Back in the Kitchen with Ethan Friskney-Bryer

Ethan Friskney-Bryer, Head Chef at Fitzroy, in Fowey, Cornwall, was the first chef to write a recipe for the Farms to Feed Us Journal back in May. During the lock-down he and his wife, artist and front of house at Fitzroy, Hazel Friskney-Bryer have turned the old walled garden at Trefrawl Farm (on the Farms to Feed Us database) into a beautiful, small but productive farm: Wayzgoose Garden. Now that he’s back at work in the kitchen, we asked Ethan to reflect on his months in the garden and what it has been like going back to work on the pass and cooking with produce he has grown himself. Read what he wrote below.

Lockdown affected everyone differently.  For many of us in the hospitality trade, we went from having a job which occupied a considerable proportion of our waking hours as well providing us with career flexibility to go and work more or less anywhere, to having a huge amount of time on our hands and the very real prospect of industry-wide collapse, seemingly overnight.

 Whether intentionally or not, I spent almost all of lockdown expanding a project I had started in December last year: restoring a walled garden on a nearby farm, with the aim of growing fruit and vegetables. 

 One winter's morning, Ed & Nic of Trefrawl Farm near Looe kindly agreed to show the team from Fitzroy (the restaurant in Fowey where I am head chef) their pedigree Hereford herd, before dropping into conversation that they had a walled garden they had always wanted to cultivate but never had the time.  Optimistically, we all agreed it sounded like a fine idea.  We could grow a variety of vegetables throughout the year with which we could supply Fitzroy and perhaps a few local shops (yields permitting). 

We started by clearing the garden (aided by some very enthusiastic pigs) and digging out the original paths which would help delineate the beds.  The more time we spent there, though, the more there seemed to do.  Every stage took longer than anticipated and seemed to bring to light several additional stages we hadn’t even considered; not to mention the fact that the garden was considerably larger than any of us had actually realised.

We were starting to make a little headway (in spite of the incredibly wet start to the year), when lockdown happened.  There we all were one Friday evening at Fitzroy, having a quick staff meal before service, when Boris announced restaurants had to close.  And close we did. 

And so began one of the most rewarding, physically-demanding, relaxing, enlightening, physically exhausting, energising experiences of my life. With everyone from Fitzroy on lockdown, my wife Hazel and I continued to work the garden for the next few months, turning it from something totally barren (with the exception of a couple of fruit trees) to something which started producing far too much food for the two of us to eat. 

Lettuces thrived, peas and beans started to pod, flowers flowered, and we forgot just how enthusiastic radishes are and grew far too many to even sell (all our neighbours ended up with a couple of bunches dumped on their doorsteps like an unwanted child of yesteryear).  We linked up with the Farms to Feed Us database, as well as a couple of local shops – Fowey Farm Shop and Lanreath Village shop – who agreed to take a variety of produce, as well as The Tipsy Cow, a nearby bar doing takeaways who took a couple of kilos of salad a week.  But we were still somewhat overwhelmed with produce. 

And then, suddenly, three and a half months had flown by.  The 4th of July had arrived and we were suddenly required back at work, because the restaurant was reopening.  I have to admit, I was totally torn.  If I went back to work, what would become of the project I had devoted the last few months of my life to?  Growing is such an intrinsically personal thing (for me at least) and I had put so much into it that I felt the garden to be an extension of myself, in some weird way.  I couldn’t abandon it now, could I?  Especially at the start of the growing season? 

But then, if I didn’t go back, what would become of the restaurant project I had been a part of for the previous 12 months? I did some serious soul searching. I sat up late at night trying to work out a schedule whereby I could do both things simultaneously. I considered asking for help to maintain the garden, but it had become such a personal project that I genuinely couldn’t contemplate anyone else (other than my long-suffering wife) working on it with me. 

The problem was, I had enjoyed every aspect of the gardening work: being outside all day long (whatever the weather); handling soil (something which is proven to have the same effect on your brain as Prozac); planting tiny seeds full of promise and then watching them grow into huge plants; carrying a small, engraved gardening knife with me; wearing grubby clothes and not caring; stopping at the village shop in Lerryn to buy a hot sausage roll for lunch; sitting on the bench we made in the evening sun with a cold beer plucked from the bucket of cold water in a shady corner; picking fruits and vegetables we had grown ourselves and then spending time lovingly cooking them for ourselves or packaging them up proudly to sell at local shops; hearing feedback from people who had eaten and enjoyed our produce.  All these things seemed to be the total antithesis of a return to work in the hospitality trade.

I’ll be frank: had there been some way in which I could have continued my lockdown existence whilst retaining some form of financial solvency, it’s probable I would never have returned to my ‘proper’ work.  I was just too attached to the idyllic life I was leading.  But there wasn’t.  The cold, hard reality of growing is that it’s a massively tough (read: nigh-on impossible) industry.  To grow organically in a small space, as we were doing, the yields or the price (or both) need to be sky high.  This year I’m simply hoping to recoup most of the money I’ve put into the project (and maybe a contribution to the petrol costs). 

So I signed back on.  I returned to working in hospitality.  And it was tough.  Going from spending 12 hours a day outside to spending 12+ hours a day inside has been a major adjustment (despite the fact that I had done it for years before). Going from working at my own pace, pottering around the garden, deciding what little project I would undertake next to suddenly being in the middle of a frenetic 80 cover service was seemingly impossible to get my head around. 

 But there have been some major highlights. Returning to work has meant that the produce we have been growing over the last few months has a guaranteed home.  Whilst I am continuing to drop to Fowey Farm Shop on a weekly basis, Fitzroy has provided a home for huge quantities of the fruits and vegetables we are growing. 

Unless you’ve done it yourself, it’s almost impossible to explain the sheer joy that is cooking with (and, if possible, subsequently eating) produce you have grown yourself.  ‘Pride’ doesn’t quite cover it.  It’s a feeling of almost unrivalled, wholesome fulfilment which is further enhanced when people pick out specific things they have enjoyed from a meal (unprompted, might I add), and they’ve been grown by you. 

I’ve had to fall back in love with cooking professionally again.  I don’t suppose I was ever really out of love with it, it simply got displaced from my mind by the gardening project I had undertaken.  Falling back in love with cooking hasn’t meant I don’t miss spending time in my garden (I definitely have at least one eye on the end of the summer season when I can spend a little more time growing), but they’ve amalgamated into an even more entrenched appreciation of the food industry and everyone who works within it.