

Alice: As PRs, we shouldn’t be self-promoting too much. We are behind the scenes and we are helping clients. We want them to be talked about, not, oh look, how amazing we are at our jobs.

Further reading>

Vittles

The Volatile World of London Restaurant PR w/ Gemma Bell

Good morning and welcome back to The Vittles Podcast…

Listen now

5 months ago · 38 likes · 11 comments · Vittles

Smashed

Smashed special: The Dark Art of Restaurant PR (part 1)

How do you find out about new restaurants to visit? Read newspaper restaurant reviews and consult restaurant guides? Check Instagram, TikTok or YouTube? But have you ever wondered how journalists, guide inspectors and content creators find out about the restaurants they are recommending to you in the first place? Maybe some come to their notice through…

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2 years ago · 33 likes · 8 comments · Andy Lynes

Vanilla Black

Part 89 Finally

Did you know, if you put a Like at the end of this, a beautiful puffin will land on your window ledge and sing a song for you…

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4 months ago · 49 likes · 37 comments · Vanilla Black

When I first meet someone, the ensuing exchange almost inevitably goes something like this:

“So what do you do?”
“I’m a food journalist.”
“Oh you get to review restaurants?!”
“Well not quite… I did a bit of that years ago, but…”
“Tough job. Someone’s gotta do it!”
“I write features. What makes a restaurant tick; how animals fit into sustainable farming practices – that sort of thing.”
*Confused stare*

This has been more or less the story over the last decade. Writing about food – its pleasures, its issues, its culture – is, comparatively, eternal (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, one of the first ‘modern’ food writers, was around long “before restaurant discourse got its legs”). And yet, the title ‘food journalist’ – in the view of the general public – applies to no one other than those like Giles Coren or Grace Dent.

How can that be, when reviews from the Corens and the Dents of the world pale in importance to other food journalism? Whether we’re talking about – off the top of my head – the “modern slavery” manifesting in what was once the world’s best restaurant; what happens when British pubs and indian food come together; the cultural insensitivities of Anthony Bourdain; how our diets have put bird species at risk of extinction; the writing about food writing; or a much less serious (very funny, even) mother’s take on sugar and hyperactive kids.

The job of a restaurant critic is, in Jay Rayner’s words, to “sell papers”. This gives us a clue as to why it might be the most recognised form of food journalism (side note: “selling papers” is a lot easier when you absolutely dump on a restaurant), but also that food writing is perceived as entertainment or what the industry might call ‘service-based’ – therefore, not generally taken seriously enough to deal with any serious subject matter, such as holding food corps to account, or helping people understand where their food comes from. Much more likely could ‘food writing’ be the punchline of a joke.

Or do I mean the subject of apathy? Another thing people say when I tell them I’m a food journalist is shrug, smile, and astutely point out that “everyone eats”, inferring that it must be good or honourable to write about something everyone is interested in. Based on the kind of food writing people tend to consume, I would suggest the majority of the UK populace aren’t curious about food at all, despite its part in their daily lives. Or possibly because of it – I have at least two friends who’d sooner eat a pill that sated them of hunger until the next meal (or next pill) than have to think about what they’re going to eat.

At least they’re in the minority. For the rest of us, I suspect all our interest in food, to whatever degree it might ultimately take, is derived from the sheer pleasure of eating. More than just for the purposes of survival, food and sex are our “primary sources of pleasure”. It’s therefore a highly emotive topic which, again, makes me wonder why the correlation between our health, our diets, and the fate of the planet aren’t as aligned accordingly.

Perhaps people engage with restaurant criticism more because the writer tends to put themselves within the story – this being an effective literary device rarely used in food journalism. But, on the whole, food criticism is fairly reductive. I’m not fully on board with the idea that one person’s experience of a restaurant can accurately reflect another’s, especially when the person in question (usually) has an extremely developed palate, and therefore an extremely high bar. Sure, if they like something, then there’s a chance their readers will too. If they don’t like something, I’d hazard that it wouldn’t otherwise be enough to put others off. I have no proof of this, other than anecdotally – there are a lot of restaurants in Somerset that I don’t think are of good standard, but is that not irrelevant if most my friends say they like it?

Instead of telling people what’s good, I’d like to continue offering them the tools to be able to identify that for themselves. It varies from place to place, but there are a few outward signs that suggest a restaurant is likely to provide a worthwhile experience – depending, of course, on what you’re looking for. The standard indicators being things like shorter menus (focusing on a few things, and doing them well), adjectives or lack thereof (a ‘creamy’ creme brulee is redundant and suggests a restaurant wants to force a certain experience on you), and a head chef who’s previously worked at a reputable restaurant or two. As for Somerset in particular, farm restaurants are a reliable measure of freshness and traceability, while restaurants sourcing from local producers suggests little want for compromise, and an appetite for what’s good and readily abundant. Knowing what to look for, you can confidently assess whether a restaurant is worth going to before you’ve even been there.

Amounting food journalism to nothing but restaurant criticism is a perfectly natural response to someone who doesn’t know much about what food writing can be. This doesn’t reveal anything incriminating about them per se, but it does say something about mainstream media’s attitudes towards what food and restaurants entails, and how those attitudes inform our own assumptions.

Below the paywall: Percy Pig’s cult of personality; French cuisine is a hoax; Somerset’s eating out profile on the up; why it’s worth ignoring Michelin star awards; and much more besides.

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Updated February 2026:

As part of its ongoing recovery after centuries of post-industrialist decline, Frome is becoming something, among other things, of a gastronomic attraction.

It is second in that category only to Bath as far as Somerset is concerned and, in some areas, even surpasses it: to search anywhere else in the country for a Scandi-style sausage bar, Mexican taqueria, and Trinidadian comfort food in the same place would be an endeavour nothing short of fruitless.

A lot of the above is what you get when someone with experience in hospitality moves out of Bristol or London with an eye for somewhere quieter and slower-paced (if not considerably cheaper) in which to start a family, but cannot let go of that urge to serve or feed a broader audience too. In Frome, there are chefs and other alumni from such London institutions (former and current) as Moro, Monty’s Deli, and Quo Vadis.

All that being said, a number of these resulting new and new-ish eating places in Frome simply aren’t that well apparent on the map quite yet, and can easily pass by the casual observer. Which, subsequently, calls for a local’s guide to where to eat in Frome, and particularly one that speaks to any potential visitors.

This guide will be updated periodically, so do keep it in your back pocket for whenever your next visit.

A few things you should know

Though there are circa 25 restaurants, pubs, cafes, and other eating places without a similar description in this guide, eating in Frome can pose its challenges — namely, the quieter days. This is a town whose population is a little shy of 30,000, after all. Monday especially has a reputation for tumbleweed, though at this time of the week there are good options if you know where to look, such as Little Walcot, Bistro Lotte or Bar Lotte, Thai Spice at The Griffin, and The Ship.

Below the paywall: The full, up-to-date guide on where to eat in Frome. Includes the town’s best dishes to seek out, and which Frome restaurants are — at least in my view — more extraordinary than others.

Read more

SVB first popped up on the WFJ’s radar not because it was Somerset’s newest brewery at the time, but because it was connecting brewing to the land. SVB is fairly unique in that it grows a lot of its own barley (processed into malt at the famous Warminster maltings) used in its beers. This being the ingredient that adds body, texture, sweetness, and colour to a beer and the fermentable sugars that the yeast turns into alcohol. But could its locality also say something about Somerset and its food and drink culture?

Heritage and culture is also manifesting in the supposed resurgence of cask beer which, for those unfamiliar, is matured in and dispensed from (via handpull) a cask rather than a pressurised keg (served via a tap). Cask is loved because it’s a sessionable yet – like cheese or kimchi – a complex, living product, and unique to the UK and its pubs. We mention this later, but it’s worth reiterating: without cask beer, the traditional British pub would likely not exist.

As we all know, the first six weeks or so of the year are pretty challenging for hospitality businesses. And, with pubs declining at a rate of one every week in the UK, one has to wonder what it’s like operating a drinking establishment at this very moment.

The following exchange is close to verbatim, but edited for clarity and brevity.

Hugh: So, what’s it like running a pub this time of year?

Chester: On the 3rd of January, we were actually busy enough because of a Bath [rugby] home game. But from there on, we saw a massive decline in trade. When January hits after a big December, and you start seeing very low turnover days, it is difficult. Our weekends are 60% of what they were in December, but they’re not awful. And the thing is, when the business is new and you don’t have last year’s data to compare to, you find yourself comparing to the previous month. We started in the middle of October, then had the whole of November, which is actually traditionally quite crap for hospitality as well, because everyone’s saving money before Christmas.

Hugh: Why did you open a pub in the first place? Or is it even a pub – you call it a taproom, right?

Chester: It’s an elevated taproom with a small plate menu, essentially. We wanted a place where people who hadn’t necessarily heard of us could come and try our beers and our food and learn a little bit about who we are and what we’re doing, linking back to the farm and all those bits and bobs. And, as a brewery, you need to be able to have direct sales to the drinker. It’s great getting your beers into all the pubs you can, but where the margin lies is in your own taproom. When that building [the former Belushi’s] came up for us and we knew the previous occupiers, we went for it. I guess it’s important to add that we’ve taken the whole building, and we have plans to use upstairs for accommodation at some point.

Hugh: So even after securing the site, even after all the overheads, even after the labour, etcetera, it’s still more cost-effective to run your own pub than sell beer to pubs?

Chester: We don’t have the data to be able to tell you that right now. But all I can say is the margin I’m making off a pint we brew ourselves is much higher. You’re creating the beer for 80p a litre, say, and you’re able to sell it back over the bar at £11, £12, £13 a litre, as opposed to creating that same beer and selling it to the trade in a keg for £3 a litre. But yeah, all the overheads are pretty mental. I mean, I’m only just getting my head around it all, and labour is by far the biggest one.

Hugh: But how come you’ve got such a wide selection of beers made by other people, then? I mean, you’ve got, what, 19 lines there? I can’t think of anywhere else in Bath with that many.

Chester: We’ve got 18 draught lines, and two cask lines. We’re entering our third year, but it really feels like it’s only just getting going for us because we’re now brewing on the farm. We’re producing much better quality beer than we were a year ago, for sure. I guess the plan is to eventually occupy as many of those lines as we possibly can, but we’ll always have room for guest beers as well.

Hugh: You said you’ve been making improvements over the past year or so?

Chester: Now everything is at its home on the farm, we’ve got a lot more control over our processes as opposed to when we were brewing in Bristol [at On Point Brew Co]. I couldn’t be there five days a week, so I might miss a gravity reading or I might not be able to get a dry hop done on that particular day. We’ve also been able to brew stronger IPAs, we brew a new bitter, and we brewed our first sour.

Hugh: A lot of the cereal growers had a pretty terrible harvest in 2025. Was that the case with your barley?

Chester: A lot of it from this year went to animal feed, because it didn’t reach the grade. But we’re fortunate to be among a lot of other local farmers – as long as it’s still grown within the Somer Valley, we’re still able to access good barley. So we do have to lean on that from time to time.

Hugh: Do you think Somerset has much of a beer culture to itself?

Chester: I don’t know, really.

Hugh: I’m just thinking, even though it’s probably not very relevant anymore, but back in the day beers brewed up North tended to be more malty because they didn’t have as much access to hops up there, whereas obviously hops grow better down South. I suppose on the lines of the North-South divide, we could talk about sparklers, can’t we? I don’t know if you use sparklers on your handpulls?

Chester: We do for Gurgle, our bitter.

Hugh: Do you do that to improve the head, etcetera?

Chester: Exactly. We don’t use them for pale ales and IPAs and other cask beers, but yeah, a lot of our ‘thing’ is how the beer is presented over the bar. We’ve got a big light box board showing a list of all the beers, and we started off by just listing the cask on that and not having badges on the handles, and it just wasn’t moving very well. And then we put the badges on the cask handles and lo and behold we started selling loads of cask.

Hugh: Is cask important for you from a cultural perspective?

Chester: Definitely. Guy [brewer a SVB] and I are super into our bitters at the moment and all sorts of cask varieties. We want it to do as well as it can as it’s such a big part of pub culture in the UK.

Hugh: I think I remember reading somewhere if we didn’t have cask, we probably wouldn’t have pubs. Or at least we definitely wouldn’t have them in the kind of volume that we have now, even though they’re declining.

Chester: I think that’s probably true. I mean, I’ve lived in Australia and New Zealand where they have pubs, but they’re nothing on ours.

Hugh: They’ve tried to introduce cask beer to the US, but they just don’t have the tradition or more importantly the distribution for it to actually work.

Chester: It might even be down to palate as well, and climate. In Australia and New Zealand, they don’t drink cask. They want to drink beer as cold as possible.

Hugh: Do you make a loss on it? Considering that if you go up to a bar, you’re spending something like £5.50 on a pint of cask compared what, at least £6.50 on a pint of keg beer?

Chester: It’s down to cost of production. If you’re getting rental casks, you can get them dirty and poke a spray ball in there and give it a good clean yourself – a lot easier than cleaning a keg because you’re working with an unpressurised vessel. Also, traditional breweries aren’t putting anywhere near as many hops into their cask beers than a modern craft brewer would into a keg beer, and the hops are what drives the price – they’re by far the most expensive ingredient that goes in.

Hugh: Is it that cask tends to ferment out quicker as well?

Chester: You don’t have the utility cost of it hanging around in the tank for ages, for sure. Gurgle [4.1% bitter] we can get brewed and into a cask within seven days. And then it spends a week conditioning in casks before it’s put into cellars and then it spends a bit more time conditioning there.

Hugh: Compared to two weeks or so in the brewery for a kegged pale ale?

Chester: We’re turning our pales around in three weeks now. We’re not rushing things.

Hugh: Glad to hear that cask is alive and well by the sounds of it.

Chester: We saw an increase in cask sales over 2025. I think it’s definitely on the way up.

Read next>

There’s no “I” in “food journalism”. Or is there? Upon reading Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay ‘The Death of the Author,’ every creative writing student (myself very much included) didn’t need much more reason to convince themselves that the story is the most important thing about a piece of writing – it doesn’t matter, and it shouldn’t matter, who tells it. Any ego in the message must be sanitised by the author and screened by the reader. The literarists of the mid-20th century said so.

You might say the same about life in general – we all go around trying to convince everyone else we have no traits other than the ones we want to be publicly apparent.

But what if the ego was part of the message? I’m slowly coming round to this thought that my literary training, which finished some 13 years ago, has not prepared me for – not that inflections natural and distinct to an author are involuntarily and perhaps unavoidably apparent in their message, whether in journalism or in fiction (some would say those things are one and the same), but that readers want those inflections. Are hungry for them. Probably in the same way they want an exploration of vices and virtues in fictional characters (this being what sells novels, after all).

It kinda makes sense. People want to know people – they don’t want to ‘know’ products or services. Bear in mind I’m coming to terms with this as the proponent of a newsletter titled The Wallfish Journal. The most engaging Substackers/YouTubers/whateverers are themselves, or at least some version of themselves, and under their own name. They ain’t ‘hiding’ behind a publication or something else that they can, whether at short notice, disassociate themselves with. That, strangely enough, may well be where authority is found these days – not in traditional journalistic modes, but in literary ones (even or especially that of the unreliable narrator). Some other Substacker said something on the lines of the best writing on Substack consisting of not just great writing, but great writing that makes people curious about who wrote it. This has made me further wonder whether the WFJ is perceived as a product of me, or whether it is me. And if it is a metaphorical stage (i.e. helping platform a variety of people), or if it’s the microphone (a mouthpiece for one). Really I’d like it to be more the former and less the latter.

Anyway, this is a long prelude to the fact that, since starting the WFJ in January 2022, I (Hugh) have never really introduced you to the person writing to you every other week. So here it is. Being an enjoyer of food, and being someone who has writing as their primary means of expression, has led me down the path of using those things to help people better enjoy and understand what they eat and drink (elevator pitch WIP). Since moving to Frome in Somerset, this has translated into ‘how do I help my community better understand and enjoy what they eat and drink’ (too strong? Too knightly?) in the form of writing yes, but also by managing farmers’ markets, creating a collective of like-minded food people, and through the efforts of that collective organising local food projects and events.

That’s what I do. As for what I am, let’s just say my personal character and character arc could at least in part be determined from what’s between the lines of everything you’ve read above. In addition, people often like to comment on: my height; that I’m a prolific wearer of shorts; that they often catch me eating; that I am laconic, and stoic. Unless any protests arise, there’ll be more evidence that there’s a character or unreliable narrator at the WFJ helm (I’ve also updated the about page to reflect this), and he wants to be far more of an active human than what his previous projections might suggest.

Next month for paid subscribers: Why does everyone think I’m a food critic? (I’m not, but also sort of am)

Below the paywall: When do we reject localism; Big Food gets away with it (again); Decidedly un-romantic stories of what it’s like to chef in Paris; and more besides.

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Whether that’s because it’s too cold to go out, or because the general public have parted with all their cash during Christmas, either way it’s a fact restaurants are all too aware of.

And so exists the set menu lunch, one of the primary tools hospitality uses to put a little more wind in its sails throughout January and February.

Trouble is, the best deals always seem to be the hardest to find. Let that now be less the case, as I’ve come up with a list of good (either on authority or from my own judgement) independent restaurants in Somerset offering up remarkably budget-friendly options for eating out. If, in most cases, you don’t mind venturing out for lunch and if, in most cases, you don’t mind forgoing one of the traditional three courses.

Need it be said, extra spend is not expected but encouraged – particularly as you’re getting a good deal already, and particularly as local independent restaurants tend to operate on wafer-thin margins as it is.

Alfredo’s

“Italian food with a pinch of Somerset” is how they do things at Alfredo’s (comparisons with the pizza place of the same name in The Office may end here). Although their £18pp lunch menu has now snuck off the list of options — a true sign of the times — the good people of Somerton and beyond can still get a couple courses and a glass of wine without breaking into £30 territory.

alfredos.uk 
28 Market Pl, Somerton TA11 7NB

Castle Farm

Two years ago I made the claim Castle Farm puts on the best Sunday roast in Somerset. I’d submit to you that that’s still true, and these days at the not at all pricely sum of £23 per head. Only trouble is if you want a table, then you probably should have booked it three months ago. Failing that, keep an eye out for cancellations.

castlefarmmidford.co.uk
Midford Rd, Bath, BA2 7PU

Below the paywall: The full, up-to-date guide on where to eat in Somerset for £30 or under

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Whether that’s because it’s too cold to go out, or because the general public have parted with all their cash during Christmas, either way it’s a fact restaurants are all too aware of.

And so exists the set menu lunch, one of the primary tools hospitality uses to put a little more wind in its sails throughout January and February.

Trouble is, the best deals always seem to be the hardest to find. Let that now be less the case, as I’ve come up with a list of good (either on authority or from my own judgement) independent restaurants in Somerset offering up remarkably budget-friendly options for eating out. If, in most cases, you don’t mind venturing out for lunch and if, in most cases, you don’t mind forgoing one of the traditional three courses.

Need it be said, extra spend is not expected but encouraged – particularly as you’re getting a good deal already, and particularly as local independent restaurants tend to operate on wafer-thin margins as it is.

Alfredo’s

“Italian food with a pinch of Somerset” is how they do things at Alfredo’s (comparisons with the pizza place of the same name in The Office may end here). Although their £18pp lunch menu has now snuck off the list of options — a true sign of the times — the good people of Somerton and beyond can still get a couple courses and a glass of wine without breaking into £30 territory.

alfredos.uk 
28 Market Pl, Somerton TA11 7NB

Castle Farm

Two years ago I made the claim Castle Farm puts on the best Sunday roast in Somerset. I’d submit to you that that’s still true, and these days at the not at all pricely sum of £23 per head. Only trouble is if you want a table, then you probably should have booked it three months ago. Failing that, keep an eye out for cancellations.

castlefarmmidford.co.uk
Midford Rd, Bath, BA2 7PU

Corkage

Although wine is typically the main attraction at Corkage, the food is far from an afterthought (see for example THIS goat’s cheese croquette with watercress vinaigrette, or THIS ox cheek with charred French onion sauce), as what they serve leans quite heavily into seasonality, what’s local and good, and the noble practice of ‘less-but-better.’

With that in mind, a Friday set lunch comes in at two courses and a glass of wine or three courses and a glass of wine for £20 and £25 respectively. For which you’d do well to book ahead.

corkagebath.com 
5 Chapel Row, Bath BA1 1HN

Chez Dominique

A little down the road, and just off Pulteney Bridge, is Chez Dominique. Don’t let the name fool you too much – ‘French’ is only a part of the theme, and ‘European’ might be a more appropriate descriptor (as much room is given to dishes like chorizo and chickpea stew and squash tagliatelle as it is to onglet steak with Cafe de Paris butter and pomme frites).

Whatever the case, go for lunch and you will have the option of three courses for a very reasonable £25.1

chezdominique.co.uk
15 Argyle St, BATH, BA2 4BQ

The Clockspire

If you are of a prim-plated, formal-serviced, and white table-clothed persuasion, then The Clockspire is more than likely your bag. The kitchen has a well-established network of local and semi-local producers (e.g. Creedy Carver, Barbers, Westcombe, Cornish day boats), served in an impressively-restored 19th century schoolhouse, the likes of which – with massive chandeliers and timber rafters – they don’t make any more.

For £28, you can have two courses from a menu of such things as cured bream with forced rhubarb and pine emulsion, or ginger parkin (which, again, no one makes anymore) with marigold and creme fraiche. Bear in mind this applies to Wednesday and Thursday lunch and dinner, and Friday and Saturday lunches only.

theclockspire.com
Gainsborough, Milborne Port, Sherborne DT9 5BA

The Newt Garden Cafe

It might cost you £20 to get into the grounds without a membership, but on one technicality or another, eating at The Newt’s Garden Cafe can still save you money. 

The cafe, like the rest of the estate, is farm-to-table at its core. In other words, whatever’s growing in the garden is whatever’s on the menu. The aesthetic is on the lines of ‘museum canteen’, but with objects of ruralcore like pickled veg from the kitchen garden out front. Not to mention there’s a bloody great tree trunk through the middle of it.

As for lunch itself, the very modest and vegetable-driven set menu – featuring items such as coal-baked turnip with charred leeks, estate greens, and carlin peas and a barbequed January King cabbage with field mushrooms and chicken sauce – weighs in at £28 for two courses.

thenewtinsomerset.com
A359, Hadspen, Castle Cary BA7 7NG

The Pig – near Bath

The doctrine at The Pig is ‘simple but done well.’ Given that they produce a lot of it themselves (from their kitchen garden, livestock, or otherwise as much within 25 miles as possible) I’d argue any ease and simplicity is in the method, not necessarily the execution. 

Anywho, if you don’t mind spending £28.50 on a menu of two courses that includes such items as Wiltshire truffle risotto and cured coppa and mushroom salad — and in the surrounds of a Georgian house — then consider The Pig a good bet indeed. 

thepighotel.com 
Hunstrete House, Hunstrete, Pensford, Bath BS39 4NS

The Pony

These days, Josh Eggleton’s gastro-empire extends to six brands, and the region is all the better for it. The Pony is its nucleus, sporting a prolific kitchen garden, a cookery school, and of course the restaurant itself, which kicked off Eggleton’s culinary entrepreneurship 20 years ago. 

The Pony also happens to be one of the best-value lunches in Somerset, at £28 for three courses. Include as it might the salt-baked celeriac with King Oyster mushroom, crown prince squash and winter pesto; and the rhubarb and apple crumble with custard.

theponychewvalley.co.uk 
Moorledge Road, Newtown, Chew Magna, Bristol BS40 8TQ

See also: The fresh pasta at Solina in Bath; the £30 set menu at HOLM in South Petherton; two courses for £30 at Ilminster pub The Barrington Boar; and virtually anything at Frome’s Station Approach.

As usual with these monthly round-ups: free subscribers get a brief lowdown, with paid subscribers party to developing trends, opinion, and the odd scuttlebutt.

What did we learn in 2025? Tradition for tradition’s sake be damned, but I’m actually curious to reflect on the past 12 months of the WFJ. I, for one, learned of the terror and abuse that can occur in the kitchen of a local, and supposedly ethical, restaurant; how snails became Somersetians’ dish du jour because of their attraction to the limestone of the Mendips; why Rye Bakery makes about 82p profit on a £10 bacon sandwich; that some of the country’s best and most environmentally-responsible ice cream is being made in Evercreech; of the campaign to reintroduce eels (formerly an important local food source) to Somerset rivers; that the closer to the source of a food you eat, the more likely it’s retained its nutritional properties; of the difference between a young farmer and a Young Farmer; of the Somerset dairy that wants us (tasting notes within) to drink horse milk; why industrial livestock farming is exporting wildlife destruction 5,000 miles away; how even with food costs going up, independent shops can often beat supermarkets on price; that it can take 15 years for walnut trees to start fruiting, even well-suited as they are to Somerset soil; and that Somerset cheddar is hugely variable in taste and texture depending on who’s made it and how. If you needed a round up of what you might’ve missed over the last year, then there it is.

Plans for the Wallfish Journal in 2026? Things around here might look a little different on the eye, and, if all goes well, there’ll be a new contributor or two. But the haymaker-jab formula of a big, central story with digestible news and opinion seems to work ok for readers and my current schedule. Some stories I’m looking forward to covering this year include: Why a jar of local honey costs £8; how the Victorians and their railways changed Somerset dairy forever; how Frome livestock market was once the centre of the universe (sort of); how to use everything from a veg box (whatever the season); the corporate colonisation of your kitchen; and a pommelier’s guide to Somerset cider.

Just to add to the above, some Substack writers are increasing value to what they do by acting as a kind of hosting/mingling space for their community of readers. Does connecting with other people curious and involved in local food and drink interest you (there’s more than 1,000 of those signed up to the WFJ)? If so, what could that look like?

Below the paywall: how your dining out habits are changing; which common foods have been classed as potentially toxic; a MasterChef judge struggles in opening a Somerset restaurant; and more besides

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Cheddar is the UK’s favourite cheese. And it’s not even close.

Such is its rampant appeal that the vast majority of the ~380,000 tonnes Britain consumes annually is designed for the mass market – it’s standardised, pasteurised, plastic-wrapped and lacking depth and personality.

Though some of this ‘factory block’ (as those in the industry tend to call it) isn’t a bad choice if you’re melting it on toast anyway, an appreciation for nothing else is simply a missed opportunity. Especially, that is, if you live in somewhere like Somerset, where the story of cheddar started. And where it continues, as the epicentre of Britain’s farmhouse cheesemaking renaissance.

To understand how this happened, you could look to its climate (being so wet and lush, much of Somerset is better for cattle grazing than anything else), or its geology (the consistent temperatures and humidity of the caves under the Mendip Hills provide an ideal environment for maturing cheddar). Sprinkle in a little myth and legend – such as the supposed law that a cheddar could only be made within a 30 mile radius of Wells cathedral – and you’ve well and truly solidified the region as the home of cheddar, if not British cheese generally.

Does it deserve its reputation? Largely, yes – there’s no official number recorded, but I count at least 12 independent cheddar makers in Somerset (any other part of the country is lucky to have one or two) – but in some ways, no: “I think you can make a good cheddar anywhere,” says Frome-based cheesemonger Martin Scott, aka The Cheese Lord. “It doesn’t need to be here. There are some terrible cheddars that are made in other places, but equally, there are some pretty awful cheddars made in Somerset.”

A fair point – while ‘cheddar’ isn’t a protected interpretation of cheese in the way Stilton, Comté, Rochefort, and Parmigiano Reggiano are, only dairies using milk from Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall and making cheddar using traditional methods can legally call their cheese a ‘West Country Farmhouse Cheddar’.

What are these methods? Well, ‘cheddaring’ involves cutting milk curds into blocks, that are then pressed and stacked, forcing out their moisture under their own weight. This process is repeated again and again to squeeze out more and more whey, eventually helping yield the sharp-flavoured, dense cheese cheddar is known as. “There are fantastic cheddars being produced even in the US now,” says Martin. “I think it’s much, much better to think about cheddar as a process rather than a place where it’s made.”

Of course, it’s one thing to make traditional or farmhouse cheddar – it’s another thing getting it into people’s hands in an informed, considered manner. This is where people like Martin come in, who, from his Cheese Chariot in a Frome carpark (see here for the Cheese Lord’s full backstory and democratisation of South West cheese for South West people) flies the flag for British cheeses, whether that means sourcing a local equivalent to parmesan, or a well-ripened Somerset cheddar you’d struggle to find anywhere else.

At the time of my last visit, five of the eight cheddars on his Lordship’s counter were produced in Somerset. Most of the 121 total cheddars made in this county (again, not an official number) only get a passing mention in this guide – not because they’re not stocked by Martin, but because they’re either mass marketed, highly commodified, or otherwise lack anything that wildly distinguishes them from what you tend to find on any supermarket shelf. Not to disparage anyone for that.

Really, the kind of question I want to answer here is: what makes one Somerset cheddar different from the next, even when they’re made fewer than ten miles apart? Let’s see if his Lordship can give us the run down.

The Cheese Lord’s guide to Somerset cheddars

Keen’s

Moorhayes Farm, Wincanton, BA9 8JR

Keen’s British Friesians graze on 500 acres of Somerset countryside, and are specifically kept for cheddar-making – intent as James Keen and family are on doing one thing, and doing it well.

The Cheese Lord says: “This is the one with the most tradition; the one that’s been made by the same people for the longest. It is also, I think I’m right in saying, the only one that’s completely handmade.

“It’s entry-grade traditional cheddar, an everyman cheddar, and what you might expect from a cheddar if all you’ve eaten before is from a supermarket. Whenever someone comes and says they want a nice cheddar for a cheeseboard for 20 people, this is the one I suggest.”

Tasting notes: Gritty, crumbly texture; clean, mild, slight mushroomy flavour.

Westcombe
Lower Westcombe Farm, Evercreech, BA4 6ER

Tom Calver once made “pretty rubbish” (his own words) cheese. These days though, his cheddar features in just about every London restaurant cheese course.

The Cheese Lord says: “Tom does an enormous amount for cheesemaking. He’s the driving force behind the West Country farmhouse cheddar movement. The thing is, if you go to a foreign cheesemonger and buy a British cheese, nine times out of ten it’s going to be Westcombe. Lots of people come back and buy it every week.”

Tasting notes: Smooth, almost dough-y texture; somewhat complex, grassy flavour.

Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company’s Vintage Cheddar
Cheddar, BS27 3QA

Cheddar made in cheddar has undoubtedly been commercialised for tourist appeal, though that’s not to say its mission – or its cheese – is entirely dumbed down.

The Cheese Lord says: “The vast majority of what I stock is made by farmers, but these guys [CGC] buy in their milk. Their cheese is generally substandard in my opinion, but this one [vintage matured] is head and shoulders above everything else they produce, including the cave-aged, which is the one they make a big song and dance about. The vintage has been aged for 24 months, and it’s got something more about it. 90% of the time, when people say, ‘give me your sharpest, strongest cheddar,’ this is what they want.

“Also, the thing that works for a cheesemonger is it’s vegetarian. The rest of the trads use animal rennet, or waxing, or larding.”

Tasting notes: Dry, crystalline texture; sharp and robust flavour.

Green’s of Glastonbury Twanger
Old Farm, BA6 8NX

Organic cheddar made by John Green and family within sight of Glastonbury Tor.

The Cheese Lord says: “This is a pasteurised one. You can absolutely depend on pasteurised cheddars and depend on them being the same every single time. They taste clean, and they’re palatable. It would be unfair to say they are one-dimensional, but they do lack something.

“If you want to make cheese on toast, I think this is fantastic because it’s strong, it’s creamy, and it’s crunchy. It’s got everything that people, when they ask for a cheddar, tend to say they want.”

Tasting notes: Clean, yoghurty, inoffensive.

Montgomery
North Cadbury, BA22 7DW

Monty’s Somerset pastureland is pretty legendary, it being the original site of King Arthur’s Camelot Castle – and home to the cows that, without hesitation, help make one of the best cheeses in the world.

The Cheese Lord says: “Montgomery’s isn’t the prettiest looking cheese. It’s kind of dried out. But I always love cracking it open. You can smell the pasture coming off it. It’s intoxicating. Something like Westcombe is about consistency, but every time you crack open a Montgomery, you’re not quite sure what you’re going to get.”

Tasting notes: Complicated, grassy, and farmhouse-y. A “filthy” cheddar. Not sharp, but punchy.

Pitchfork
Trethowan’s Dairy, Hewish, BS24 6AH

Somewhat new on the scene and therefore without the heritage other cheesemakers may boast, but the Trethowan brothers’ cheddar is so well made you wouldn’t know it.

The Cheese Lord says: “Delicious, beautiful depth of flavour from a regenerative farm outside Weston. I like Pitchfork but don’t sell it as it’s an organic trad cheese similar to Haford.”

Godminster
Bruton, BA10 0EH

Organic cheddar from a Bruton farm famous for their heart-shaped wax cheeses.

The Cheese Lord says: “Great example of a wax-wrapped cheese like Black Bomber. And probably because of Black Bomber I don’t get asked for as much as I used to. The other reason I don’t sell Godminster is because you can get it just about everywhere else.”

To round out the Somerset cheddarmaker map of sorts, see also Barber’s in Shepton Mallet, Wyke in Bruton (both among the biggest cheesemakers in the country, the latter supplying various supermarkets with own-label cheddar), Lye Cross Farm this side of Bristol, Batch Farm in Shepton, and Ilchester Cheese Company.

The Cheese Lord’s notable cheddars from further afield

Just ‘cos they’re not from Somerset doesn’t mean they can’t make good cheddar – as these cheeses exhibit very well.

Black Bomber
Snowdonia Cheese Company, Rhyl, Wales

Snowdonia Cheese Co. has only been going since 2001. It fooled me before, but don’t let the appearance of its Black Bomber deceive you – this is every bit a ‘modern classic’ as some cheesemongers have described.

The Cheese Lord says: Waxed cheeses are funny things. You make a cheese and you mature it, then you smash it up, put it back together again, and cover it in wax. What you then get is something really soft and creamy and sharp. Black Bomber is really lovely, because it shows what a broad church cheddar is. It has absolute devotees.

Tasting notes: Intensely creamy, melt-in-mouth texture; rich, savory flavour.

Haford
Holden Farm Dairy, Ceredigion, Wales

Holden Farm’s Patrick Holden is the CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust. Here he puts his money where his mouth is, with a responsibly-made cheddar from a 1917 recipe.

The Cheese Lord says: Haford is a great tasting cheese, but also it comes from a really good regenerative farm. And it’s a fantastic example of cheese making in that way. It is a touch more expensive because of that. It’s buttery, with an absolutely amazing texture. Many people find traditional, complex cheddars too dry. But I think this has got some moistness to it.

Tasting notes: Buttery texture; earthy, mushroomy flavour.

Lincolnshire Poacher
Ulceby Grange Farm, Alford, Lincolnshire

Somewhere between cheddar and comté, some people detect a curiously strong, pineapple-like flavour to Lincolnshire Poacher.

The Cheese Lord says: It’s often sold as a cheddar, but it isn’t really a cheddar – the process is more mixed. This one’s been aged to 30 months, and it’s very dry, but you get more mountain cheese flavours in it.

Tasting notes: Slightly waxy texture; rich, savoury, nutty flavour.

Quicke’s
Home Farm, Devon, EX5 5AY

The Quicke family have farmed their little patch of Devon for 14 generations. Their buttery (pasteurised) cheddars are from cows that spend 10 months of the year out on grass.

The Cheese Lord says: I’d love to stock it to be honest, but the plan is to sell them online soon. They make great cheddar, but it costs £43 a kilo.

Below the paywall: The Cheese Lord’s guide to a proper Christmas cheese board, his hot takes on what cheese is best for when, and how to get the fullest flavour from your cheese.

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Further daring experiments are likely to occur, WFJ reader contributions allowing (£3.50 a month or £35 for the year, in case you were wondering).

Speaking of which, below’s a preview of today’s round-up for free subscribers, with the lowdown in its juiciest entirety for those with a paid sub. Have at it.

After an extensive multi-year refurb, The Prickly Pear in Bruton has reopened. Its social media channels don’t give much away at the moment, but know this: it does tacos (£6-£7.50 a go) alongside Mexican-inspired side dishes, and it claims it’s a pub. Unlike its former incarnation, it’s a lot more ‘restaurant’ than ‘pub’ (on the lines of The Three Horseshoes or Bath Arms at Shearwater) and contrary to most pubs it’s neither presented at or priced for ‘the many’. If there’s any good news further to all this it’s that Higher Farm’s former head chef George Barson (a big part of what made the food at HF so brilliant) is the main man on the pans.

I recently checked in with Little Origins, a culmination of a two-year research project into nutrient-dense meals for young families. There’s a play space for kids, and an area in which to eat from their menu of things like cheese biscuits, beef ragu fusilli, and beetroot falafel – a cross section, if you will, of stuff that’s good for you and of stuff you want to eat. Little Origins are based in the Commerce Park in Frome – if you live in the area and have young kids, you may find it worth checking out.

A Taunton farmer went through the humiliating experience of being a Big Brother contestant in an attempt to win enough money to save his family farm. The £100,000 prize money, he so claimed, would help alleviate the effects of the controversial new inheritance tax on farming assets. Did it work? He finished fourth, behind a novelist and an influencer from Essex. The plot thickens, however, as one sleuthy Redditor discovers the farmer’s family recently bought a farm for £6.7million in Northumberland.

These monthly posts come with a paywall.

Below this one, we have such items as:

• The best thing I ate in Bath for quite some time

• What does Somerset’s first whisky taste like?

• Free seminars on food history

• How pigs are restoring biodiversity in East Somerset

• And more besides

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In 2003, after finding what appeared to be the remnants of a Glastonbury monk’s lunch encased in a 16th century stone wall (nut shells included), Roger Saul thought he should go about growing his own walnuts.

Having just left Mulberry – the multimillion fashion label he founded in 1971 – and taking on Glastonbury farm Sharpham Park, Roger expected his newly-planted trees would need about five years to start producing. 15 years later, they offered their first fruit, and with a meagre 300 kilogram harvest.

Firsthand, Roger found out why Britain doesn’t grow much of its own nuts – though the trees can largely be left to their own devices, they are fickle (especially in such a wet climate), generally preferring warmer parts of the world like Iran, Turkey, and southern China.

That being said, Britain’s changing climate is bringing forward a more and more hospitable environment for nut growing. This long, warm summer and autumn we’ve just had has lent local fruit and nut growers one of their best yields in history (spare a thought for cereal farmers, mind), asking whether a revitalisation of British-grown nuts – limited to cobnuts, walnuts, chestnuts, and on occasion almonds – and fruit could well be on the horizon if things keep going the way they are.

Walnuts haven’t always been Sharpham Park’s hero crop – the farm grows all sorts including apples, pears, cherries, greengages, and from 2004 up until two years ago it championed the ancient grain spelt. Does Roger have a knack for pivoting, then, or is swapping handbags for horticulture and spelt for walnuts not as radical a departure as it seems?

Taking place in the middle of Roger’s biggest walnut haul to date, the following exchange is pretty close to verbatim, but edited for clarity and brevity.

Hugh: I found my local organic shop is selling your walnuts, and they seem to be not necessarily sweeter but much less bitter than what you’d usually buy out of the packet off the shelf. And definitely more buttery. Does that have anything to do with how and where they’re grown?

Roger: Very hard to say. Generally what you get in the supermarket would come from the States, China, Far East, or Middle East – that sort of thing. Perhaps Turkey, maybe France. But if they’ve already been cracked and shelled, my guess is they will have been chilled right down to preserve and transport them. So that’s when you get this desiccated taste to them. It still tastes nice, but they’ve lost some of that creaminess and freshness.

Hugh: So do they last longer in the shell?

Roger: I’m still eating a few of last year’s. They can last 12 months in the shell, but it does depend.

Hugh: There’s something about that – foods being so sensory. Walnuts have a distinct clacking sound when you chuck them in a bag and they rub together. And then when you go home you have the satisfaction of cracking them. That’s much more of a tactile experience than it is tearing open a plastic bag. I remember at home we’d have cobnuts, and we’d break into them with an old, ornate-looking nutcracker, made of brass or something. And I think those sensory experiences that better connect us with food we’re losing a bit. And maybe it’s connected to food culture, and whether there is a food culture under the surface in Somerset, and whether we want to start enjoying it again.

Roger: Well, I think you’re absolutely right and there is no reason why not. It’s a question really though, isn’t it, of almost taking a map of Somerset and putting little pins in it and saying, okay, we’ve got this type of apple here, we’ve got that pear there. Here’s all the different things we’re producing – what could we do more of?

Hugh: What does that mean in your part of Glastonbury? There’s also Andrew Kent [Glastonbury Nut Farm] near you – does that say something about the soil or conditions within your area?

Roger: Walnuts love clay, and we’re in a clay-heavy area. They like having dry feet. We are very nearly on the Somerset Levels, and our walnut trees – the lowest row in each of the fields – is where water tends to collect. They don’t like it, and are half the size of the bigger ones. But the soil around us when we’re not on the peat moor, which is acid and peat, gives perfect conditions.

Hugh: I’m hearing from fruit growers the harvest has been enormous this year – could you put that into numbers from what you’ve seen?

Roger: We will have harvested probably about two and a half tonnes of walnuts this year. And that would’ve compared with probably three quarters of a tonne last year or just under a tonne, which was disastrous.

Hugh: What happened?

Roger: Late frosts and a wet, cold spring. But it was much the same for apples. So I think apples and fruit in general – anything that’s an early blossom – is the one that gets hit in this country.

Hugh: Do you feel there’s a bit of a moral dilemma then, in that you’re always hoping for a good harvest, as you’ve had this year, but at the same time, not wanting the shift in climate that’s causing it?

Roger: It’s going to happen to us whatever, isn’t it? It’s nothing you and I can change. We’ve got to really try and adapt to work with it. The whole imbalance of everything is a timebomb waiting to happen, in that we seem to be in a changing climate, which we all understand, but we have a government that is penniless in terms of looking at farming and food, and the last government was no better. No government seems to have paid any attention to the future of food for probably 20 years, I would say. And then if you look at investment generally, why would that go into farming or food at the moment when there is no incentive, no sort of push or pull to help it get there? So these steep changes in what’s happening with our climate and that then affecting apples, grapes, you name it, with a master crop one year, and disaster the next. If you look at grain, it’s smaller yields out of bigger or smaller areas. And then if you look at how much dairy, beef, sheep we are doing, particularly here in Somerset, that balance needs to move more towards vegetables, cereals, fruit, and nuts. Which can be the same land – you could actually do both to a certain extent.

Hugh: I gather that’s what you’ve been doing with your sheep, which are…

Roger: Shropshire sheep. Which we chose as they don’t eat the bark off the trees. Except if they’re rams at a certain time of year, which we found to our cost.

Hugh: When you first bought the farm it was an old dairy farm, is that right? Quite conventional?

Roger: It was. When they were growing corn [as cattle fodder], they would’ve used all sorts of chemicals, but fortunately the farm hadn’t had a vast amount of chemicals put on it because it didn’t need to. As we transitioned to organic we had a lovely farmer from Highgrove who came in and advised me what to do. He said [when farming at Highgrove], “I would bring in an aeroplane to spray the crops and kill the blackfly. Now I watch the blackfly land on the beans and go, oh no, what’s going to happen? And then along came the ladybirds and ate the blackfly.” That cycle of an organic farm compared to a nuclear farm, if you like, is very, very different.

Hugh: From what you said before, it doesn’t sound like you particularly miss growing cereal crops.

Roger: Yes and no. I mean we loved doing our spelt, but I think if you look at the yields this year, although the quality has been much better, the yields generally for wheat and cereals have been pretty poor, particularly spring-sown. So it’s going to get more difficult for farmers to know what they’re inputting and what they’re going to get out of it.

Hugh: What happened exactly on the spelt side of things? Why did you have to shut it down?

Roger: We’d seen what happens with big international fluctuations before, ever since my Mulberry days. But Brexit was especially what hit us. [During COVID] you remember the whole thing of [everyone] buying bread, we just couldn’t produce enough and we had standing orders from Waitrose who were saying, look, give us whatever you can possibly produce. But we then hit Brexit, and lost all our international business overnight.

Hugh: Do you have a rough idea of how much you were exporting to up to that point?

Roger: About 25%. None of those independent retailers around Europe were remotely interested in going through the hoops they had to to import from the UK, and we weren’t doing anything big enough on a scale to make it worthwhile setting up offices in Europe to import for us, which some companies did do and got round the problems. We didn’t really lose business with the supermarkets, but what we found was that they wouldn’t take in any new business. We could get spelt into Planet Organics and the independents, but we couldn’t get the critical mass of volume. I think I learned fairly quickly in our agricultural life that the margins on a handbag are nothing like the margins on a bag of flour.

Hugh: What about the local market? If we’re talking about local people being interested in local food, especially in and around Somerset, is the desire there overall just not enough?

Roger: We were in the millions. At that sort of level, you cannot rely on local to supply that. We would’ve been talking about 60 to 70% of our trade going through the big supermarkets like Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Ocado. I think the typical situation is when you get an exciting period – which we had as we grew with our spelt – people are excited about taste and tasting what’s natural and sustainable. If you can bring those things together, which is what we did with our spelt, we had a huge following. But as soon as you hit crisis periods, be it banking or economic, as we’re going through now, supermarkets inevitably have to look at the bottom line and that means they have to look very hard at price.

Hugh: Is it a similar sort of story for walnuts?

Roger: We’re on a much smaller scale now, and have really worked hard on direct-to-consumer, which is where 70% of our turnover is from. Also we’re with Able & Cole and Teals and The Newt and business like that. It’s much more of a singular product, though we’re looking at doing walnut chocolate, walnut oil, walnut pesto, and pickled walnuts. But for that we are looking into next year, hoping we get another good – if not better – harvest.

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