The brief was simple. One week, prix-fixe menus, local producers on every plate.
Fifteen restaurants signed on, and the independents leaned hardest into it: three courses, fixed price, the producer named beside the line. Mrs Greaux pepper sauce on the chicken at one table. Old Road Rum in the dessert at another. Ebang fudge with the coffee at a third.
What stayed with us was how many menus leaned on the same three or four producers. There are not many making at a scale a restaurant can buy from week in and week out, and the handful who do became the quiet backbone of the week.
The lesson, if there is one, sits in that fact. The federation has the producers. The restaurants want to use them. What is missing is the connective tissue between them: the cold chain, the steady ordering, the supply a kitchen can rely on. Restaurant Week works because everyone agrees to stretch for seven days. The harder problem is the other fifty-one.
We were glad to be in the room. Several producers on our larder were named on Restaurant Week menus, and the week made us think harder about what we owe them between editions.
Shop this story: Mrs Greaux Pepper Sauce · Old Road Rum 12 Year Aged · Ebang Fudge Tin