Excerpt from Eat Slow Britain by Alastair Sawday & Anna Colquhoun:

“People in Essex wanting good pasta or risotto come here,” says the Sun Inn’s proud Neapolitan chef, Ugo Simonelli. This fifteenth-century coaching inn may look quintessentially English, but the passion for good food and conviviality evoke an Italian trattoria. Owner Piers Baker says: “Sundays are mayhem: children dashing everywhere, parents reading the papers, grandparents nattering, and regulars at the bar laughing at us running around.” …

Ugo exudes enthusiasm for Italian cuisine and, encouraged by adventurous diners, has unearthed vanishing dishes. Hare with chocolate and rosemary sauce is a relic of times when boundaries between sweet and savoury were blurred, and cassuola, a Milanese cabbage and pork stew, was traditionally eaten at the end of pig slaughtering season. Pumpkin and mussel soup, raw fish marinated with smoked Maldon salt and pan-fried lamb hearts have their fans too. For more conservative palates, there is grilled salt marsh lamb with roast beetroot, pan-fried calf’s liver with melted onions and sage, and sea bass with saffron potatoes and samphire.

Between shifts Ugo tends his vegetable patch or experiments with bresaola and prosciutto curing in the cellar. He also teaches in the village school. “We make pasta, pizza and gnocchi, and the kids find they like garlic, parmesan and basil after all. I had them eating pesto by the spoonful!” he laughs …

The Sun Inn, Essex, England

Excerpt from Eat Slow Britain by Alastair Sawday & Anna Colquhoun:

As a teenager, Sherri Singleton sold watermelon fruit cups on the beach in Los Angeles for pocket money. It was the first of a series of successful culinary enterprises, stretching from California to Essex, where she now runs two restaurants and a cooking school. “Food is in my blood: my great grandmother ran a gourmet food store, my grandmother had a restaurant, my mother cooked everything from scratch and grew vegetables, and our neighbour, a celebrated chef, roasted pigs in his garden. I was surrounded by people who adored food.”

Arriving in Essex in the eighties was a shock to Sherri’s culinary system - where were the bundles of fresh coriander and basil, the heirloom tomatoes? She found excellent meat, seafood and cheese, but couldn’t lay her hands on local fruit and vegetables. So Sherri persuaded smallholders to grow for her, something many other restaurateurs wouldn’t catch onto for years.

“Now it’s ridiculously easy. People pick samphire for me, grow asparagus in their gardens, leave boxes of quinces and squashes on my doorstep. And we grow artichokes, sprouting broccoli and blackcurrants ourselves.”  …

The Mistley Thorn, Essex, England

Excerpt from Eat Slow Britain by Alastair Sawday & Anna Colquhoun:

“The Olive Branch is more than a pub, it’s a community project, too,” says Ben Jones, who with old friends Sean Hope and Marcus Welford, managed to get their hands on the pub before it was sold as a house. Locals were delighted: with no local shop or post office, the Olive Branch was vital…

Inside the beautiful stone house you can see the frame of the three cottages that were knocked together  - now they are cosy interconnected dining areas. Low beams, old wooden furniture, crackling fires, the chatter of happy diners and genuinely enthusiastic staff put people at ease. “We like to generate rapport with our customers, so we can tell them about our food and encourage them to try new things,” explains Ben …

The menu changes constantly to capture ingredients at their peak: asparagus from Abbey Parks Farm in spring; courgette flowers from the Red Lion’s kitchen garden in summer; quinces from villagers’ trees in autumn; pheasant and partridge in winter. “We offered locals a pint per pound of food brought in. They soon twigged heavy items were a winner, and we were inundated with venison haunches!” recalls Ben …

The Olive Branch, Rutland, England

Excerpt from Eat Slow Britain by Alastair Sawday & Anna Colquhoun:

… The farming of oysters dates back to at least Roman or Greek times. For millennia people have believed in their health-giving properties: Parisians and Londoners used to buy oysters by the hundred, Cicero ate them to nourish his eloquence and Louis XI swallowed them by prescription. Oysters are now known to be rich in minerals, vitamins and cancer-fighting ceramides.

Oyster farming has slowly increased in Britain, but we have never fully regained our love of the slippery bivalve; we export the majority, along with most native shellfish, and frozen prawns from Asia seem to have grabbed most of the market. Trawled wild tiger prawns have a MCS [Marine Conservation Society] score of 5 [the worst], not least because up to ten kilograms of by-catch is discarded for every kilogram of prawns landed.

Pete is exasperated by this madness. “Supermarket fish counters are generally poor, stocking fish flown in from around the world. In the Poole area they prefer to stock Scottish or Irish oysters when they have some of the best oysters in the country caught here.” …

Dorset Oysters, Dorset, England and Storm Fish Restaurant, Poole

Excerpt from Eat Slow Britain by Alastair Sawday & Anna Colquhoun:

The Thomas Lord pub does not serve orange juice. And don’t expect Tabasco with your Bloody Mary, parmesan on your pasta or lemon with your fish. Instead there will be local Hill Farm apple juice, Fireball hot sauce, Lyburn farmhouse cheese and lemon thyme butter. Frustrated by the ubiquitous slogan “local and seasonal wherever possible”, David Thomas and Richard Taylor set out to prove it was always possible …

This doesn’t mean going without variety: ten or more vegetables adorn Sunday roasts. Even in winter they rainbow around the lovely handmade plates - emerald broccoli, purple carrots, pink Chioggia beetroots, black cabbage, red cabbage, earthy bean sprouts, creamy cauliflower, golden parsnips - and put the usual pub trios to shame.

… In summer the outdoor brick oven is fired up for pizzas served on wooden rounds. Richard’s inquisitive quails look on from the coop, and keep the kitchen in eggs. Those from the hens are sold on the bar, labelled with their creators’ names. Past the hurdle fence, a table for two nests in the potager amid grape vines and cooks scurrying in and out to pick salad leaves, edible flowers and soft fruits moments before they are served …

The Thomas Lord pub, Hampshire, England