Ashcombe Farm
Chew Valley, 11 miles
Kate and Marcus grow for about a dozen kitchens. Boxes land Tuesday and Friday, and whatever is in them decides half the menu. In August that means more tomatoes than any restaurant can sensibly use.
About
Nell Harkin opened Fen and Field in 2019 in the old ironmonger's on Chandos Road, with a second hand stove, thirty-four chairs that did not match, and a standing order from a market garden in the Chew Valley.
The chef
She cooked in Bath and then in London for eleven years, and came back to Bristol because a friend told her about a shop unit with a good extraction system and a bad landlord.
The first menu had six dishes on it because that was all the second hand stove could handle. It has grown since, but not by much. Nell still writes the carte on a Monday morning after the Ashcombe delivery, still works the pass five nights a week, and still refuses to put a steak on the menu that has not been aged in the fridge downstairs.
The cooking is modern British in the plain sense of the phrase. Things are grown or caught nearby, they are cooked over fire or in butter, and they arrive looking like themselves. There is no foam. There was one, briefly, in 2021, and we do not talk about it.
If a dish needs three paragraphs of explanation from the waiter, it is not finished yet.
Nell Harkin, head chef and co-owner
Sourcing
We are not going to pretend everything comes from within thirty miles. The olives do not. But the things that matter, the meat, the fish, the vegetables and the dairy, come from people we have met, and mostly from people we can drive to inside an hour.
Chew Valley, 11 miles
Kate and Marcus grow for about a dozen kitchens. Boxes land Tuesday and Friday, and whatever is in them decides half the menu. In August that means more tomatoes than any restaurant can sensibly use.
Mendips, 19 miles
Hereford cattle, grass fed, slow grown. We take a forequarter at a time and age the sirloin forty-five days in the fridge downstairs, which is why the Sunday beef tastes like beef.
Brixham day boats, 78 miles
Whatever came in that morning, packed at the quay and on our step by half nine. Some days that is plaice and some days it is gurnard, and the menu does what it is told.
Somerset levels, 26 miles
Cream, milk and the cultured butter we salt overnight and serve with the bread. Their cheddar has been on the cheese board since the week we opened.
Failand, 7 miles
Herbs, salad leaves, wild garlic in the spring and sea buckthorn in the autumn. Delivered in the back of a Volvo estate by a man who gives you the weather forecast, asked for or not.
Downstairs, 0 miles
Bread, vinegars, vermouth, ferments, ice cream and the ginger beer. Anything we can make better than we can buy, we make, and anything we cannot, we buy from someone good.
The building
Number 42 was Chandos Hardware for fifty-one years. The tiled floor at the front is the original, and so is the run of drawers behind the bar, which now holds napkins and corkscrews instead of washers.
We took the ceiling out to get the height back, put in the arched window at the rear, and left the rest alone. The room seats thirty-four, which is small enough that one person can look after the whole floor on a quiet Tuesday and large enough to be properly busy on a Friday. Upstairs, the Long Room seats eighteen around a single oak table.
It is warm, it is a bit loud when full, and the lighting is deliberately low. Several people have told us they cannot read the menu. There is a large print menu behind the bar, and we are sorry.
See the room in the galleryThe team
We pay above the real living wage, split service equally across kitchen and floor, and close on Mondays so everyone gets two days together. When there is a job, it goes on this page first.
How we do things
Not the other way round. If the fish is not right on Thursday, the fish dish comes off on Thursday.
Ten per cent, discretionary, split across everyone including the kitchen porters. Ask and we will show you the breakdown.
The table is yours for the evening. It costs us covers and it is worth it.
Two starters and two mains, at least one vegan, cooked by the same person who cooks the beef.
Forty bottles that Ruth has drunk and can talk about, rather than two hundred nobody can.
Tables for two to twenty
The best introduction is a Tuesday. It is quieter, the menu is brand new that morning, and Nell has time to talk.
Or ring the restaurant on 0117 496 0148, Tuesday to Saturday from 10am.