Will Devlin

I read on your website how your menus are defined by hyper-seasonal ingredients. Can you explain how that works in practice? Of course – we have long term planning around what we will grow throughout the year, but we constantly change the menu based on availability. We know roughly what’s going to be available each month, but adjustments become necessary when we look at what is actually ready on any given day. Those are the hyper-seasonal tweaks that are needed because it’s incredibly hard to judge when you’re growing food in a natural low intervention way. We’re not using pesticides or chemical fertilisers and there are other factors, such as the weather, that will impact availability – it can change at the drop of a hat. A seed packet may say something should be harvested in May but you never know. If an ingredient is on the menu but isn’t ready, is it a case of sourcing that elsewhere? No, we just won’t use it and we’ll look for a replacement. Our menus are more about flavour profiles and combinations, so if we wanted to use a carrot for its texture but it wasn’t ready, we may look at alternatives from our preserves, which could be squashes that were picked in the summer and then cured. If it was the crunch of the carrot that was important, we may look at something like a radish, which would then add a peppery kick to the dish and result in something a little bit different.

So, we make those small adjustments as we go, especially in the early spring and winter when it’s less about fresh ingredients and more about our preserves. May is always a really busy month – the mad month of May. We’re basically getting the farm organised during that month, sowing a lot of seeds and planting. April and May are the hardest months for us in terms of ingredient availability, so we end up using a lot of our stock of preserves – we may have planned to use pickled onions on a dish but if they’re finished, we will change over to pickled fennel, so we’ve still got that same level of acidity.

You must have a big store of jarred goodies waiting to be used. We’ve got hundreds of Kilner jars full of things from throughout the year. The stock is dwindling at the moment but as soon as harvest begins, we’ll start preserving again. We are using fresh tomatoes at the moment but we will also pickle some, dry some to use with oil in a marinade and others may be juiced, which will then be fermented and jarred. Every time something is in season, we use that fresh ingredient and, in the background, we are utilising every part of it to make sure we have a larder that can be used throughout the year. We work with local farmers as well. Our new season potatoes aren’t ready yet but we have a friend whose are, so we are using those. We also forage for ingredients – wild garlic is abundant at the moment – so we’re using our own produce but also sourcing ingredients from other local supplies. Odd question I know, but do you ever worry about making a mistake when foraging? I would be sitting with the family asking them to taste everything before me! I have been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time with professional foragers, including Miles Irving, who’s one of the most prolific authorities on the subject. The old adage is, if in doubt, leave it out – foraging is all about identification. There are some easy things to identify such as elderflower or blackberries from the hedge, you know what they look and smell like, so you’re not going to get those wrong. But then there are others, like mushrooms, which can be a bit of a minefield. It’s free food in one sense but it’s not free in terms of the amount of knowledge that is needed.

Is picking fresh essential to the flavour? Absolutely, and also when you pick it, in the morning or the afternoon, whether it’s sunny or been raining – those kinds of things make a huge difference. For something like wild garlic, you also get different sized leaves which taste different, there are shoots at the beginning of the season, the flowers are fantastic and then when the petals drop off, you get left with lovely seed heads – they all taste incredibly different. Most chefs must miss the opportunity to really explore an ingredient as you do, to discover what it can offer at every stage of its life cycle? That’s what I really like. It’s what we’ve been doing for years. Whether something has been brined and fermented for a short period of time, or over six months or longer in the fridge, it’s about discovering those changes of flavour. You will get a light pickle with something that’s quite fresh but that becomes really deep and interesting when it has been preserved a bit longer. Our food is obviously quite unique because it is specific to where we are – the food has all been grown here or foraged nearby. It’s similar to terroir when you talk about wine.

Mum asked me to look at the lawnmower once because it was broken, but I said no because I was inside making brioche buns for the burgers we were having for dinner.

What struck me when I was looking over your website, was how you talk about your gardener. On the surface that sounds quite a normal thing to do, but how many restaurants have a gardener? I’m presuming they hold quite a senior position here? It’s one of the leadership roles in the same way that the head chef runs the kitchen and the restaurant manager runs the restaurant – the gardener runs our land. That’s wonderful because the status of a gardener has been lost in recent times. Do you know anything about your family heritage? A little bit, my second name is Devlin. We were originally Northern Irish, from the Blackwater around Dublin, and were sheep rustlers believe it or not! That’s brilliant but I wasn’t fishing for a family confession! The reason I asked was because in my family, there were a lot of people listed as market gardeners on the censuses, which I guess is what you have here, but those small producers are now quite rare. Agriculture shifted from small pockets of food grown for the people in that area to either eat or sell at the market, over to food that was industrially farmed. We should remember though that what we are used to now is relatively new – what we’re doing here at The Small Holding might look different, but the truth is it’s been done that way for longer than it hasn’t. We’re in a privileged position here with our location. I think if you were to ask most chefs and restaurateurs, they would prefer to be growing their own produce but can’t due to their location.That said, I went to New York a few years ago where there’s a restaurant called Olmsted. The guys there were telling me how they basically took over a derelict community block in Eastern New York and turned it into a garden. It’s now allotments and they grow their produce there, so if it can be done in the largest city in the world, then in theory it could be done anywhere.

Your growing area is a lovely sight when you drive into the car park. It looks like a cross between a big allotment and one of those formal gardens you might see at a stately home, but you get the sense it is being worked for a reason. Am I right in saying that it’s one acre? I’ve never been able to picture that kind of measurement in my head. That’s right, I looked it up on the Land Registry website because I was curious as to how big it was and exploring what could be done with that kind of space. It’s now a very important part of who and what we are. We have expanded as a business – we now hold courses on the farms and also have another restaurant called Birchwood, where there is a yoga and wellness space. We felt that we needed a company name which covered all of those things, so we went through a naming process and the name Acre is what we settled on because of its significance. It all started with that one acre and everything that we discuss now, around food and drink, relates to that measurement – a vineyard might be 50 or 500 acres, the sheep are grazed on 20 acres, etc. So that is your calibration? Exactly, everything that we work with on a regular basis is calibrated and measured by acreage. That’s a great way of helping people to quantify what the restaurant is working with. I’ve always looked at plots of land similar to yours, or allotments, and wondered what can be generated from those spaces. That was one of the other reasons for us running with the name acre – it helps to communicate what we do and our ethos. When you showcase an acre’s worth of food and produce, it opens people’s minds as to what can be achieved. For those lucky enough to have the space, there’s so much you can do, whether that’s having some beehives or 10 acres of wildflower. Showcasing how much impact you can make with just one acre of land was an important way of educating our customers and also our team.

And looking at your team now, what roles do you and your brother take? Matt manages our operations, so he’s working on the back-end stuff, making sure everything works, the lights are on, paying the bills and that we’ve got the right tools to do the job. And then we have a wider leadership team including James, our head chef, and Alex, who runs the farm. We are now a mid-sized business but it’s still small enough that we know everyone and that’s important. Just because we are now 50 people, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t feel the same as when it was just five of us. So, what is your role now? Well, we spent a lot of time defining everyone else’s role and mine unfortunately defaulted to founder, which isn’t great to be honest. I do a bit of everything – I could be in the kitchen working with James on the menu, down on the farm with Alex talking about what we should be picking, or looking at the marketing side of the business. It sounds as though you’re the connector between many of the other roles. I guess so. I know I have a lot of meetings. My role is very varied and includes thinking about the next steps of the business and I like that. I’m also lucky that I have experienced pretty much every role in the business, so I can help different members of the team if they have questions or are unsure about anything. I want them to make their own decisions but I’m there to listen and help where needed.

You’ve just mentioned that you have experienced most of the roles in your team, so it would be good to try and picture how and where it all started. When did you open here? That was in April, 2018. You had been working at a number of restaurants prior to that – did you have any backing to get this off the ground? No, Matt and I put in everything we had. Before that, I was working with Matt running a pop-up restaurant called No Fixed Abode Pop-up, and we were literally doing that out of the back of my car. We would do a tasting menu for 20 or 30 people – my wife and Matt were front of house and I was in the kitchen. Was that literally from the back of your car? Yeah, I’d rent out tables and chairs for wherever we were, but the cooking equipment was all loaded into the back of my car. We did that for about a year, so we could build up some money, get a bit of a reputation and also some experience so that we knew what we wanted to achieve next, which was this. It was a good way of testing the water. It was quite successful – there were some down times in there as well but we learned a lot during that time.

Originally, we thought we wanted a big farm – hundreds of acres with sheep and cows, growing grain for bread – that was our vision but that was a £2 million project and we were obviously nowhere near that. So, we signed up with a few commercial estate agents and found this building in November, 2017. It was an old pub and had been shut for some time but we still needed to get the price down for us to afford it. I don’t know where it came from, but I managed to negotiate a great deal and then that was it – we were in and then it was a case of, right, what do we do next! We cleaned the place up, painted the walls and these tables were made by a friend using planks from another friend’s scaffolding company. We put a bit of money on the credit card, took out an overdraft and stretched ourselves until we were about to pop but we made it happen. And how long did that take? We signed the contract in February and opened in April, so a quick turnaround in terms of restaurant refits but we didn’t have a choice. Friends and family came to help us out and I had to learn a lot quickly – how to construct decking, how to use a digger so we could put the footings in for the polytunnel and so on.

Did you start the farm at the same time? Yeah, but when we started it was just me looking after it for a couple of days a week. At that time, we were closed for two days each week, so I would look after the farm then and pop down to water and harvest anything that we needed in between kitchen work. It was mad, especially as it was just two of us then. That quickly became five but we were still running around like lunatics for the first year.

Was it stressful? Definitely. There were times when we were really quiet and didn’t know why but at other times, we were really busy and probably needed to double our staff. We worried about money and paying everyone. That’s a big responsibility when it’s all on you, so there were several months when I didn’t take a wage. I was working 80 or 90 hours a week and still struggling to pay the mortgage but we broke through that period and began to learn what we needed to do to improve the finances. We hadn’t been doing any kind of marketing or advertising because we didn’t have any budget for that, but a couple of people came and wrote good reviews. As those kinds of things became beneficial, we kind of said, oh yeah, we need to tell people about the restaurant! It was really like that – grassroots stuff. Looking back, I suppose we could have been more calculated and approached an investor, but I’m glad we did it how we did.

And then you took on The Curlew as well? Yeah, I knew the owners of the building because I had previously worked with their son. They were looking to sell and asked if we would like to take it over. They gave us a great deal and really looked after us so we said yes, thinking it would be difficult for it not to succeed. Unfortunately, we hadn’t accounted for Covid and although the restaurant was doing well, the pandemic had a big impact and eventually we had to cut ties with it in 2022. That must have been sad. Incredibly sad, but on a positive note we learned so much during that period which has helped how we operate now. At around that time, when things were going well at The Curlew, we also took on another site called Birchwood. Initially, we got a letter asking if we would be interested in opening a café on an industrial estate? Absolutely not I thought! But they asked a couple more time so I thought, you know what, I’m passing that area regularly, I’ll go and take a look. I popped in one day, saw it and was blown away – it was really cool. We had already written a list of things that we wanted to do in the future and one of those was a casual daytime dining venue for breakfast and lunches. There wasn’t anything like that around here – the kind of place that we would want to go to on our day off, so we set that up operating seven days a week.

Having Birchwood, The Curlew and The Small Holding all operating together forced us to look at our organisational setup – brand guidelines, staff handbooks, structured meetings, timelines, etc. We would never have done all of that if we hadn’t had the three sites operating at the same time. We had a cracking time at The Curlew – we were getting incredible reviews in national newspapers and winning awards but in the end, we couldn’t avoid having to shut because it was going to sink everything. I kept putting money in but eventually I didn’t have any more to give, so we had to close.

…if the guests take that first bite and then look up at each other, that’s like a home run. That’s what we’re chasing.

If your primary teacher had ever asked you what you wanted to do when you were older, what would you have said back then? I wanted to be a footballer. That’s all I wanted to be. Were you good? Obviously not that good. I thought I was alright but by 14 or 15, if you haven’t made it, you’re done, aren’t you? What position did you play? Centre back. Without insulting you, are you tall enough for that position? Not anymore, but I was when I was younger. What happened?! I haven’t grown a lot since I was 15. I was huge then but now I’m average. It’s really odd. You must have dominated the back line. Yeah, it was easy. I didn’t even have to jump for the headers! So, that was my dream but I actually became a mechanic before I became a chef.

Would you consider yourself academic? No, I wasn’t ever going to go to university, so school basically suggested that I learnt a trade. I didn’t understand anything about plumbing, electrics or scaffolding but there were fast cars at the garage so I thought that will do. I really didn’t enjoy it but didn’t know any different then and was just living each week as it came. I was always cooking though, I always loved food, even on lads’ holidays I would be in the kitchen. At that stage, did you like pleasing people with the food you cooked as much as the actual preparation or cooking? 100%. I just found it really easy and comfortable. My mum tells stories about when I was at school talking about becoming a mechanic. She asked me to look at the lawnmower once because it was broken, but I said no because I was inside making brioche buns for the burgers we were having for dinner. She always backed me, but would say, are you sure you shouldn’t think about cooking? My dad was the same – we would cook together – he would say, you chop the onions and I’ll get the pasta on. We would make a dinner together and it was really nice. Were they both good cooks? Yeah, but home cooks – not professional. It was just nice food with good produce, when we could afford it. My brothers weren’t interested, they just asked when dinner was going to be ready – I’d be in there asking what we were having and what I could do, but I never considered it as a career.

What eventually prompted the jump from mechanic to cooking? Because I didn’t do the whole Uni thing or get a chance to go away, I decided to go on a few party holidays and ended up moving to Ibiza for a year. I eventually ran out of money and had to come home but it hit me then that I didn’t want to go back to a garage. That was the time that I went to catering college – I just thought I’d give it a go. I got a job in a couple of pubs washing up and also used to make sandwiches for a sandwich van. I was starting at 5 o’clock in the morning, then going to college before coming back for the pub shift. I was just cracking on and saying yes to everything, whilst keeping my eyes open to see what could happen next.

The hospitality industry is addictive, there’s just stuff happening all the time which I loved. I went out to a couple of really good restaurants and was blown away but it was a visit to Claridge’s, when Mark Sargeant was cooking, that was the main jaw drop moment. I had never been anywhere like that before and it just felt out of this world. There were so many staff, everything was immaculate and the food tasted incredible. I think that was the moment that started the journey to where we are now. If you can sum it up in a nutshell, it is that moment when you put food in your mouth and it bashes you in the face with flavour. That’s exactly what we want in the restaurant. The chefs serve the food here, so they’ll come over and put the food down on the table – if the guests take that first bite and then look up at each other, that’s like a home run. That’s what we’re chasing.

And I really need to ask about your Green Michelin Star. How important was it to achieve that or is it just part of the journey? It’s part of the journey. It was a new accolade when we received it, so we weren’t working towards it. When did they start? In 2020 – we were 1 of 12 restaurants in the country to be given the award in that first year. It’s not something we aspired to because it wasn’t there, but our sustainability credentials helped us to achieve it. I looked up the award requirements and it said that it isn’t a box-ticking exercise. It’s about excellence in food but also demonstrating a commitment to making a positive change. Absolutely. It’s been great in raising awareness about the restaurant. We’re in the middle of nowhere and not many people have heard of Kilndown, so it’s a massive platform for us to shout about what we’re doing. It’s important to us, but I don’t think it’s the most important thing, which is to keep doing what we’re doing. To improve in every way and get better every time. We need to make sure that we’re doing the best we can and if someone wants to reward us and give us a pat on the back, then we’ll be very thankful and really appreciate it. No one makes a film with the intention of winning an Oscar, in those creative spaces you do it because you want to and you want it to be the best reflection of what you can achieve. Hopefully that is acknowledged and will allow us to keep the ball rolling.