We chatted to Ivan, Native Head Chef and Co-Founder, to find out all about their ethos and commitment to sustainability.
What’s your story?
Mine was not the traditional pathway into being a chef or restaurant owner. I studied business at university where I
decided that I wanted to work for myself after being made redundant as a recruitment consultant during the 2008 banking crises.
A born and bred Londoner, I fell in love with the countryside and the wild produce available which I knew very little about as a child. We started Native as a street food stall and a way of offering city folk like me the chance to eat wild produce that is native to the UK. I managed to secure work at The River Cottage in Devon, where I worked under some great chefs like Gelf Alderson, Andy Tyrell, Steve Lamb and Gill Mellor. I also worked at the world, renowned, Michelin-starred Blue Hill farm at Stones Barns in upstate New York under Dan Barber. This place was mind-blowing, and an absolute inspiration to my own restaurant.
Bar the experiences above, 99% of my career has been on the-job learning, but the beauty of this is that I have not been confined to traditional restaurant conventions. I have always been able to think outside of the box and create dishes, with nobody to tell me that’s wrong. Eight years down the line I think and I hope people are still enjoying my food.
How would you describe the ethos of Native?
At Native we let the land dictate to us what we serve. We are inspired by the fields, coasts, forests, and urban landscapes of the UK. For us, regenerative farming and foraged produce are always at the forefront but most importantly we are here to produce great food. From day one we have always set out to create a restaurant that we wanted to eat at ourselves.
What inspires your cooking?
We have a saying “What grows together goes together.” For example, rhubarb and rosemary are two of the first things we have available to us in the winter and they pair wonderfully. I often take inspiration from the diets of the animals we are serving or the ecosystems they live in. It is important for us not to put stress on the food chain and so a further source of inspiration can come from how we minimise the waste we produce from a product or how we incorporate parts of its farming process into our restaurant.
Can you explain a bit about your foraging and sourcing process?
When foraging we always abide by the rule of 3: pick a 3rd, leave a 3rd for the animals and leave a 3rd for next year.
With sourcing food and drink we believe in doing the right thing, not the easy thing. We have an in depth procurement policy available on our website but in general we look to choose suppliers who understand our industry’s impact on the Earth and who want to fix the food chain, like Rathfinny.
What ingredients do you look forward to cooking with this time of year?
Its a wonderful time of year to use some amazing blossoms and wild herbs. Obviously we have elderflowers popping out everywhere, but there are also some beautiful Woodruff flowers to be discovered as well as pineapple weed that grow in the cities as well as the fields.
