Welcome to The Wallfish Journal

If you enjoy food and drink and live in Somerset, you may well like it here

Served up to you by Hugh Thomas, a food journalist and Frome dweller, The Wallfish Journal is a newsletter about food in Somerset and the people who grow, cook, make, and sell it.

There’s a bit more background on the about page, but the main role of this newsletter is to help inform locals of what’s on their doorstep (it might surprise you), and how it fits in with the more nuanced conversations around food which largely otherwise aren’t being had in traditional media.

In other words, I want to ask the questions supermarket customers and restaurant guests want to ask, but find difficult to over the counter or midway through their Cornish crab cakes. I want to look at what we mean by ‘local’ food, and whether it’s as good as we think. I want to examine the issues affecting the world at large, but through a hyperlocal perspective.

The WFJ’s first ‘issue’ went out in February ‘22. Since then, it’s covered:

• Why a locally-made sourdough loaf costs £4.50 [link]

• What the conservation of bees and the commodification of honey means for local apiarists [link]

• Who sells fruit and veg in Frome, and from where do they procure it? [link]

• How shopping for local food benefits the local economy [link]

• Local cattle herds proving that farming livestock is not evil incarnate and can benefit the environment [link]

And much more.

Expect new issues to appear in your inbox every week — subscribe to the newsletter, and you won’t miss a thing.