Love of the land

Sep 5 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

Local food has always been on the menu at Newcastle’s Grainger Rooms restaurant. Now owner Chris Slaughter is taking his passion for local to new heights by launching a food club aimed at fellow enthusiasts. Jane Hall reports.

CHRIS Slaughter was never into football as a lad. When his friends were running around kicking a ball and pretending to be Gary Lineker or Alan Shearer, the young Chris could be found hanging on to his grandmother’s apron strings – in the best possible way.

Born and raised on the family poultry farm at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in Northumberland, a love of the land was instilled in Chris from an early age.

But it was the 29-year-old’s paternal grandmother Joan who taught the eager-to-learn youngster to appreciate fine cooking and quality ingredients.

“The farm was set up by my grandfather, Albert, after the war,” Chris says. “He was a PoW on the Burma railway and when he got home he bought the farm and started rearing pigs.

“In the 1970s and 1980s with the help of my dad he moved into poultry. It was by no means free range, but it was food off the land.

“The farm came with a big farmhouse and nan and granddad lived in the bungalow next door. There was plenty of land around their house and they used to grow all their fruit and vegetables.

“My nan was the sort of person who was always making and baking, preserving and pickling and freezing like World War Three was about to happen.

“God rest her soul, she died in January at the age of 82, but we are still wading our way through her preserves. As I was growing up I spent a lot of time with my nan in her kitchen, and it is from her that my main food influences have come: cooking everything from scratch, using what is in season and choosing the best ingredients.

“Once you have got a taste for it – not so much local but well-farmed British stuff – you wouldn’t want to have anything else. It is a sad state of affairs when people are now so divorced from the land that they get excited about a carrot tasting like it should and supermarkets actually brand some fruit and vegetables as being ‘superior’ tasting and charge extra for the privilege.”

It was almost inevitable, considering his upbringing, that Chris would end up working with food. Having served his time in the kitchens of some of the region’s best-known restaurants, he is now chef-owner of the acclaimed Grainger Rooms in Newcastle’s Higham Place, opposite the Laing Art Gallery.

Specialising in modern British cooking, he has become a standard-bearer for what he calls the “North East’s fantastic local produce”, and unashamedly supports our fishermen, farmers, microbreweries and small independents.

His desire to support his home region has seen him turn to some unlikely sources in his hunt for ingredients. The dearth of quality vegetables grown in the North East with chefs’ fighting over a limited supply, has long been a source of irritation.

But rather than compromise and buy-in from outside, Chris turned detective to solve the problem for himself – and eventually found the answer in Newcastle’s former industrial heartland, Elswick.

It is here on a half acre plot that the Tyneside Cyrenians – the homeless charity which offers help and support for those excluded from society – runs a horticulture project.

Specialising in producing heritage varieties that are in danger of dying out, vulnerable homeless people work in the garden to help build their confidence and pride in preparation for taking their place back in society.

Chris says the initiative is inspirational, for the way it is helping Tyneside’s excluded and disadvantaged, and for the quality of the food produced in an urban area.

And it has inspired him not just to reach greater heights in the kitchen, but to try to encourage others to see the benefits of choosing local while helping two charities close to his heart – the Cyrenians and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Next week Chris will launch The Local Food Society. Based at the Grainger Rooms, the group aims to promote local industry by supporting the region’s suppliers, farmers, fishermen, brewers and small retailers specialising in artisan foods.

A free-to-join club, Chris is looking to attract like-minded people and describes The Local Food Society as a social experiment, which he hopes in time will be rolled out to other restaurants across the region sharing the Grainger Rooms ethos.

A website and monthly newsletter is planned featuring in-season recipes, offering members a 20% discount on the ingredients at named outlets and arranging special foodie nights.

There will also be a tie-in, competitively priced seasonal menu at Grainger Rooms with £2 from every order being split between the Tyneside Cyrenians and Macmillan. Chris’s father David, 58, was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and his son says: “Dad and I are very close, to the point where we play squash against each other about two or three times a week. He has received a lot of support from the Macmillan nurses and I want to do what I can to help them.

“I also wanted to do something to help the Cyrenians beyond just buying their vegetables. What they are doing in Newcastle with getting homeless people back into the work ethic, is fantastic.

“If we get 3,000 people in over the year eating The Local Food Society menu, that would be £6,000 split between two very worthwhile causes.

“I would rather get somebody in paying £25-£30 a head with their food and drink who really want to pay it and eat this menu than, say, have only five people in and for the place to look as if it is some sort of exclusive haunt. The Grainger Rooms isn’t – good food shouldn’t be an elitist thing.

“I suppose The Local Food Society is a social experiment for myself. Through different channels people will be able to come to the Grainger Rooms and see we aren’t somewhere you only go on a special occasion and that quality produce doesn’t have to come at an exorbitant price.”

Chris also gets the chance to build a database of like-minded people, whether that be diners, retailers or fellow restaurateurs, who believe local is best.

“I didn’t want to set something up that was a lot of voucher-chasers who are only interested in getting a free meal. I wanted to set something up that is genuinely going to make people aware of what is around them and will help support local suppliers, retailers and other restaurants. I want to pitch this to people who are going to appreciate it and support it.

“If people can get the buzz then we can get more interested in food. It would be nice if we can get our own Northumbria food scene and people become more aware that there is fantastic local produce out there.

“If people get interested, why would they want to buy food that has been around the world three times? I know some farm shops can be expensive, but if people support local then the prices will come down.

“We have got everything we need: a fantastic range of fish that comes straight off the boats, and fantastic farm produce. I don’t have to go out of the region for anything.”

Chris is sourcing all his green leaves, courgettes, peppers, beetroot and tomatoes from the Cyrenians. Earlier in the summer there were gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb. Main crop vegetables, such as cabbages, potatoes and brassicas, which the Cyrenians don’t grow, come from Blagdon.

“The Cyrenians are growing six or seven varieties of heritage tomatoes alone and two or three different types of courgette, along with knobbly cucumbers, which you don’t see anymore.

“The rocket I’m getting at the moment is out of this world. You couldn’t eat a huge amount of it as it has such a powerful pepper and mustard taste. If you bought the same thing from a supermarket there would just be a hint of that; there is really no comparison between mass produced and vegetables grown in small quantities with care as the Cyrenians do.

“The only ingredients I use in the restaurant that aren’t local are lemons, coffee and chocolate.”

Chris, who describes himself as something of a black sheep after being thrown off his catering course at Northumberland College in Ashington where he admits to being “bigheaded and arrogant,” because he thought he knew it all – believes it is time the North East stood up and proclaimed itself as a gourmet destination to rival Edinburgh and London.

And he sees local food as the way forward.

“There is a hard core of people in this region who are into local food, but we aren’t Edinburgh and we aren’t London. We could be, though.

“I hope I’m going to be pleasantly surprised and people take to The Local Food Society and really help put the North East on the food map.”

To find out more about The Local Food Society go to www.graingerooms.co.uk. A dedicated website will be operational soon.

We have a fantastic range of fish that comes straight off the boats, and fantastic farm produce