“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."
