“If you see a massive pile of steaming compost, you’re in the right place”

I’ve arrived at Cinderwood Market Garden, and realise they weren’t being disingenuous with the “nothing fancy” claim on their website. I mean this as a compliment​​—such phrasing is often thrown around too readily these days, usually by slick big businesses trying too hard to be relatable. But you can’t be corporate or pretentious when the ‘car park’ is filled, quite literally, with shit. This is a working site after all, and exactly the kind of down-to-earth (how far can we take this?) welcome I’d expect from an endeavour that feels authentic and organic, in every sense of the word. 

It also brings us straight to the point of what they’re doing here. As head grower Michael Fitzsimmons explains to me, the key to producing the tastiest veg is in the soil. And Cinderwood, a one-acre market garden just north of Nantwich, is growing food for flavour. This is no agricultural behemoth mass-producing crops for maximum profits. Yet this little corner of a field in the middle of Chesire is having a big impact on the local food scene. 

The idea for Cinderwood came out of a fortuitous meeting back in 2018, between Michael and Joseph Otway, then head chef of A Restaurant Where the Light Gets In (previously Relæ and Blue Hill at Stone Barns). Michael was interning in the kitchen to explore how growers and chefs could better work together. Fast-forward to 2022 and Cinderwood is doing just that, directly supplying organic produce to chefs across Greater Manchester. Participating restaurants currently include the likes of Pollen, Honest Crust, Ramona, Primo Bagels, Isca and WTLGI, as well as a couple further afield such as Sheffield’s Bench and The Timberyard in Edinburgh.

This success is unsurprising considering the talent behind Cinderwood—Michael and Joe are joined in their endeavour by directors Richard Cossins (ex-Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Fera at Claridge’s and Roganic) and Daniel Craig Martin (ex-Noma and Blue Hill at Stone Barns). With time on their hands in the endless lockdown of 2020, they built the market garden by hand, from scratch, on an empty corner of Jane Oglesby’s regenerative livestock farm. It now boasts two polytunnels housing, at the time of my visit, mustard leaves, borlotti beans and the last of the season’s tomatoes. Outside are rows of celtuce, delicately beautiful radicchios and brassicas that seem almost Jurassic in appearance.

In line with regenerative principles, they hope to integrate livestock next year, with chickens and pigs introduced initially. In a real full-circle moment, the pigs that will munch on their crops to fertilise the soil will eventually also end up on the menu at Higher Ground, the restaurant owned by Joe, Richard and Daniel, which is set to open at a permanent site in 2023—Cinderwood already supplies their neighbourhood wine bar, Flawd. ‘Farm-to-table’ is no buzzword here. 

It’s unseasonably warm as we wander round, which means the cabbage planted for January is prematurely ready for harvest. Other challenges include finding pest-control solutions to save the purple sprouting broccoli, which came under attack from slugs last year. There’s a lot of trial and error, but it’s combined with a deep understanding, and respect for, the land that they’re working with. And the success of their ‘no-dig’ approach is evident in the flavour they’re getting out of their crops, despite Michael’s insistence they’re not doing anything wildly different from elsewhere—“it’s just great soil here”.

The team’s experience, professionalism and dedication to quality is of course key to the fact that Cinderwood produce is popping up on menus all over the city. But there is also a need for this kind of project, and particularly here; an area of the country rich in resources and arable land yet only recently emerging as a player on the global food scene.

Whilst the restaurant-with-adjoining-farm concept has become increasingly popularised in recent years, there are few places locally that supply to restaurants directly (as opposed to via a wholesaler), which allows for that symbiotic relationship between chef and grower to flourish. Michael admits this has been a challenge at times—chefs have become accustomed to being able to order what they want, when they want. Working with a small-scale garden requires more flexibility and creativity in the kitchen. But the pay-off is getting hyper-seasonal, local produce that is abundant in both flavour and nutrients. This is ideal for the growing number of restaurants working with daily or weekly changing menus that are dictated by the land, not the other way round. And there’s a growing clamour for this approach to food, and eating, to become the norm. 

If restaurants can—and they do—influence food trends outside the hospitality bubble, then what they’re doing at Cinderwood isn’t just about facilitating a tasty plate of food. It taps into more complex issues around food supply, demand and production, as well as how we interact with and sustain our environment amidst climate change and an ever-growing population. 

Manchester is, as Michael describes it, a ‘hungry beast’: neither its population or hospitality industry is getting any smaller. How we continue to feed people locally, and indeed globally, is an increasingly urgent question. It’s one of many challenges currently facing us that can seem overwhelming. Michael and I touched on the now well-worn subject of living with perpetual instability and what can feel like a relentlessly negative news cycle. But he was adamant that the way forward is not to indulge in pessimism or allow oneself to feel downtrodden, but to instead lead by positive example. Restaurants can be this example, leading the way in raising awareness about what good food is, where it comes from, what it takes to produce it, and how we move forwards with our food system.

Nothing new and nothing fancy maybe. But, without fuss or fanfare, Cinderwood is achieving much more than simply “good food, grown well”. 

Cinderwood Market Garden grows produce all year round using regenerative farming methods, delivering produce harvested less than 24 hours previously. Find out more here.