From garden fork to dining fork in a matter of hours: fresh, seasonal ingredients are a serious matter for us at The White Hart at Fyfield.

Though most restaurants and gastropubs extol the virtues of cooking with seasonal, locally-grown ingredients, few can boast a menu brimming with produce picked daily from their own kitchen garden.

With a dedicated plot bursting with fruit and vegetables for every season, we can really shout about a menu centred around food that grows right on our doorstep.

Summer is an exciting and busy time of year for our green-fingered staff, so tending the garden produce and stock-piling excess crops for the months ahead are a priority. As owners, Mark and I, are passionate about the provenance of our ingredients, and it doesn’t get more local than the bountiful crops picked fresh from the garden. Our ethos centres around making the most of the produce on our doorstep – using local farmers and suppliers, growing our own produce and even utilising locally sourced wild ingredients.

Mark (chef owner) has been recently joined at the helm by head chef James Wilkinson, formerly of the Michelin-starred Black Swan at Oldstead, North Yorkshire. James worked alongside Tommy Banks, Britain’s youngest Michelin-starred chef, for the last six years and came to The White Hart bursting with ideas and much experience of foraging and utilising the countryside produce around him. Together, Mark and James make a dynamic team.

Mark loves the summer and the flavours it brings. Seeing our allotment bursting with produce causes real excitement amongst the chefs. We are already picking spinach, baby carrots, radishes, courgettes, broad beans, beetroots, rhubarb and much more. Our menus are designed around what we have in our garden and what’s available from local suppliers which keeps our carbon footprint low. Everyone is a winner.

For example, James has been gathering meadowsweet from nearby meadows, which he has dehydrated into a powder and stored in jars, ready to add to sauces, puddings and cocktails. Local hedgerows also provide us with an abundance of elderflowers, which we gather to make elderflower cordial, seasonal cocktails and puddings.

The front of house team are busy making home-grown rhubarb into rhubarb syrup to use with the wild elderflower cordial in a variety of seasonal cocktails and drinks.

We grow lavender, bay leaves, rosemary, mint and basil, which complement the different gins. Customers love the fact that we dash out to the garden to pick the garnish as we prepare the drink.

So our new seasonal tasting menu for summer is based on the ingredients in our garden and from trusted local suppliers, as well as local customers who bring in their garden booty. Come and try it out for a taste of summer.

whitehart-fyfield.com/01865 390585