Silo, the new zero waste place, is fantastic and they use a lot of local and foraged things, there’s a lot of places in Brighton that have a similar focus.”
Foraging is now as popular as ever with Charlie saying there are “quite a lot of professional foragers around” that they work with and “It’s a good way of using sustainable products that are just there.” He explained: “There’s no one interfering with them, they are essentially weeds and that’s just the way you look at them isn’t it? You might look at them as a weed or you might look at them as food.
“But sometimes you get a bit of time to go out and pick some of the things that we know, that we’re sure of; in the Autumn particularly for fruits and in a couple of months’ time we’ll be out picking the elderflowers and the more we use the ingredients the more you’re exposed and you recognise them growing.”
Charlie is now familiar with what is safe and what he wants to use, although if he saw wild plants growing out of the pavement he wouldn’t necessarily use those in his dishes. He said: “If you saw
some thyme growing in someone’s front garden you’d be familiar with it, but as you start to become familiar with the wild things you begin to see them everywhere walking down the street.
“You need to be very careful of what you’re picking and that you’re sure of what you’re picking. I mean something like nettles everyone would recognise are quite good but then you also need to be careful of the legality of where you’re foraging because obviously, what’s growing on the land belongs to whoever the land’s owner is.”
As well as the foraged ingredients it’s the names of them that also draw people to the dishes and creates an “interaction between the chefs, customers and floor staff” something which is also helped by the open kitchen. Charlie explained: “People have always got questions for what these things are and it’s nice to just be able to tell them about it and get them to try things.
“Some of the names of some of the foraged things are quite interesting, some of them have got crazy names, opposite-leaved golden-saxifrage for one; it’s just a little salad leaf but it definitely creates some interest.”
Interest that is also apparent with the pigs head dish which is a talking point on The Chimney
House’s
social media, although Charlie “doesn’t like to think of this as a signature dish”. Talking about the dish he said: “It’s been on the menu from the beginning in one way or another and it wasn’t very popular at all but now it’s really popular.
“It doesn’t look like a pig’s head though as it’s like a croquette, it’s crispy, it’s fried, it’s juicy with some nice bits of garnish on there, it’s tasty just like a piece of pulled pork or something like that really.”
Having been opened for three years now Charlie plans at some point to open another pub but this time outside Brighton. He said: “We’re looking at slightly more of a country pub with a bit of land so that we can do more, maybe grow some more of our own produce and things like that.”
