Slow Food.

If you come and visit us at Open House, you might notice a sign that hangs above our menu boards as you enter.

It says "Slow Food".

Quite a few of our customers have enquired about it. In our modern world where everything seems to be getting faster and faster, isn't it a little strange to be proclaiming to the world that you may have to wait for your food?

I was once told that if you wanted to show somebody that they were important to you, and that you cared, you should make them a home-cooked meal.

That really stuck with me, and I've given it a lot of thought over the years.

When you think about it, the physical act of creating something for another is a rare thing indeed these days.

In a culinary world that often seems dominated by convenience - Deliveroo, Just Eat, fast food, frozen meals; many people don't even feel like they have the time to cook for themselves, let alone others.

Spending the time, intention, and care to create a meal for another person with your own hands, knowing that they will take that meal into their body is one of the most connecting and intimate things I can imagine.

Imagine this; that meal when ingested will cause a chain reaction of physical events. Your body can't help but react to the food. Eventually this will result in the release of neurotransmitters in the brain to make you feel positive (hopefully) emotions such as satisfaction, happiness, joy, or even bliss. As a cook you have the ability to make your diner really feel.

We believe that food is so important to our wholebeing; to our experience of being human.

And that's not even considering the powerful associations our mind makes between taste and memory. Smell and nostalgia. Cooking someone the right meal can literally make their bodies remember their childhood, and make them feel loved. Make them feel cared for.

So when we say "Slow Food", what we mean is that we choose to be intentional about the food we serve. We take our time with it. Because we know that it is important. Because we care.

Another saying I've heard since my childhood is "You are what you eat".

And even though it is often passed off as just something your mom told you, when you think about it, it is literally true. All those molecules, all those atoms and elements in the food you eat, will literally become part of you. Your cells, your muscle fibres, your neurones and neurotransmitters. They will all be made partly from the food you eat today.

It certainly makes you think doesn't it?

And that's why we also care where our ingredients come from. We want to show as much care and intention in the sourcing of our ingredients as we do in the cooking of our food.

I've written here before about our steady journey towards providing organic produce and using local suppliers and how happy we are with the progress we are making.

Today marks another milestone in that journey, as for the first time we took a delivery of produce from our very own Kitchen Garden (down at 10 Trees Garden in Bamford), grown with love and care by our own team.

Considering we only started thinking about growing our own produce last winter, I'm amazed and so proud of how far we've come. In our minds, growing our own produce, to prepare and cook meals for others is one of the most caring and loving things we can do for ourselves and our community.

Is it convenient? No.
Is it cheaper? Definitely No.
But is it soulful? Is it important? Yes, we believe it is.

We still have much to learn. Figuring out how to supply the Open House kitchen all year round is going to be a wonderful challenge for us. And we can't wait to share the journey with you.

And so our "Slow Food" is in fact getting even slower. It will take months at a time to grow from seed and soil through to harvesting for your plate. But I think it will be worth the wait. 

André