Coming out of the Kentish closet

When a week or two ago I ran the living off Kent produce idea past Stefano Cuomo at Macknade, he said he thought it was very achievable, but to succeed you would have to adapt. How right he was.

Doing this, you can't expect to walk into a shop, pick up oodles of goodies, go home, bung it in the oven and pop out a corker of a meal. This stuff needs thinking about and working at. It also takes up a lot of time.

So far we have been able to source a variety of meats, vegetables, fruit, cheeses, milk, fish, soft drinks, wine and eggs from just the local area, say within five miles of Faversham. But shopkeepers themselves don't make it easy, often it can really be a case of hunt the Kent item. Even some of the most hallowed of local produce food halls seem diffident about saying their products are from Kent. Rather, the weasly word “local” is ubiquitously sprayed across everything. Given local in the hands of some retailers is about as meaningful as “fresh” that really isn’t at all helpful

So, Lesson No. 2 - it’s high time good quality retailers came out of the Kentish closet and started labelling the produce clearly; if your goods are allegedly “local” why not say where it’s from more?

Thumbs ups all round so far to Macknade Fine Foods, Snoad Farm Meats, David Simmons and Bluey Walpole, who have come up with the goods, literally, in their respective fields.

Off today to resolve the Great Kent Butter Mystery, more on that tomorrow.