It was great to see Gip from Salvo's winning on the F Word last night in their neighbourhood restaurants competition.
I went to Salvo's a few weeks ago for their zero food miles menu. They had a special menu for three days in their salumeria, with all the produce grown and reared in Leeds. We really enjoyed it - and at £19.50 for a six course menu it was great value too.
I'd gone along because I know the people who run Swillington Organic Farm - and they'd provided much of the produce for the menu. I went back again last Friday to interview Gip about how it went. I took my flip camcorder but unfortunately I didn't get him in shot - he moved when we started talking and, still being a bit new to this stuff, I didn't realise - so you can only see half his head. So I'll just have to tell you what he said instead.
Basically he was really pleased with how it went - and customers loved it - they were sold out each night. He's keen to do more - with the next step being to buy a pig on a Community Supported Agriculture basis - where you pay up front to share a bit of the risk with the farmer. You can imagine that there'll be plenty of scope for publicising this arrangement with Salvo's customers, which is great for the farm.
I'm really keen on this kind of thing - where local businesses get together and work with each other. I wrote a while back about how I was feeling a bit unenthusiastic about a lot of the funded local food projects that I'd heard about at a conference. They were great - but so many of them relied on funding - which won't be around for ever. If you can get businesses trading locally with each other because it makes sense - and because it fits with who they are - in this case a neighbourhood restaurant - then that's got a much better chance of being sustainable and making a big difference long term.
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