Palmito - Building supplier relationships
Palmito is a 20 seater restaurant on the Brighton/Hove border serving eclectic fire cooked global flavours, utilising local suppliers. Owner and head chef Diego Ricaurte chatted to us about the concept behind Palmito, pairing global flavours with local British ingredients, sourced directly from primary producers.
What is the concept of Palmito?
My concept is global flavours in a local restaurant. I aim to bring the marketplace to my restaurant. We are a local restaurant, my dining room is 7 metres by 3 metres. The food I cook at Palmito is nothing out of this world. When people say, oh your cooking is amazing I say no it’s not, the produce I’m working with is amazing”.
I wanted to have a menu that would be very flexible. I wanted to cook with what I could find, and people either eat it or they don’t. It wasn’t even about cooking with the seasons, it was about cooking a daily menu so I had that flexibility. With that restraint, I built the concept.
Why is it so important to you to work directly with your producers?
Diego realised the importance of working directly with producers when he started connecting with his local food charities, including Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, who work to increase the access to healthy food for all.
This was a turning point for me. I realised if we are thinking about how to make our restaurants more sustainable, we have a social responsibility as well. Restaurants don’t make a lot of money you know, but by working in this way we are doing our part.
Obviously it tastes better and is better for the land, but that, for me, is obvious. I do it because in my country, in Ecuador, in South America, you buy everything that is local. You go to Italy, to France, everything in Europe and everything is local, we need to get back to those roots.
How does this way of working stack up financially?
As chefs we need to stop equating good quality food with fine dining. I’m not a fine dining restaurant. My prices are affordable because of our way of working, cooking, procuring and because of our focus on seasonality and locality. Financially long term it makes complete sense as well. I have faith in my community, those people who come to eat every month. It really really works. But I put in those hours to build those relationships with my producers, this is really important.
How do you go about finding your primary producers?
Diego came across his first veg supplier through his local household veg box scheme. This is a great place to start. Other ways to find suppliers in your local area include:
Instagram! Many growers and farmers are on Instagram these days.
Visiting your local farm shops.
Local food charities and food partnerships - these folk are embedded in your local community and connected to many local farmers and growers who are doing great things.
Diego explained to us how he started connecting with more growers in his area.
I started to go to little barns where they sell produce, I would talk directly to the grower and buy their stuff, no agenda, take it home and eat it. Then I would message them, always thank them and then mention I have a restaurant, maybe I would like to buy some things from you and I would like to buy them directly. I’d buy a little bit and ask what else they were growing. You need to show you’re interested.
How do you build relationships with your growers and farmers?
It starts very small, just trial, and see how it can work for both of you. It’s very important to me to listen to them, to hear how they work and how much they can supply me. With one supplier, I maybe only bought herbs from her once a month, she was getting used to working with restaurants, but now she sells to me every week. Adaptability and patience is so rewarding, because once the produce arrives it’s really really good.
Not everyone is going to want to work with you, I think that’s very important, to understand this. A lot of people will not. Not everyone wants to sell to restaurants, but it’s part of the journey and you still get to meet amazing people.
To be able to build those relationships and keep trust with those producers you need to say ‘I will support you and adapt to what you have’, and what they have is amazing anyways.
How do you work with your suppliers?
I always ask the questions, how can you deliver this to me, what is the easiest way, how can I help you? What is the minimum order? And I always say to them, if you don’t have something this week, I don’t mind because I change my menu. I think that a lot of small producers struggle with working with chefs because of their lack of flexibility, but I think if we chefs approach things with an open mind, we can end up building really strong relationships.
For example, today there are so many tomatoes around and one of my suppliers said, I’ve got 5kgs, do you want them? That’s a huge saving for me as I get them at a discounted rate, and I just adapted my menu, and I think it makes me happy because it’s how old school market trading used to work. I help you, you help me. It’s not about the money but about making sure we’re growing the food in our community and people are getting access to the food, at the restaurant, the school or at home.
You don’t need to have a big budget behind you, you don’t need to have a big name, you don’t need to be a big chef, or have won awards to do this.
You are a tiny kitchen and a tiny restaurant, how do you make this work for you?
As a chef, if you have flexibility in the way your kitchen works then limitations like growers only delivering once a week is not a problem, in fact it’s better, because you’re working more with the produce.
At the moment, I have a friend who is a fermenter. I am talking to my suppliers, because right now produce is plentiful. I am going to buy a lot of produce for the winter. I have changed one part of my restaurant for the moment, even though it’s very small, into a fermenting area and we’re going to ferment a lot of stuff for the winter. I’m going to buy in bulk, so I will get it a little bit cheaper from the growers, and I will be able to use pickling and fermenting to get us through the winter months so we aren’t just eating turnips over January and February, but things like fermented tomatoes as well. This is a way to not be restricted. This is not a new thing, it’s how people did it in the past, and how it is still happening all over Eastern Europe.
“I think that a lot of small producers struggle with working with chefs because of their lack of flexibility, but I think if we chefs approach things with an open mind, we can end up building really strong relationships.”
The importance of farm visits
It’s very important for chefs not to just stay in the kitchen. Even if you have very good suppliers, it’s important to question them. Go and see your suppliers, go and see their land. At the same time, you realise, all this investment pays off. It does take a little bit more time at the beginning, but then you realise that you are getting a better product without the inflated prices of a wholesaler. You’ll figure out a working schedule around it, it’s totally worth it, for us anyway. It’s really nice because other restaurants around Brighton are starting to work this way. It’s so important to share that knowledge. I’m so happy to share my suppliers with other restaurants, whenever somebody asks me. We are gaining as an industry and the consumer is gaining and the supplier is gaining, we’re not buying tomatoes from Spain anymore, we’re buying local tomatoes.
“When you have time off as an executive or head chef, get out there to the countryside. There is so much going on. Talk about food and the love you have for food.
How do you combine local British ingredients with the global flavours you use?
Diego discussed the importance of maintaining cultural diversity in cooking, and how this can be done whilst still working seasonally with local British produce.
I still use turnips, but I give them a global influence. Okay, it’s turnip season, it’s squash season. How can we best adapt this local vegetable and match it with Latin American and Southern Indian flavours? I do go to international shops. I’m not cooking 100% British ingredients. But we’re still celebrating all local growers and we’re still sticking to what we do at Palmito.
What are other benefits of working directly with your suppliers?
The nutritional value is incredible, but also importantly, we are building a local food economy. All that can grow near us is beef and all the abattoirs around us have closed, and so the farmers have to take their meat out of Sussex and then they sell their meat to other counties. There are only two abattoirs left, so I work with one of them. I buy the whole animal, it goes directly to my butcher. My butcher is happy to work with the goat farmer because he knows me and I trust him. We are all small businesses making it work. This way of working is interesting to people and we get more business out of it, and then more people are starting to eat Sussex Goat.
When you build relationships with growers, they are able to give you a whole year’s calendar of what they’re going to be growing. This way, you can plan ahead for the whole year.
Sustainability begins at the farm
One of the growers I’m working with, she’s not certified organic though the practices she uses are organic. Her next step is to get that certification. I’m not going to not buy from her because she doesn’t have it yet, it’s the opposite. I’m thinking, I’m following her journey as well. I know how amazing her plot looks from last year to this year, and how much abundance there is. It’s about thinking about the whole food journey. All the things people are talking about, sustainability, less-waste, it all stems from the farm. When I see these farms, I think okay, I can also change my ways a little bit. These journeys and outcomes build organically, there’s no right or wrong.
A few years down the line, how are your relationships with your producers evolving?
We’re working on a lot of things. There are some ingredients I really like using, and over the winter, when we all have less work, I can have conversations with my growers and say, can you grow lots of these types of chillies for me, which are exotic, or this specific herb. They can incorporate this into their planning. Maybe they can put aside an area of their plot, where I can pay them for growing these specific things.
Any final words of encouragement for chefs?
I think there are so many chefs who are really progressive and really care. The most important thing is community, this is a way to build community and to gain business. People understand, once they taste they understand. Use the produce, tell the story and the customers will make up their own mind.