With ingredients sourced from Heckfield Place's own biodynamic Market Garden, Michael Chapman's menu champions a deeply seasonal and local approach
Locally grown, responsibly sourced, carbon-neutral… as more and more chefs and restaurateurs are eager to showcase their menu's sustainability credentials, it can be hard for diners to discern what these buzzwords mean in relation to the produce on the plate.
But at Heckfield Place's flagship restaurant Marle in Hampshire, diners are left in no doubt as to where their food has been seeded, nurtured, matured and plucked. Up to 45% of Marle's menu comes from Heckfield's 340-acre mixed arable biodynamic farm. Even in the raw winter, that figure never drops to below a third.
Marle, which attained a green Michelin star last year, has a more than earned its place as a go-to venue for green fine-dining. The 64-cover restaurant is led by executive chef Michael Chapman, former head chef of Michelin-starred the Royal Oak in Berkshire, and Skye Gygnell, who secured Petersham Nurseries' Michelin star in 2011. Both Chapman and Gyngell work with the 40-strong farm team to curate a seasonal bi-monthly menu.
Chapman says: "We all talk about when and how we could put certain produce on the menu and we're not rushing the process. We're not telling [the farm team] that it must be or look a certain way; instead, we ask them for a forecast of what they assume is coming through. We start pencilling it in and ask, ‘What can we do? What did we do before? What hasn't sold well? What would the customer like?'," Chapman says.
Having worked in a suite of kitchens prior to his now almost five-year tenure at Marle, Chapman says he became fatigued with the industrial scale of the food supply chain which, he says has "caused big problems", including produce lacking in flavour and nutritional value, and a supply chain where "everybody's trying to make a buck and that's when the customer gets shortchanged". But to eat at Marle is not to be shortchanged; rather, it is true celebration of the hyper-local terroir and, adds Chapman, a "homage" to the land and those who care for it.
This homage is keenly felt throughout the menu. Take the tortellini with goats' curd, corn butter and girolles, which he likens to "art on a plate" due the "care, attention and thought process" the food receives from the farmer's nurturing of the hens and their eggs to the chef's careful preparation, cooking and presentation. Forty freshly laid egg yolks and 1kg of flour from Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire form 18 portions of five tortellini. "That rich farm yolk gives the pasta that bright colour," enthuses Chapman. His team of "masters" make fresh batches for every service to ensure optimum freshness and to minimise food waste.
The dish's accompanying corn butter is also made from farm produce: "We use the core of the corn husk to make a poaching stock, adding in green chilli, coriander, onion and garlic. We then reduce it down, strain it and add our butter." The girolles are currently bought in but Chapman is cultivating his own mushroom nursery in the kitchen.
The farm supplies the plums in the autumnal almond and roasted plum frangipane tart with fennel blossom ice-cream, plucked from a fruit courtyard 20 metres away from Marle's double-French doors. Once baked, a plum syrup, made from plum trimmings, is "brushed on the top of the tart to give that nice, glistened look". This is accompanied by a fennel blossom ice-cream, where everything except for the sugar is sourced at the farm. Farm-grown fennel blossom is added to the cream and milk when it reaches 82°C in the pan and left for 20 minutes to allow the flavours to blend before being added to sugar and farm-sourced egg yolk to make the custard mix.
Chapman is eager to point out his techniques are not fancy and much of his food is "in the frying pan, on the grill or it goes in the oven". His team do not practice sous vide cooking or use cling film as he views these as creating unnecessary plastic waste.
With a green star under its belt, does Chapman hope to attain a red star anytime soon? Pausing, he answers: "You end up doing things that are just reflective of what the star may want.
"The amount of work and craziness I put myself through, because I thought that's the only way to prove myself… But I think now, I've got a nice full restaurant, I've got guests loving what we're doing here, and I've got a team of chefs that are inspired. That is, by far, more valuable for me."
Heckfield Place, Hampshire, RG27 0LD www.heckfieldplace.com/food-drink/marle
