Dining · 5 min read
A Menu Without a Plan
Head Chef, Peace Glory · 19 January 2026
Our kitchen does not decide what to cook until the morning harvest is in. Here is how that actually works in practice.
Most restaurant kitchens work backwards from a fixed menu: decide the dishes, then order what they require. We work forwards from whatever the farm hands over at seven in the morning, which is a considerably less comfortable way to run a kitchen.
The morning handover
The growers bring in what is genuinely at its best that day — not what is merely available, which is a different and much longer list. Sometimes that is a glut of one thing. Sometimes it is a difficult scatter of small quantities.
- Whatever peaked overnight leads the menu
- Gluts become preserves, ferments and stock for the weeks ahead
- Anything imperfect goes to staff meal, never to waste
- Trimmings and peelings return to the compost windrows the same day
The discipline this imposes is useful. Cooking becomes a response rather than an execution, and the team has become far better at improvising than they were when a printed menu protected them from having to.
A tomato picked this morning does not need much help. Most of our job is knowing when to stop.
Guests occasionally ask to see a menu in advance and we cannot provide one, which is a genuine inconvenience we accept. What we can promise is that nothing on the plate travelled far, and most of it did not travel at all.
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