Echoing Ricard Camarena on Monday, the talk by British chef Merlin Labron-Johnson (Osip*, Bruton) dwelt on the freedom and creative possibilities of only working with what the land provides. “When I was in London (he ran the Michelin-starred Portland), I picked up the phone and got everything I wanted. When I arrived here I saw it was different, and that was the way I wanted it". "Here" was the county of Somerset, in southwest England, where Labron-Johnson has settled and set up a farm.

The chef explained how he set up a genuine farm-to-table restaurant: “I opened the restaurant one month before the pandemic. Theoretically it was going to have a menu and be more normal, but the pandemic changed all that. When we opened again, we opened as a restaurant with a farm and no fixed menu, where every day I cook what I get from the land and local producers I trust"- He admitted that his role is no longer just being a chef: “I'm an intermediary between the land and the kitchen”.

Osip is now a non-vegetarian restaurant, but it has a 90% vegetarian restaurant, with its own plantation and a closed water circuit to maximise this resource. “That kind of work incentivises creativity, because you're working with what you have", he repeated. By way of an example, he cooked two recipes with aquaponic trout. One in sushi format, with the trout cured and cut into slivers rolled up with apple (a major ingredient in Somerset) and radish, both cut into fine slices using a Japanese mandoline. The cardoon leaf acts as algae to build little sushis covered with flowers and petals.

The second recipe was trout in brunoise to create a tartare with fresh cream and shallots, covered with slivers of raw radish. “Simple recipes, and few ingredients", but creative. Natural cuisine and farm to table. Ingenious cuisine with whatever is to hand.