West Sussex farm restaurant and cafe wins two prestigious awards

Winning the Farm Farm Café/ Restaurant of the Year award, the West Sussex Farm was praised by the judges highly.

A statement from the Judges said: “Their menu centres around their own outstanding produce, in a bright and fresh setting with loads of natural light."

Ollie Thorpe has been the Head Chef at Runcton Farm Cafe for almost two years now and said the winning this award felt ‘incredible’.

He added: “It makes it al worth it to recive an award like that here, it’s been really exciting. We use a lot of local ingredients in our cooking. Everything that we use is from next door at the farm shop, it’s brilliant that we can use this sort of produce."

Front of house Manager Claire Eade-Baker spoke about how the idea of entering the Farm Retail Association awards came about.

She said: “This year, we decided to put the cafe forward and enter into it. We were really excited do that and there was a lot of anticipation leading up to find out. We ended up being nominated for two awards; The cafe and restaurant of the year as well as the rising star award.

We were all over the moon when we found out. It was really wonderful for the whole team, everyone works really hard on a daily basis here. I think both the awards really provide an outcome for what we do and gives us credit from the front of house and kitchen, and how it all comes together.”

Owner of the cafe Simon commented on the work it’s taken for him and his team to get into the position they’re in: “It's been a lot of hard work. We had some issues when we started this journey over lockdown around three years ago. That was quite a challenge for us but we have managed through it. We’ve got a good settled team and we’re lucky that we’re able to produce a lot of food on the farm ourselves.

Cafe regular customer Anna said: “We really like the food here, it’s very well presented and cooked brilliantly too. The local food is great and you can definitely taste the difference.”