Rooted in the land
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Words by Hannah Tapping
Tom Holloway grew up foraging on Dorset cliffs and cooking over French barbecues. Now, one of Britain’s most exciting young chefs is taking everything he has learned and foraging his own culinary path.
There are chefs who fall into food by accident, and there are those for whom it was never really a choice. Tom Holloway is firmly in the second category. Growing up in Dorset, summers were spent at his grandparents’ house in France, with each day’s repast built around the barbecue, every meal an occasion. Back home, his grandfather would forage the clifftops and hedgerows for razor clams, wild mushrooms and wild garlic, returning with ingredients that found their way into meals shared around a table that always felt like the centre of everything. Food, for the Holloway family, involved culture, memory, taste and connection rolled all into one.
It was this foundation that pointed Tom, on finishing school, through the doors of one of Britain’s most celebrated restaurant groups, The Pig. A revolutionary collection of hotels whose food philosophy is built around sourcing within 25-mile radius took Tom under their wing as one of its earliest apprentices. What followed was a decade-long education unlike any other: working across the group’s hotels, absorbing its ethos of provenance and place, progressing through the ranks from apprentice to senior sous chef, before being appointed head chef, first at The Pig at Harlyn Bay, then at The Pig near Bath, where he has spent the last three and a half years.
The Pig’s influence on Tom’s cooking is profound, though the relationship has always been one of creative dialogue rather than imitation. Each head chef within the group brings their own distinct voice to the kitchen, and Tom’s is immediately recognisable: provenance-led, elegant but unshowy, built on British ingredients treated with deep respect and a light touch. A Tom Holloway menu is very much a conversation between exceptional ingredients and a chef who knows when to step back and let them speak. Four or five elements on the plate, nothing unnecessary, everything singing in harmony. A simple boil of perfectly seasoned water transforms asparagus from a vegetable into an event. A dish might summon a memory, or create an entirely new one. That, he believes, is what cooking is for.
Last year, Tom was named in the Cornwall Business Awards’ 30 Under 30 for hospitality in recognition, perhaps, of something that those who have eaten his food have known for some time: that here is a chef with both the talent and the values to shape the next chapter of British food culture. That chapter is already being written. Alongside his kitchen work, Tom has become an informal ambassador for the British Asparagus Association, making the case for why British produce, picked in season, sourced locally and prepared simply, is always worth choosing over the convenient alternative. It is, he freely admits, a cause that aligns perfectly with everything he believes. The disconnect between what is grown on British soil and what ends up in the supermarket basket troubles him deeply. His advice to home cooks is characteristically generous and entirely without dogma: you don’t have to commit to everything at once. Start at 25 per cent local and build from there. The small step matters more to the people growing your food than you will ever fully know.
More exciting still is his recent collaboration with Allett Dairy, a small family-run farm just off the A30 in Cornwall, run by Steven Hughes; a man who has weathered considerable hardship, including the loss of his entire goat herd, to reach a point where cheese-making is once again possible. Tom approached him with the kind of directness that defines his cooking: I’ve got a platform, let’s do something together. The result is a new fresh, goat cheese compote named for a local spot near the farm, curated by Allett Dairy in collaboration with Tom. Launching in May and distributed by the Cornwall-based Greet Cheese Delivery Company, whose refrigerated van supplies farm shops and hotels across the county, it is exactly the kind of project that makes sense of Tom’s career. Taking a great, overlooked ingredient, connecting it to a wider audience and telling a story worth telling.
And then there is the next great chapter… Tom is joining the Beckford Group as opening head chef of Teffont House, a stunning 18th-century property just south of Salisbury, being carefully restored with 17 bedrooms, a 45-cover restaurant, a kitchen garden and an open-fire cooking area set within an orchard. It is, by any measure, the perfect canvas for a chef of Tom Holloway’s temperament: ingredient-led, farm-to-fork, rooted in place. A kitchen garden, a fire, the best local produce and a menu built around what is at its absolute peak.
