Paul Burgalières, L’Enclume

Paul Burgalieres, Executive Chef of L’Enclume, how do you select your vegetables?

– About 80 percent of the vegetables comes from our own farm where we use organic methods. Apart from that, we try to work with smaller suppliers and have a good connection with them. Also, a former chef of ours has opened a farm in the south of the UK, using regenerative farming. It’s important to be able to trust people, and to be able to see for yourself where the beef and pork comes from.

How do you bond with your producer?

– We talk to them every single day when we see each other at the market. We also support local suppliers in various ways. For example, we have a milk supplier who would be paid too little when delivering butter to a big dairy company, so we let him deliver butter to us instead.

You have around 150 people working for you, across the restaurant group. Do they get any kind of sustainability training?

– Simon has created an academy for youngsters who want to come into the industry and work as chefs or waiters. They get to work in all of the restaurants for 4-6 months, and in addition to this they do 3-4 weeks at our farm. That way, they all learn about growing, harvesting and composting at the farm – which is all about sustainability.