Chef to Watch: Liam Fitzpatrick, Head Chef of Our Farm

Eager to promote and develop Britain’s food culture, Liam Fitzpatrick head chef of Our Farm, is looking to change attitudes through foraging, preserving and pickling, building his reputation as the Pickle Prince.

Liam started his career at the age of 15, working originally in front of house before moving into the kitchen, where he worked as a pot washer.

"My uncle owned a furniture shop and he built a restaurant on the side of it. I started working there at weekends, in front of house first, and then one thing led to another and I ended up in the kitchen washing pots," explained Liam.

It wasn’t long before Liam was taking on more responsibilities in the kitchen and working in numerous pubs and restaurants across the North of England, including The Box Tree in Ilkley, before attempting to work as a chef in Italy.

"My girlfriend's parents live in Italy so we used to go out there quite a lot and I tried to go out there to get work, but no one wants an Englishman working in an Italian restaurant it seems, so that didn't work very well,” he explained.

Upon returning to the UK, Liam took up a position at The Chester Grosvenor before moving on to Simon Rogan’s now three Michelin-starred L’Enclume in 2014, where he stayed for three years before being appointed sous chef at Rogan & Co.

Describing what Rogan & Co was like when he joined, Liam said: "Tom Barnes came to the company after he had been away at Geranium. We got a Michelin star, and it all took off from there."

After Rogan & Co won its Michelin star, it wasn’t long before Liam was appointed head chef of the restaurant, a position he held until before becoming head chef of Simon’s new venture Our Farm.

Talking about his experience working with Simon and Tom, Liam said: "It's testament that I'm still here really. This year will have been nine years with the company and it's the place that I've stayed the longest. It's where I feel like home now, I think I'm an adopted country boy and it's where I've learned the most of my career off Simon, and off Tom, so I basically owe them everything to where they are now, along with a bit hard work along the way."

OUR FARM

Located in the Cartmel Valley, Our Farm was established in 2011 with Simon and his team building the farm from scratch, with the main aim of creating a world-leading natural and sustainable growing operation, providing premium quality produce across the entire restaurant group.

Describing his role at Our Farm, Liam said: "My role day to day is working with the chefs in the restaurants along L'Enclume, Rogan & Co, Aulis etc. and trying to decide what's used where and helping to create menus.”

Our Farm now provides 80 percent of produce used across Simon’s UK-based restaurants and grows multiple varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, young plants and shoots. The size of the farm has tripled since it was first established, to include the addition of both chickens and bees - to produce a closed system, where the animal waste is returned to the land.

In 2021, Our Farm took a further step towards zero waste with the introduction of composters.

“Anything that's not being used, or any excess is then preserved and kept for the winter. I've got fridges down at our unit in Flookburgh full of fermented cabbages from last year, and fermented beans and things like that, and this year is the first year we’ve started doing demos at the farm," explained Liam.

From July 2023, Our Farm will begin inviting guests onto the farm for dinners, highlighting the group’s range of produce and Liam’s show stopping cooking.

"This year is the first year we've got to venture into doing dinners at the farm. I'm currently building the area, it's going to be a barbecue with 16 people around the table cooking things from where you're sat basically, eating what's around, taking bits from the restaurants that are classed as off cuts, or fat rendered down from meat in the restaurant,” he explained.

FORAGING, PICKLING, AND PRESERVING

With nearly a decade’s worth of experience working for the Simon Rogan Group, Liam’s style as a chef is defined by utilising the wide range of naturally occurring herbs and produce synonymous with the UK.

Describing his style and how Simon’s work has influence his cooking, Liam said: "Using natural ingredients that you've grown yourself, super local, seasonal; I think that's been a bit of a cliché in the last couple of years, grow your own and things like that, but I think with Simon being a pioneer of that in this country we really need to own it. This is the future of cooking."

Known as the ‘Pickle Prince’ across the group, Liam’s favourite dishes are ones that combine separate meat and vegetarian elements to create rich and rustic flavours, which celebrate the best of British.

Revealing some of his favourite dishes to cook, Liam said: "I'll take for instance a cabbage but cook it in animal fat, so instead of just getting a piece of meat and cooking it on the grill, there's more thought going into it. It's like how can I take this humble cabbage and elevate it using ingredients that would otherwise not be used, like the fat from an animal normally just goes in the bin once it's prepped down."

CHANGING THE COUNTRY’S FOOD CULTURE

Looking to the future, Liam is staying with the group thanks to Simon and Tom giving him the scope to forge his own role and take on more responsibilities, as well as pushing the boundaries of modern British modern gastronomy.

Explaining his aims for the future, Liam revealed that he wants the philosophy of his, and the group, to be the norm for the industry.

"We've seen the prices of things recently go through the roof, food-wise, and just costs in general. If we can manage it from when it goes into the grounds when it goes onto the plate I think that's the way forward in this industry,” he said.

Talking about the importance of celebrating the UK’s traditional approach to food, Liam said: "It's a cornerstone of the culinary world in this country, it's been happening for hundreds of years before we got hold of it, it's how we used to survive. I really think to build our food culture across Europe, which most European countries look down on us like France and Spain, that our food culture is not great, but we have we just need to reawaken ourselves with what we've got around us."