There’s a version of the seasonal eating argument that’s become a bit of a talking point — a virtue being performed rather than a genuine practice. We’d rather be direct about what it actually means to us and why it shapes the menu in real, practical ways.
The flavour argument
A tomato in August, grown outdoors and picked ripe, has nothing in common with a tomato in February, grown under glass and picked before it was ready to withstand shipping. They share a name and little else.
The same applies to most vegetables and fruit. Asparagus in May is crisp, sweet and worth featuring. Asparagus in November is woody and largely pointless. Leeks in winter are genuinely excellent — underrated, versatile and full of flavour. Leeks in July are worse in every way.
When we design the menu, we start with the question of what’s actually good right now. Not what’s technically available — almost everything is technically available year-round — but what’s genuinely worth cooking with at this moment.
The best seasonal produce costs less, travels less, and tastes better. These three things are almost never simultaneously true of out-of-season ingredients.
How this shapes the menu
In practice, it means the menu changes more in some weeks than others. The shift from late winter to early spring is dramatic — suddenly there are forced rhubarb, blood oranges and the first of the purple sprouting broccoli, and we want to use all of them. The transition from summer to autumn brings roots, squash and brassicas, which suit the long, slow cooking we enjoy most.
We do use some produce year-round — onions, garlic, dried pulses, tinned tomatoes (which are picked and processed at peak season), dried herbs and grains. These are foundation ingredients whose quality doesn’t depend on time of year.
What we don’t do
We don’t use seasonal eating as an excuse to be restrictive. If a dish genuinely requires an ingredient that isn’t in season locally, we’ll use it and not pretend otherwise. A Thai green curry needs lemongrass and galangal; a laksa needs good coconut milk. These aren’t local or seasonal in any meaningful sense, and that’s fine.
The goal is to let what’s genuinely good at any given moment lead the menu — not to follow a principle for its own sake.
March is actually one of our favourite months in the kitchen. There’s a seriousness to the available produce — root vegetables reaching their end, the last of the winter greens, the very beginning of spring. It demands proper cooking. We enjoy that constraint.