Cultivate goes Caribbean, by Katie Herring

ONE of my aims as a member of Cultivate is to get more local food to more local people. Selling veg to local communities at our weekly stops, talking about local food online and just writing this column hopefully goes some way to achieving this. But another way we are looking to get more local food out there is through supplying local restaurants and businesses.

This is why we are incredibly pleased be working with Cowley Road’s newest Caribbean restaurant Spiced Roots. Their chef approached us at our Sunday market stops as he was looking to create a new menu that focused on Ital foods. Ital is food celebrated by the Rastafarian movement and the general idea is that food should be natural, or pure, and from the earth. As as food co-op dedicated to sourcing the best local, ethical and delicious food this was totally up our street.

So we met the full Spiced Roots team at their restaurant on the Cowley road to discuss our new partnership and the ideas flying across the table were making my mouth water. The passion of the whole team there was infectious, they were all excited to be getting hands on produce that was not only great quality but also was fully traceable right down to the name of the farmer growing it. I have to admit it was pretty hard to stop my stomach from rumbling when I was sat surrounded by the smells of the evenings dishes being prepared so we just had to stay for dinner.

Our food really was fantastic, packed full of Caribbean flavours and perfectly presented. And we weren’t alone in thinking so: the restaurant, having only been open for a few weeks, was absolutely rammed full of happy customers. I can’t wait to return this week when they launch their Cultivate supplied Ital menu. It will be a great opportunity to taste our local produce used in some not-so-local cooking methods. It’s definitely the start of an exciting and very tasty journey for us and the Spiced Roots team, I can’t wait to see how it develops.