The Food Safari story (so far)

Just before Christmas last year, on a bitterly cold December night we (Polly and Tim) spent an evening at the wonderful Leaping Hare restaurant run by Carla Carlisle not far from Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk and hatched the beginnings of a business idea. This new blog picks up the story 9 months later!

We'd shared a passion for food since meeting at university and Tim was brought up on the Suffolk coast so we both loved this special part of East Anglia. Increasingly, like many people we knew, we were shopping more and more at farmers' markets to get our hands on fresh, local food but also because we really enjoyed meeting the producers who in nearly every case are so full of infectious enthusiasm for their produce, that it's hard to resist taking something home. But we both knew there was more to these food heroes than manning a stand on a Saturday or Sunday - incredibly hard work, unique stories, fascinating insights, often in beautiful landscapes. Wouldn't it be great to get behind the scenes and learn more about these producers and their food?

Inspired by the idea of connecting food lovers with local producers we started meeting producers in February 2008 and having received an enthusiastic response we decided to take the plunge: we sold the house, packed our two young children off to live in Suffolk and founded Food Safari.


Over the next few months we'll be running a number of Safaris (guided day tours of a number of producers on location) and Courses (in depth workshops) around Suffolk and we'll be blogging about it here. You can also visit our website to find out more.