For Higher Ground good food starts with good soil

"Jane was one of our first guests at Higher Ground," says chef patron Otway. "She actually brought a steak in her handbag. That was the catalyst for our relationship, and for the start of Cinderwood Market Garden."

The trio of hospitality professionals, who between them have CVs spanning Noma and Relæ in Copenhagen, Simon Rogan's Roganic and Fera, and Stockport's Where the Light Gets In, share a hunger for improving the wider food system. They grow all year round using regenerative farming methods and organic principles at Cinderwood Market Garden, their own partner farm in Cheshire, which occupies one acre on Oglesby's Farm, "a small, bio-intensive, hand-reared, pasture-fed cattle operation, with some other animals to add to the diversity", says Otway. "That's why our soil is so good, because she's already done the work for years.

"We're three years into the relationship now and beginning to explore the symbiosis and how we can work together. We put our third polytunnel down this year. We're trying to use no – or as little – machinery as possible; it's a no-dig operation. Jane's currently got three piglets and they've done the digging for us – they've basically tilled the soil. It's where the brassicas will go for the winter. You can see the connection building and that's what gives us the power to start telling these stories."

Farm to fork

"With a full-scale kitchen at Higher Ground, we can now explore more relationships with farms and suppliers, including Cinderwood," says Cossins who looks after the restaurant's ambitious wine list [see panel] as well as front of house alongside Martin. "Without having a full-time operation to run during 2020, it made sense to use our time and apply that to Cinderwood. We were able to help Michael Fitzsimmons, our business partner and also the head grower at Cinderwood, to build the infrastructure. We got off the ground in October 2020, and 2021 was our first growing year."

Their market garden now works with a number of top restaurants in addition to Higher Ground, including the newly opened Stock Market Grill at the Stock Exchange hotel and Climat, both in Manchester, Timberyard in Edinburgh and Bench in Sheffield.

Cinderwood produce is harvested to order, says Otway. "Our availability list goes out on a Sunday night, you have the Monday to order, on Tuesday we harvest exactly what you ordered, and on the Wednesday morning it's with you, within 24 hours of harvest. It's pretty much unprecedented, really. And we're always trying to encourage communication with chefs. The market garden operation is a difficult game to be in, but we're getting there. And Higher Ground opening will be a real boost."

For these future small projects to work, "you need vegetables and animals working together", believes Martin, whose interest in farming and agriculture landed him at Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant on a fully functioning farm in New York State in the US, where he met Otway and Cossins in 2016. "Cinderwood is purely vegetables, and Jane's Farm is purely animals, so bringing those two together and seeing how they play out in the dining room is great."

Best of British

Jane's Farm supplies meat to Higher Ground, which is doing whole animal butchery onsite in their new venue, "making sure that every stage of the supply chain is paid for, essentially," says Cossins. "You'll be seeing different cuts from the same animal throughout the week."

Using the whole animal "is one thing we won't compromise on", says Otway. The kitchen team is currently focusing on pigs, with dishes such as a rich slow-cooked pork shoulder ragu served with Marfona potato mash and copious amounts of smoked butter alongside Cinderwood Market Garden winter mustards. "But then we might take a heifer, then maybe mutton."

The team also work with Littlewoods Butchers, based in Marple in Stockport, who Otway worked with while he was head chef at Where the Light Gets In, and with Manchester-based Organic North, who Cossins describes as "one of the most important organic wholesalers in the country. We actually worked at Organic North during lockdown, in the warehouse, and being hands-on gave us a really good understanding of the vegetable industry".

Other suppliers include Hodmedod's, the specialists in British grains and pulses based in Suffolk, Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire, and Gilchesters Organics in Northumberland, which combines traditional milling with organic grains. Otway and the team are using the produce to bake their own bread rolls – "a nice bistro touch," says Otway. "And we want to explore pasta again, too. It feels like people want to eat that kind of food now."

Community living

The new Higher Ground restaurant accommodates 50, with the option to sit at dining tables or counter seats with views of the open kitchen and charcoal oven. There's also a walk-in wine room and shop in the venue, which was previously a coffee shop and co-working space.

"The ethos of the menu is communal," says Martin. "It's not really a small plates thing, but it's designed for sharing." There's an à la carte menu and a set sharing menu priced at £45 per person, with ingredients sourced from the north-west and a focus on organic, small-scale agriculture and small herd, whole carcass cookery.

"The menu will be constantly evolving," says Cossins. "It's highly seasonal. But people can just pop in for a glass of wine or a snack and sit at the bar, too, and there'll always be space for walk-ins."

Otway adds: "We don't want to bamboozle people with overly intellectual stuff. We want to make it approachable, so people can just come in and order stuff that's familiar, then think, hold on that's actually a bit different to what I'm used to."

It's all about the "invisible legwork", believes Martin. "If you make a really simple dish, but you use the best sourced ingredients available, you just know it's going to be really good, don't you?"

Regeneration reputation

Higher Ground quickly gained a reputation for serving well-crafted seasonal dishes using locally grown and reared produce along with a carefully curated selection of natural wines when it first launched in 2020. But the initial residency ran for just a few weeks at the Bungalow at Kampus, a canal-side garden neighbourhood in Manchester city centre, before being curtailed by the first lockdown.

"We just had to tread water and basically try to stay afloat," says Cossins. "We operated out of multiple venues during that time, which it turns out was actually a great way for us to integrate into the city, working with a number of different teams of people along the way."

Following a series of pop-ups, including Manchester's Ducie Street Warehouse later that year and then at Mackie Mayor food hall in the city's Northern Quarter in 2021, the trio went on to open Flawd, a neighbourhood wine bar and bottle shop on the waterfront in Manchester's New Islington.

"We really had to park Higher Ground in the summer of 2021," says Cossins. "It was crucial for us to keep the team together, so we opened a model that we were able to get off the ground quicker than a full restaurant. Joe and I lived in New Islington during the pandemic, and it became obvious the neighbourhood needed a casual space to hang out. We had also accrued quite a full wine cellar in that time via the pop-ups, so it made sense for us to open a casual neighbourhood wine bar, with a retail element just in case the chaos unfolded again."

"We basically had the restaurant packed up in our bedrooms," says Otway. "But we thought we could probably just about get a small wine bar off the ground." Despite lacking a full-scale kitchen, Flawd has gone on to receive widespread critical acclaim for its impressive seasonal small plates using British cheeses, charcuterie and other local produce, including a Chef of the Year nomination for Otway at the 2022 Manchester Food & Drink Festival Awards and a nod from The Good Food Guide. Now with the restaurant being a permanent site, the team has grown from six to 16, with 10 people at the new restaurant and six over at Flawd.

"We're now over three years into our journey of owning our own business and we're only just launching our first full-scale restaurant," says Cossins. "It's a feeling of absolute relief to have found a permanent home for Higher Ground, and now we're really able to work with ingredients in so many different ways."

Accessible and easy-going

"Flawd is hugely accessible and easy-going, and we can't wait to transfer that vibe into Higher Ground," says Cossins.

"After the years that we've been through, and after Flawd going so well, it just felt like if we did a tasting menu restaurant, it would be exclusive to those people who helped us get where we got to," says Otway. "So we thought, why not do something more casual, that's more accessible, for more people?

"There's power in telling a story, but it's something we shied away from a bit at Flawd because it didn't feel right at the time, without a full-scale kitchen. But now we have this dining room, and we can connect with suppliers and make a positive change. With a full kitchen, we can showcase what Cinderwood is doing, keep pushing businesses towards it, and keep growing and improving." It's been a huge learning curve, says Cossins, but the ambition is now to attract diners from across the UK to their new British bistro and bar, which is a 10-minute walk from Manchester Piccadilly train station.

"We started the pop-up Higher Ground almost three years to the day of our opening date of the new restaurant," says Otway. For diners, it looks well worth the wait.

From the menu

Sample à la carte menu

Porlock Bay oysters naked or dressed, 2019 fermented chilli sauce £3 each

Curing Rebels 12-month-cured culatello £14

Barbecue leeks and oyster mayonnaise £8

Fried sprats, nasturtium tartare £10

Ash-cooked onions, whipped Cumbrian cow's curds, yeast £9.50

Coal-baked celeriac, Spanish blood orange and bay leaf £8.50

Dressed Cinderwood Market Garden winter mustards £7

Coal-roasted skate wing, red wine, brown butter and seaweed £22

Jane's acorn-reared pig belly with grain and mushroom porridge £25

Marfona potato with smoked butter £6

Collard greens £6

Sailboat cane sugar ice-cream £5

Rye and sea buckthorn meringue tart £8

Pear, cider and Burt's Blue £10

Yorkshire rhubarb, frozen custard, caramelised croissant £7.50