Inside Fifty Two at Rudding Park, Harrogate's Michelin-starred shipping container restaurant

Adam Degg has one of the more unusual backdrops for a Michelin-starred restaurant – a series of shipping containers.

Fifty Two at Rudding Park does not offer a menu, instead relying on what is available from the kitchen garden that day, which features 500 varieties of herbs, fruit and vegetables.

And the combination has been a success – becoming Harrogate’s first ever Michelin-starred restaurant in February 2026, as well as holding a green star, highlighting its approach to sustainability.

“We've built a restaurant out of recycled shipping containers, and it's a fun little place,” Adam explained.

“It's more like a dinner party with friends each night than a restaurant. And we've got amazing produce grown out there in the 52 raised beds, where the restaurant gets its name.

“Everyone sits at the same time. There are 20 covers, but the seats are all facing the kitchen. You share the tables, we call it social seating, so if you're a two, you'll sit with another two. And the way the tables are arranged means that everyone gets a view of the action."

He added: “Shipping containers, I think normally they're associated with street food, like they've popped up in city centres now.

“But apart from people being apprehensive of coming to somewhere that's a bit different, once you come inside and see how nice it is, I think that goes away.

“It's a little bit like a grown-up Lego kit; it means that we can add extra pieces if we need to. So we've got all our refrigeration and freezers in one, our dry ager and our dry stores in another.

"It blows my mind that these were shipping containers that travelled the world, and were recycled, and are now rooted in place serving food. It's gone from being all around the world to 50 metres max, which I think is really cool."

Why Fifty Two at Rudding Park has no menu

Fifty Two is open five days a week, closing on a Monday and Tuesday, with a team of just five across the kitchen and front of house.

A big unique selling point of the offering is the fact guests do not know what they will be eating before they arrive.

“Part of the concept here is no menu, and that's a big part of what we do,” Adam said.

“There's a couple of reasons behind that. One, the garden: nature dictates what we cook, so things change so frequently. I don't want people to look on the website and think, 'oh, I'm looking forward to this, I'm looking forward to that,' and it not being available.

"But also, it adds to the fun of the experience. People come in and they've got to trust us. And I think that adds to what you get here at Fifty Two."

He added: “The kitchen garden is a massive, massive part of what we do. The restaurant wouldn't be what it is without it. Emma (Pugh) looks after the 52 raised beds, and there's just so much produce coming in, more than we could probably deal with having only 20 covers a night.

“But we pickle, we preserve, we ferment, and we make sure nothing goes to waste. There's just so much growing out there.

"And she brings me things all the time that I've not seen before.

“She came up last week with some okahijiki, which I'd never heard of before, and it's a lovely product. We use it on our little radish and cucumber salad at the moment, and it just gives it a little burst of flavour that most people haven't seen before."

Adam Degg’s inspiration from Tom Kerridge

Recent dishes at Fifty Two have included an apple blini, oyster with sorrel granita and alpine strawberry tartlet.

For Adam, he has taken a lot of his inspiration to cooking from his time working under Tom Kerridge at The Hand and Flowers and The Coach.

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“Working for Tom Kerridge for quite a long time, I learned standards mainly,” Adam explained.

“I think what he shows in his restaurants is relaxed doesn't mean careless, and everything is the best of what it can be. Everything tastes of what he says it tastes of.

"I remember they had a garlic sausage on the menu, and I tried it and it was so garlicky. And I said it to Tom and he was just like, 'yeah, it's garlic sausage.' If you say what something is, it has to be that, and it's about delivering that through everything we do.

“I make sure here now that everything tastes the best of what it is. That's what I got from working with Tom."

The work behind the dish creation

Adam, who has also previously competed on Great British Menu, gave an insight into the work that goes into creating some of his dishes.

“For the apple blini, we had a ridiculous amount of apples, so we dehydrated loads, preserved them, and we made loads of apple juice as well,” he said.

“That's served with some smoked cod's roe, Oscietra caviar, an apple disc and apple marigolds from the garden.

"Another dish is a Lindisfarne oyster. We serve that with a jalapeño ketchup, made from last year's jalapeños that we fermented and made a little hot sauce with. And then some fresh sorrel granita, using sorrels from the garden, and some oyster leaves.  

“The strawberry tartlet, we've got some alpine strawberries growing out there; people know them as wild strawberries as well. A little bit of custard in there and some flowers.

“Alpine strawberries don’t last, so we pick them on the day, we use them on the day, and they're at their best.

“That's the biggest benefit of having the garden: we can go out and pick things on the day. Things like borage flowers and oyster leaf flowers, they don't last. So we can go and pick them just before service, and they're as fresh as they can be."

Another part of the space includes the onion store, where Emma has separated out Roscoff onions by size and also garlic. Even the skins are used, to create onion powder.

“It's just about maximising the use of everything, but also getting as much flavour in there as possible,” Adam said.

“We're only a small restaurant, so we have to pickle, we have to preserve, we have to ferment, we have to make sure that we don't waste anything.”

Future plans for Adam Degg and Fifty Two at Rudding Park

Offering no menu means Adam hopes guests leave with the intrigue of wanting to return and see what they can eat next time.

He said: "When a guest leaves Fifty Two, I want them to go away thinking, 'when can I come back?'

“They know from coming to eat here that we change what we do quite regularly based on the garden. So I want them to be excited to come back, to see what's growing and what we're cooking with next time.

"I think that's always the biggest thing for me. If a guest leaves wanting to come back, you've done your job, you've had great success.

“The last two years have gone pretty well. We've had quite a lot of success. I'm really, really happy with it. I'm proud of what we're doing.

"In the next five years, I want this to grow. I want us to carry on doing what we're doing. I've got an amazing sous chef in ‘other Adam’ (Adam Jones), and I see him running this place and doing amazing things with it.

“And I've got big plans of expanding and opening up some more concepts, hopefully here at Rudding Park. So we'll see what the future brings."