Hold The Meat? How Crudités Became The Star Of The Culinary Show

Have you heard? Vegetables are chic now. Think Loewe’s tomato clutch, or Elizabeth McGovern relaxing in a field of cabbages for Burberry. And you’re likely to spot at least one customer wearing an “allotment-core” chore jacket on your next trip to a bougie grocer. Chefs, though not typically the most fashion-conscious, are way ahead of us: at some of the country’s best restaurants, they are wowing cynical diners with elegant, delicious crudité plates, and reframing the notion of luxury ingredients in the process.

“At the beginning, we got quite a lot of hate, because people don’t understand how expensive beautiful vegetables are. Some of my vegetables are more expensive than meat,” says Yiannis Mexis, chef-owner of modern Greek live-fire restaurant Pyro, close to London’s Borough Market. There, the crudités arrive pertly arranged on ice, and though the literal meaning in French is “raw things”, some of the vegetables – roughly 95 per cent of which are sourced from the UK, Mexis says – have been lightly prepared, pickled with a little salt or verjus for example. The mix of textures and acidity makes every bite unique, especially when dipped into smoked aubergine, or used to scoop up spiced feta.

Crudités might conjure images of garish serving platters at ’70s dinner parties, or sad batons left untouched on the buffet at kids’ parties. But at the likes of Michelin-starred Osip in Somerset’s arty enclave of Bruton – where the crudité plate has become the signature opening to the restaurant’s tasting menu – bites at time of writing might include a piece of traditional salad cucumber topped with a slice of mirabelle plum, anchored to the plate with a swipe of homemade cider mustard. For chef-owner Merlin Labron-Johnson, it’s a chance to highlight the work the team does in the restaurant’s own market garden. “Not to get too woo woo about it, but we sowed the seeds for these vegetables and we’ve kind of raised them and looked after them and harvested them at the exact moment, and that for me is all part of the process… it’s an extension of the preparation of the dish,” he says.

Other restaurants, like Rosina, an upscale new Wandsworth Italian overseen by chef Adam Byatt of Trinity fame, take a more rustic approach. Here, root vegetables are served whole alongside leafy varietals, all dressed lightly with oil and seasoning and accompanied by a fava bean dip. But it feels luxurious and generous, almost as though they’ve given you too much. At Margaret’s in Cambridge neat little vegetables, some grown on site, are served with a modern dip of whipped cod’s roe topped with chilli sambal. At the other end of the country at Inver, on the banks of Loch Fyne in Argyll and Bute, chef and co-owner Pam Brunton sees the “Garden Plate” that kicks off the evening tasting menu as a “collaboration” between the restaurant and local gardeners Kate and Russell Glasgow, who provide the produce. The plate is a mix of raw and lightly prepared bites that, with autumn underway, might include shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) with burnt garlic and brown rice vinegar dressing; nasturtium leaves sandwiched around pumpkin seed cream and Georgian spices; and tempura squash blossoms stuffed with local goats’ curd. Guests have described it as “bonkers” and “life-changing” she says. While summer is certainly more abundant in terms of produce, most of the restaurants serve crudités all year round, albeit with a little less colour on the plate. “I think it’s really important to just allow the plate to look like it will, because things do change with the seasons and sometimes winter is very brown around here,” jokes Brunton.

A hundred miles away in Edinburgh, at Michelin-starred Timberyard, they get around this lack of abundance by serving a daily changing “Pickle Plate” of vegetables from local farms, served alongside housemade charcuterie, bread and butter and smoked fish. Although Brunton stresses the importance of letting the produce “speak for itself… without the human ego”, there is perhaps still an element of chefs showing off – albeit subtly. To be saying: “Look, I’m not all fancy technique and caviar and sauces; I’m capable of restraint. I can confidently present to you simple raw vegetables and it’ll be just as good as the other courses. That’s how good our produce is and how much respect we have for it.” Mexis agrees it can be a “silent flex that even a plate of vegetables can have so much work, thought and attention behind it”.

So if you too are hungry to embrace allotment-core this autumn, start with a crudité platter in a Michelin-starred dining room. Planning to wear a chore jacket? Please check with the restaurant first.