Photos - Tim Tate
EATING OUT – AND HEALTHILY
The event started with a short Society AGM ( 2025/2026) followed by the main event.
At the Harpenden Society’s June public meeting, under the heading of ‘Soil to Supper’, local restaurateur Andrei Lussmann spoke of the challenges today facing those ecologically-minded caterers striving to maintain sustainability.
He told an 80+ -strong audience, in the High Street Methodist Church, how, across the Lussmanns chain of five restaurants, including the one in Leyton Road, Harpenden, the sourcing of ingredients aimed to support ethical standards in farming and fishing. Locally, that included a close working relationship with Hammonds End Farm where farmer Stuart Roberts pursued an organic agricultural policy.
Fish dishes figure prominently on Lussmann’s menus and Andrei said protection of fish stocks in our seas influenced the choice of fish offerings on his restaurant menus. And wherever possible UK sourced ingredients were selected rather than imported, sometimes cheaper, alternatives. Apart from such an obvious merit as freshness, there was, he said, the carbon footprint and hence climate change consideration in transporting foodstuffs over long distances, by sea, air or road.
To download the presentation please click here.
Growing it locally – and healthily
The UK’s regrettable dependence on imported food supplies – as much as 45% at the last count – provided a launch platform for the second speaker at the Harpenden Society meeting, Allison Wren, who outlined the entirely volunteer-run FoodSmiles St Albans organisation.
Now established for more than a decade, its mission statement is ‘Community Supported Agriculture’, being a partnership between farmers and consumers in which the responsibilities, risks and rewards of food production are shared. Dr Wren said the resulting ‘community gardens’ addressed, in a radical way, increasing concerns about the lack of transparency, sustainability and resilience of our food system imposed by the big supermarkets and their suppliers.
They were ecologically sound, often organic, yet essentially viable, with local community investment yielding direct sales to the public of the majority of the community garden produce.
Dr Wren's presentation can be downloaded by clicking here.
A full report on both presentations will appear in the next Harpenden Society newsletter.