Will Devlin – Food for Thought
In a fecund corner of England is a holding too big to be an allotment and too small to be a farm. Here, pigs roll in muck, chickens and ducks roam freely, bees get drunk on nectar from the blooming meadows, and various fruit and vegetables ebb and flow as the seasons shift. This particular holding is chef Will Devlin’s little slice of paradise.
Devlin is the chef-patron of The Small Holding in Kilndown, Kent. In just one acre of land, he grows and harvests over 180 varieties of fruit and vegetables, rears his own animals, makes his own charcuterie, keeps bees for honey, and even forages oyster, shiitake and enoki mushrooms for his restaurant. After investing everything he had into turning an old pub into a restaurant, The Small Holding has since become a torchbearer of “farm-to-fork” cuisine. In 2021, the restaurant won a Green Michelin Star, an award given to restaurants with an exceptional focus on sustainability.
Devlin started out as a mechanic’s apprentice, where he would fix tyres by day and make homemade bread by night. After some encouragement from his mother, he swapped the boilersuit for chef whites and studied at West Kent culinary college. He then went on to work in a range of hotels and pubs, where he gained an eye-opening insight into food production. “Watching the stream of deliveries from the butchers, bakers, and farmers come all day and all night got my head spinning,” he recalls. “When you go to a restaurant, you don’t really pay attention to what happens behind the scenes but seeing it all sparked a massive fire in me.”
Whilst working at the Marriott hotel, the sous chef told him about Michelin and AA star restaurants. “I first thought to myself, well, Michelin do tyres and AA offer cover, but then I went to Claridge’s, and I realised what he was on about – it blew my mind,” Devlin humorously explains. He started sending letters out to a range of Michelin star restaurants, from Le Gavroche to Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, then finally, Gordon Ramsay’s Pétrus replied and took him on. “The whole learning process about food production I learnt at Marriott started again but this time, with a higher level of prestige and quality. It was premier league stuff, and I wanted to be a part of it.”
Was working at Pétrus the closest Devlin got to working in Hell’s kitchen? “No joke, but yes,” says Devlin. “It was hard as hell, and there were no niceties. People got kicked out, and there was tons of swearing; people were working 19/20 hours as it was seen as a badge of honour the longer you worked, it was all hardcore.”After doing a year of cooking with a pitchfork at Pétrus, Devlin started feeling homesick for Kent. “I started thinking about the ingredients we used and how almost half of the decent stuff came from Kent. From strawberries and pears to lamb, I just thought, Kent feels good to me, and so I went to work with chef Richard Phillips across his restaurants.”
Devlin spent the next seven years working with Phillips at Thackeray’s, Pearson’s Arms in Whitstable, Chapel Down Vineyard and The Windmill in Hollingbourne, where he was crowned head chef at just 23 years old. “Towards the end, I couldn’t fight this desire of doing my own thing. My wife encouraged me to take the plunge, so I started doing pop-ups with my brother, who had experience as a front-of-house. Together we did a range of pop-ups and would take over cafés and farm shops to serve a 10-course meal using local ingredients with a menu that was all mine”.
As fate would have it, Devlin came across an old pub in Kilndown that had been shut for a long time. “We thought we could use it as a venue, grow some stuff in the ground but primarily use it as a base. As we started to refurb it, we started to notice the potential.” In the spring of 2018, just four days after his daughter was born, his debut restaurant The Small Holding sprung into existence; the name a reference to the small plot of land opposite.
The philosophy behind The Small Holding is that it is wholeheartedly produce-led. “We aim to work with the products we’ve grown and preserved on the land alongside the seasons with a heavy focus on the soil,” Devlin says. We want to showcase the great things available to us in a high-quality way without it being pretentious. I want people to drink, relax, kick their shoes off. All the chefs serve the food and the whole team are very passionate about what they do, so we’ve got a bit of a culture going. The Small Holding is a mix of development and production, from soil to plate. People like using the “farm-to-fork” label because it sounds cool, but we just want to focus on produce-led, natural, good-quality ingredients and to try and grow the tastiest things.” Soil-to-spoon it is.
In terms of crafting the daily-changing menu, Devlin works on a plan of what they’ll grow at The Small Holding throughout the year. He and his team will then scale it back to every couple of months, figuring out what to grow when it’s colder, wetter or dryer. For example: “the sweetcorn is nearly ready, and so we’ll try and do something from that next week,” he explains. “We will work with the main ingredient of the day from the farm and then look into our fridge of pickles, preserves and ferments, and I might balance that with something from the sea from the local fisherman. Or, sweetcorn also goes well with the pork that we have and so I may add some pickled mushrooms for the acidity to balance the fattiness of the pork and then add some chillies, which have just been harvested; for a bit of heat.”
Although the “Rustic British meets Nordic cooking” menu changes every day, The Small Holding has featured dishes like radishes with wild garlic mayo; lobster and pickled green bean tart; kimchi cured mackerel; Looe pollock with sea kale and strawberry sweetgrass sandwich with woodruff créme and fermented strawberry sauce.
For Devlin’s last supper, he decides on a starter of a “load of pork steamed gyozas, pot-sticker style with a crunchy vinegar dressing.” For his main course, “a massive bowl of ramen to drown in,” and for dessert, “a bowl of lovely strawberries, raspberries, cherries with a bit of yoghurt and honey.” To drink, “a beer called “Kiss the Ground” from his local brewery or a lovely orange wine from Tillingham Vineyard.
Devlin explains how he’d love to expand The Small Holding into something a bit bigger, with more land, more grain and more livestock. But for now, his favourite part of his 360-degree production is the clientele who come there. “Whether they’re in the restaurant, just discovered a new wine, or have had a wander through the farm, it’s the people for me, that’s my favourite bit,” he says. “I love seeing guests eat the produce I’ve harvested within a couple of hours; it’s incredibly satisfying. We’re still a young restaurant, we don’t have anything fixed, and when it comes to being the genre of “farm-to-fork”, we’re just trying to play our own tune.”
You can book a table at The Small Holding here.
Try Will Devlin’s seasonal recipe for Courgette Bhaji, nasturtium and chilli here:
We serve this courgette bhaji in the height of summer as part of a dish with different courgette treatments including roasted and puréed. The finished plate is dressed with chilli oil and nasturtium leaves and flowers.
Makes approx. 20
Ingredients
For the bhaji
Five medium courgettes
170g gram flour
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon ground cumin seeds
15g salt
80ml sparkling water
1 litre of sunflower oil to fry
Method
For the bhaji peel, grate and salt four of the courgettes. Save the peelings and squeeze the grated courgette of excess liquid
Mix the grated courgette with all of the other ingredients, except the sunflower oil, to form a batter
Heat the sunflower oil to 175 degrees
Using a tablespoon scoop a spoonful of the mixture into the hot oil and fry for a minute or so each side until golden brown
Make a courgette sauce by sautéing the peelings hard and fast in a little rapeseed oil and butter with the lid on to create steam. When just tender and still hot, whiz in a blender and season
Slice the remaining courgette into thick rounds, season and brush with a little chilli oil. Roast until soft and just charred
To plate:
Drain each bhaji on kitchen paper and serve hot with a spoonful of courgette purée, pieces of roasted courgette and dress with chilli oil and nasturtium leaves and flowers.