'Real Food' Revolutionary

The Canberra Times Food & Wine section - September 26, 2007

For someone who admits he “wasn’t the brightest kid at school”, Rob Rees has had an eventful career since he began work as a chef in the English city of Bath. Dubbed “The Cotswold Chef”, he spends much of his time flying around the globe promoting British food and tourism. When he’s not doing that, he’s busy at home in England, actively campaigning on food issues and having a major input into government policy. In 2006, he was awarded an MBE for services to the food industry. On a recent visit to Australia, Rees brought a little slice of the Cotswolds with him, presenting a lunch at Sydney’s Summit restaurant. While Rees spoke on a wide range of issues that are close to his heart, Summit chef Michael Moore, himself a Briton, prepared recipes from Rees’s book, The Cotswold Chef: A Year in Recipes and Landscapes.

Among the dishes was a superb risotto of peas and broad beans, followed by fillet steak with curly kale and red onion jam, and a modern take on the classic bread and butter pudding. Rees’s passion for “real food” began when he was running his own restaurant, The Country Elephant, in the Cotswolds from 1994 to 1999. “Suddenly I met all these producers within a five-mile radius of my restaurant,” he said. The Cotswolds has a bountiful culinary inheritance that includes treasures such as Double Gloucester cheese, Old Spot pork and Blaisdon Red plums, ingredients that are slowly being rediscovered by a wider audience. And yet, as he says in the book, Rees would be the first to avoid nostalgia for the sake of it. A new generation of food producers in the region is now growing chilli peppers, artichokes and other non-traditional crops.

Rees always wanted to be a chef and after being brought up in a family in which food played an important part, he worked for high-profile establishments such as the Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, the Hyatt Regency in the Grand Cayman Islands and Le Gavroche in London. But while his own restaurant became very successful and achieved a much-coveted Michelin Bibendum Gourmand Award, it also became a turning point in his career. “To tell the truth I got bored,” he said. The greatest satisfaction for him now comes from being involved in the development of government policy and working to create a better food culture for Britain.

Campaigning on education, health, nutrition, food safety and consumer issues, he has taken on an extraordinary number of roles and responsibilities, including being on the board of England Marketing, the School Food Trust and an Advisory Committee on Microbiological Safety of Food. He was previously on the boards of the Food Standards Agency and Taste of the West. He is the Gloucestershire ambassador for Food Vision, and chairman of the UKL1 million Gloucestershire Health 4 Schools project. The School Food Trust, an initiative of the Blair government, is a project that is particularly dear to his heart. “We joke about Jamie,” he says, referring to Jamie Oliver, the television chef, who inevitably comes up in any discussion on British food. “But Jamie showed in his TV program a clear need to improve school food.”

The work of the School Food Trust has seen a huge leap in quality in the six million lunches served in British schools every day. “We now have the toughest standards anywhere in the planet. We have no vending machines, no fizzy drinks, no cakes and biscuits. We’ve done that by a long education process of parents and schoolkids. It’s (also) now compulsory for all kids to do cookery.” Rees considers himself fortunate to have been involved in the revolution that has taken place in British food and farming over the past decade. “The smoking ban that came in in July this year has made all the difference, even in village pubs.” The positive impact it had had, not just on Michelin-star restaurants but right down to the smallest venue, was “just fantastic”.

The country’s skills in hospitality and tourism had improved dramatically. Just as it has in other parts of the world, the farmers market movement has had a huge impact in Britain. The celebrated Stroud Farmers’ Market began in the Cotswolds in 1999 and Rees was involved from early on, running seasonal food demonstrations and building a local following that soon extended to BBC radio, local press and eventually BBC Good Food Live. Rees says farmers markets have re-awoken people’s curiosity about food. “Each of the regions and London has a fantastic farmers market. That gives a fantastic opportunity to talk to producers.

The Cotswolds alone has 120 different cheeses of real artisan quality. “Farmers markets have made a difference, and the south-west (of England) has been one of the biggest drivers of that. A farmer’s job 10 years ago was to grow food. That’s all changed now. Even our major retailers are standing up and listening to what the producers say.” Rees says the change in food culture in Britain has been remarkable. “Lessons were learnt from issues like foot and mouth, and mad cow disease. We don’t want to eat rubbish anymore. It’s been a real tough challenge – it isn’t perfect but it’s working itself in the right direction.”

© Christine Salins

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