Every morning at 5:30 AM, before the rest of the city stirs, our kitchen receives its first delivery. Not from a distributor — from the farmers themselves. This is not a romantic detail. It is the bedrock of everything we do.
Our morning market delivery, sourced from 14 partner farms within 100 miles of Extrazcon.
The Problem with Year-Round Availability
Modern supply chains have made it possible to eat strawberries in December, asparagus in October, and butternut squash in May. They are available. They are red and green and visually perfect. But taste them alongside a strawberry picked at peak ripeness in June, and the difference is not subtle — it is devastating.
Industrial out-of-season produce is harvested early, ripened artificially with ethylene gas, and shipped thousands of miles. The nutritional content is compromised. The flavour profile is flattened. And the dishonesty of the plate — presenting something as if it were what it should be — offends everything our kitchen stands for.
"A great ingredient needs no apology and very little interference. The chef's job is simply not to ruin it." — Marco Riva, Executive Chef
How Seasonal Cooking Changes the Menu
Our menu changes every six weeks — a cadence that aligns with the meaningful transitions of British and European growing seasons. In practice, this means our kitchen team is in constant creative dialogue with the calendar:
- Early spring brings wild garlic, morels, and the first English asparagus — fleeting and precious, worth celebrating immediately.
- Summer peaks with stone fruit, heritage tomatoes, and courgette flowers that are best eaten within hours of harvest.
- Autumn is our richest season: game, truffles, root vegetables, and the mushrooms that transform a simple broth into something transcendent.
- Winter invites us to braise, cure, and preserve — to work with citrus, cavolo nero, celeriac, and the warming depth of long-cooked stocks.
Building Relationships with Growers
We currently source from 14 partner farms and two fishing vessels. These are not vendor relationships — they are friendships built over years of trust. We visit their land. We understand their challenges. We commit to buying their produce even when yields are low and prices are high, because loyalty flows both ways.
James Whitfield at Whitfield Family Farm supplies our heritage brassicas and salad leaves. His soil is extraordinary — the result of 30 years of biodynamic farming. When he tells us the cabbages are exceptional this season, we build a dish around them. Not the other way around.
At home, the simplest way to eat seasonally is to shop at your local farmers' market and only buy what you cannot identify by name. The unfamiliar is almost always what's at its peak — and the vendor will always tell you how to cook it.
The Impact on Our Dishes
The clearest way to understand the impact of this philosophy is to compare a dish across seasons. Take our roasted carrot starter — a dish we have reinvented eight times across eight seasons. In April, it features sweet baby carrots with wild garlic oil and ricotta. By August, heritage varieties turn the same concept into a caramelised riot of colour and heat. In December, slow-roasted purple carrots with spiced brown butter and hazelnuts become something almost unrecognisably different — and equally extraordinary.
This is what seasonal cooking actually means: not restriction, but invitation. The season dictates the mood, the technique, the pairing. The chef's craft lies in listening closely enough to hear it.
A Note on Sustainability
Seasonal sourcing is not merely a culinary philosophy — it is an environmental one. Short supply chains mean dramatically reduced carbon footprints. Supporting small farms preserves biodiversity and resists the homogenisation of food culture. Eating what is available locally and seasonally is, in our view, a fundamental expression of care for the world we all share.
We are proud that 90% of our ingredients travel fewer than 100 miles. We are prouder still that the 10% which don't — specialty items like Sicilian olive oil, Japanese yuzu, or Madagascan vanilla — are sourced from small producers whose practices align with ours.