Organic focus: A sporting chance
OPEN UP the dictionary and you'll find a confusing myriad of definitions for 'organic'. Even the most straightforward in the context of food may not be understood by the growing number of punters for whom the term has a cache: "Pertaining to, involving, or grown with fertilisers or pesticides of animal or vegetable origin, as distinguished from manufactured chemicals" does not exactly trip off the tongue.
Nevertheless, the definition preferred by licensee Phil Harris is a simple recipe for success - one that has helped his pub the Sportsman to join the elite ranks of pubs with a Michelin star.
The tenant of the Shepherd Neame site in Seasalter, Kent, is "not into labels. Organic producers don't have to be accredited by the Soil Association or wherever, but have to realise that producing ethically and well makes sense."
Produce on the menu at the Sportsman is in the main sourced from suppliers - explicitly organic or otherwise - located within a few miles of the pub, which meets the pub's standards of sustainability under which Phil and brother Steve run their £600,000 a year turnover business.
They believe that these methods of production make for better food and bigger profits - not to mention clear consciences."We are keen that we should get as much as possible from what's around us. You should only buy seasonally. If you are doing that, you are eating when it's in glut wherever you are, so the price is lower," explains Phil. "To keep British food viable, we have got to pay a fair price, but that does not necessarily mean paying more, because you are buying it when it's natural to buy it."
Phil is almost obsessed with avoiding wastage. Many stories behind their dishes provide models of economy. The pub gets its salt from the nearby beach, literally scooping up seawater in buckets before evaporating it in the oven.
The Sportsman buys whole pigs, and one of its signature dishes is pork shoulder cured in this cheaply sourced salt. All the other cuts from the animal are vigilantly used too, of course.
To be as responsive to changing availability as the Sportsman is - often buying in just five or six portions of a fish, say - means a flexible approach is essential. In this respect, Phil believes that pubs have advantage over the competition.
"Pubs provide the perfect opportunity to serve food in this way," he says. "You can operate more cheaply in a pub.
"For a start, getting a tenancy from a brewer is much more of a cheap way of opening a food-led business than buying a restaurant. "And then, there are things like blackboards. Customers expect blackboards, rather than printed menus in the pub, so we can just use the board and have a rolling menu."
With the Sportsman closed on a Monday, the blackboard reads like a stock market on a Sunday - it constantly changes as perishable products run out. The end result is an empty fridge and zero waste.
If that approach sounds like a tough mouthful to swallow for a modern pub customer, they seem to have got used to it at the Sportsman. "Maybe 10 years ago, 10 per cent of the population cared about organic and sustainable food," says Phil. "Now that's swung round to maybe 40 per cent. We've set a goal to appeal to people in that bracket."
