Origins Harriet Mansell

Tucked behind Lyme Regis restaurant Lilac, the Garden Table will serve wild food in a woodland setting. Chef-founder Harriet reflects on how riverbank picnics and a fondness for foraging inspired its launch. Interview by Rachel Walker.

Devon

There were just 11 of us when I started at Bendarroch School in Aylesbeare. It allowed for an individual approach and enormous sense of freedom: picnics on the grass, by a stream, on the edge of woodland – it taught me a lasting connectivity with nature.

Korean rice cakes

My family hosted overseas students from Sidmouth International School – often there’d be a girl sharing my room in summer. Mum helped them cook dishes that tasted of home: proper sugo pasta sauce, fondue, Korean rice cakes. It expanded my horizons beyond my small town and opened my eyes to new flavours.

Seafood linguine

I had weekend jobs in Sidmouth from the age of 12: at a fruit and veg shop, cafés – the best was a wine bar and restaurant called Browns. The food was epic. It wasn’t anything you’d consider that revolutionary now, but it at the time it felt progressive. I remember a sweet potato soup with Asian flavours running through it, and this totally delicious seafood linguine that was just cooked so nicely, with such care.

W i l d f o o d

I’ve always been aware of strong hedgerow flavours, but as an adult I’ve started to forage with intention. I know what I want and where to get it. It’s my biggest source of inspiration: a patch of wild garlic to flavour flatbread, garnished with three-cornered leek flowers.

Conch

I entered the Antigua Concours de Chef yacht chef competition and I made this dish using conch with coriander, ginger lime and chilli fritters. Of course, provisioners can source anything you want, but my interest was always in the ingredients from where we were sailing. That day, I’d also bought some wild spinach on the peripheries of a market in Antigua to use in a traditional ‘chop up breakfast’ and I’m sure it was that localism that helped swing it.

Mêlé cider

My biggest takeaway from doing Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) training was honing in on how to smell and taste, using it to identify micro-details. I lost my sense of smell when I got Covid and I went back to the techniques I’d learned – smelling everything I could. When it returned it felt like being born again and it amplified my quest for tracking down interesting and unexpected drinks menu options – a current favourite is Find & Foster Mêlé cider made from 100 per cent Devon apples.

The best meal of my life

I did a stage at Noma and the kitchen was unlike any other I’d stepped into, so process-driven. Until then, I’d broadly relied on heat to extract flavour – suddenly here’s this team harnessing lengthy, cold-fermentation processes. René was a guest on my podcast If a Tree Falls recently and said, ‘Fundamentally there’s only so many things you can do with a wild onion.’ His insistence on constantly challenging the status quo is why Noma was hands-down the best meal of my life.

T h a i l a n d

I served at a Thai monastery in Koh Lanta last year and I’m going on a meditative retreat to north Thailand near the Myanmar border later this year. Periods of quiet reflection help shift my perception – even if it’s doing some lino-cutting or calligraphy, it’s these times when I’m softer, quieter, more present that I start to channel a very different creative energy.

Nick Phillips

The founder of Grown Up Mushrooms, Nick Phillips, was another of my podcast guests (the premise is that I go for a walk with a wild food expert and we just see where it takes us). Nick and I came across a cep spot, so I now have dried cep powder in the restaurant. I’m endlessly inspired by the passion and expertise of people who I’ve been lucky enough to meet, like ethnobotanical food researcher Robin Harford and medical herbalist Alex Laird.