James Rogers manager of the Pointer in Brill talks about its new Big Pig Gig

I took over the management of The Pointer in Brill at the beginning of August. Prior to taking on the position I met with the owners David and Fiona several times to discuss their vision for the famous pub and became infected by their passion for The Pointer.

David and Fiona started this journey 15 years ago with a small holding in their back garden and it has since grown to 150 acres.

From growing vegetables, all the way through to a 120 head of longhorn cattle, middle white, kune kune and Tamworth pigs, as well as our newest addition – a flock of Hampshire down sheep, the idea has always been about provenance of ingredients from their home.

Four years ago the village pub (previously the Red Lion) was up for sale and David and Fiona saw this as an opportunity to find another outlet for the produce from the farm, and an opportunity to introduce others to fabulous produce.

The Pointer has gone from strength to strength over the last four years and has now entered a new chapter in its history. Whilst still retaining the ‘local’ feel, it’s now time for us to broaden our horizons and push The Pointer as far as we can.

When David and Fiona appointed me as general manager, and talked about its future, I had 1,000 ideas in my head as to how best to take this forward, and events are a great way to showcase what we can offer and show the public what we are about. I couldn’t think of any better way of demonstrating this than starting with the Big Pig Gig.

The idea is simple. Take one pig from our farm (in this case a rare breed middle white) then task our head chef, Mini Patel to compose a menu utilising every portion of the animal. This is something we do every day, either through the restaurant as an a la carte dish on our menu, the blackboards in the pub at lunch time with a pulled pork bap, or sold in our own butchers. We treat our animals with the best care and then follow that through right to the plate. I can honestly say that the pork coming from our own farm is by far the best I have ever eaten. The Big Pig Gig is a natural extension of this ethos.

Mini and I sat down with a scrap of paper and started to brainstorm ideas. There is a lot to think about when doing an event like this, the general public are still a little squeamish when it comes to meat and offal is not always appreciated for what it is.

We talked about the dishes and the execution and decided if we just entitled the dish ‘kidney’ we could put a lot of people off. We decided instead to incorporate this into the dishes in a more imaginative way, and, for example, added a proportion of kidney into the sausage roll mix. We also had the tough decision of how to use the whole animal and decided a tasting menu would allow Mini to use a variety of cuts and introduce his own twists on classic British pork dishes.

So, on Wednesday August 5, The Pointer will be hosting their first Nose to Tail evening. They’ll be serving up one whole pig, from trotters to tail and everything in between through head chef Mini Patel’s bespoke five-course tasting menu. The menu is priced £50 per person and early booking is highly recommended as tables will be limited.

Please e-mail manager@thepointerbrill.co.uk to book.

The response so far has been fantastic, and hopefully is the first of many events to come.