THE GREAT & THE GOODS
The Goods Shed takes in the best produce from around the county, but head chef Rafa Lopez is the one charged with making a meal of it
Rafa Lopez at The Goods Shed, Canterbury
“It can start about now,” says Rafael Lopez. “About this time in the early evening. Some of the vegetables we will have in the kitchen tomorrow will get pulled up overnight. Or the guy will pick the chard or spinach at 5am.
“I live in Deal and I pass two of the farms we use on my way to work. It can be picked up at 7am and in the kitchen by 8am.”
Rafa, as he is known to everyone around the renowned indoor farmers’ market in Canterbury, is not merely giving us his morning routine. He’s making a valuable point.
“It is prepared in the kitchen and on your plate by 12pm and it hasn’t even been in the fridge – from land to table,” he says.
Rafa has been at The Goods Shed from almost the very beginning. Originally helping his friend Enzo to open the bakery in 2001 – which is still there to this day – he left his position as head chef of the now Hilton Metropole in Brighton to take on a role that he was born to do.
“Of course, in the 60s you had farmers’ markets, before supermarkets and out-of-town environments grew,” he explains. “In Spain those places still exist now.
“I have always been brought up using market-led food and recipes, and when you have excess you bottle it and use it at another time.”
That mantra of making more with what you have lives on through to The Goods Shed’s kitchen today.
“At this time of year we may use lamb,” he says, by way of example. “On a Tuesday lunch we will make a braised shoulder of lamb, served with turnips. Then when that is gone, we will do leg, which cooks differently, so we might do that with aubergines and roast cherry tomatoes.
“We have the belly and deep-fry it for a little appetiser, or we pot it. It is all from the same beast. It keeps us interested and thinking on what we can do with a cutlet with a cauliflower purée with cobnut pesto, or ‘How can I turn the neck into something?’.”
“When you have a clarity on the quality of ingredients and you develop ways of working with them, recipes just come along.”
With the launch of the nose-to-tail butchers on-site, there is a philosophy that runs right through from suppliers, to market stall, to kitchen – use everything.
“The kitchen team visits the farms every year, so they all have a connection with the food,” says Rafa. “We are very resourceful in waste management also. It’s not just that we compost the things we don’t use, sometimes something which might not look good on the plate, we can make a good purée or dehydrated powder from it.”
This obviously helps when certain ingredients go out of season.
“Our kitchen is productionist,” says Rafa. “Instead of seeing a recipe and wanting to try it, we keep a close contact with the different vegetable producer we have got coming here, asking ‘What’s available? When is that coming?’.
“Pretty much every month we will get one different vegetable at least, and we will create a purée, crisps, roasted, caramelised and fermented. So you can have one element, like a mushroom, and create five different things from it.”
Of course, having one of Kent’s top farmers’ markets outside your kitchen door when you have run out of parsnips doesn’t hurt, either.
“It is the best, really,” he says. “In any other kitchen, you go on a computer spreadsheet and tick off a box of tomatoes, box of carrots when it arrives. We don’t operate like that. We are seasonal, we keep it all fresh.
“It’s the best way of being honest with the produce that you use.”
Earlier in the year, Rafa and his team were able to get a hold of a real rarity, a Kentish-grown and slaughtered wild boar.
“we just want to get elements that anyone can find in this market and put them on to your plate”
“It was first one for 10 years,” he says. “There was a ban on shooting – this year the number has crept up, but they only allowed 50 to be shot in the whole of Kent this season and we managed to get one half of one of them.”
As well as chops, the team cured the bellies for wild boar bacon and offered diners a wild boar rillette and a terrine with prunes.
“Having just Kent produce is not restrictive – the variety we have here is great. All the meat breeds that we have here are locally reared,” he says.
With fans in the national press as well as more locally in the form of The Sportsman’s Stephen Harris, you might think that Rafa feels the pressure of keeping a small restaurant overlooking a farmers’ market up to a high standard.
“There’s always pressure,” he says. “But we just want to get elements that anyone can find in this market and put them on to your plate.
“Sometimes when a beautiful fish comes in, perhaps you don’t really require a lot of technique, you just need to be clever enough to find a way to show off the ingredients.”
