Gordon Ramsey

Brighton Festival Paskins Town House has been focused on Local and Organic food for the last 15 years. Click here to see their vegetarian hotel Brighton menu

Gordon may swear but he also talks good sense. Or does he?

Some thoughts about Restaurants Brighton (& Hove)

When we started the Food Festival six years ago one of its key objects was to introduce the City to the concept of choosing fresh, local and seasonal food. Allied to that we wanted to encourage the local restaurants to showcase local produce as a means of creating a special City offer.
It is interesting to read that Gordon Ramsey the brilliant Michelin starred chef is now arguing that this is exactly what restaurants should do.

In the six years we have been propagating our ideas for local food the concept has grown nationally to be widely accepted as a ‘good thing’. It probably grew out of an initiative from California Chefs or perhaps the recognition of the more simple cooking style of Italian Chefs compared with French.

As we looked for ways of putting forward our arguments for local food we decided to organise a public debate during the festival month. Following two really successful debates with contributors as informed as the Guardian Journalist Richard D. North and Prof Gareth Edward-Jones of the University of Bangor our ideas are beginning to mature.

It is clear that you can not impose a single (good) mindset on society without creating comparablypoor distortions elsewhere. Take the rush into bio fuels for example.

We have all given generously to those starving in underdeveloped countries. One of the things we have learned in our debates is that old adage you can give a man a fish and he can feed his family for a day. Give him a fish hook and he can feed his family for life.

And so it is with local food. If we proceed at the expense of excluding developing countries form our ludicrously rich markets what do we condemn those poor African farmers to?

There are those who argue that air miles and the carbon footprint and even globalisation should exclude food travelling thousands of miles to our food distribution networks. We have learned in our debates that food grown naturally in the sun and transported here sometimes has a lower carbon footprint than many grown nearby under glass with artificial heating.

One of the curious points to emerge from the discussions around local and air miles was the heavy transport costs attached to wines. It certainly appears that all the proponents of the benefits of local food exclusively should be the first to examine their wine purchasing policy!
I mentioned at the outset the object of the Festival was to introduce and encourage local chefs in the City to highlight their local food offer. The benefits are not just fresh, local and seasonal but also that their offer became unique to Brighton & Hove. Of course you can get delightful meals cooked for you in restaurants in Birmingham or Bath. Bur not with Sussex smoked Salmon followed by Sussex Lamb, Sussex strawberries and cream followed by Sussex cheese and quaffed with medal winning Sussex wines.

Brighton & Hove has a most wonderful offer of restaurants, such variety of restaurants Brighton, prices and cuisines. You could eat at a different restaurant in Brighton, lunch and dinner for a month and not have a disappointment. You could experience a dozen different nationalities’ foods and make each meal a successful dinner party.

We don’t have a Michelin starred restaurant but we should not lose sight of the reason we go out to eat with our friends, it is to sit in a pleasant ambience, entertaining talk, good service and delicious food. Our City has this in spades.

And if I could move us from the general to the particular. I remember coming to Brighton a decade ago and having a meal at the Grand (our five star hotel) and the menu being in French. Can I direct you to the centre of Brighton seafront, outside the Grand Hotel? There is the menu for the day. Simple, delicious food mostly sourced locally and proudly recorded as such. A magnificent example of the best of the best.

Should our restaurants serve local seasonal food as Ramsey says? Well the answer is hardly a simple one and it certainly cannot be ‘one eyed’

I would say quality variety and value must be at the front of all our minds. Restaurants should attract their customers with these whilst finding their own special attributes to highlight. Local producers have the inside track to supply restaurants with these qualities and that menu on the Grand shows how it can be done.

Roger Marlowe
Chair

Paskins Town House has been focused on Local and Organic food for the last 15 years. Click here to see their menu