Jon Morrell – Foraging Chef

Foraging for food is what humans used to do to survive. It’s also what Jon Morrell learned to do – and enjoy – when he was a blackberrying toddler. And it’s what he still does today in his work as head chef at the Really Wild Emporium in St Davids.

To be precise, the title that Jon, 29, holds is “foraging head chef” – and that phrase seems to neatly sum up his remarkable career.

The Really Wild Emporium (restaurant, plus three rooms to stay in, a wild soap and skincare workshop and a shop selling eco-friendly goods), run by owners John and Julia Mansfield, opened five years ago. They envisioned it as a “social enterprise” aimed at providing year-round employment for local people, supporting local businesses and promoting wild food. 

Before opening the Emporium, Julia and John had long been leading foraging walks on the St Davids Peninsula (the former along hedgerows and the latter on the seashore). The Mansfields are huge fans of seaweed – as is Jon, who joined their enterprise five years ago, in what has turned out to be a perfect fit. 

“Jon is unusual in that he has this foraging background,” says John Mansfield, adding affectionately: “And he’s stuck with us.”

Julia is the creative director of the Emporium, but apart from masterminding its operations, she is also writing a book on foraging for seaweeds and coastal plants in Britain and Ireland which will be called Coast – Foraging on the Edge and should be out next year.

It’s perhaps no wonder that John and Julia are happy with their foraging star employee.

Originally from Cardiff, Jon was encouraged in his blackberrying and other foraging by his mother, who was very much into making food with natural ingredients. “We cooked together a lot at home,” says Jon. “And by my mid-teens I had really developed an interest in nice food and healthy food.”

He went to Exeter University to study engineering but it didn’t hold his interest; he “got fed up of sitting in front of a screen”. The call of the wild proved to be stronger and he dropped out of his course before completing his first year, resolving to follow his passion for food.

After getting initial job experience around Cardiff, he spent time working at Llys Meddyg, Newport, and it was here that he began to fall in love with Pembrokeshire. “Newport is really blessed with the hill and the forest,” he says.

But between then and settling in St Davids, Jon worked in a series of remarkable restaurants, gaining more experience of cooking – and foraging.

While he was working at Llys Meddyg, he spent weekends at Chepstow’s Whitebrook Restaurant where he was taken under the wing of natural food master the late Henry Ashby. “He was the most amazing forager and I learned so much from him,” says Jon. The Whitebrook was then one of a handful of restaurants in Wales with a Michelin star.

He went on to do a year in the Lake District at L’Enclume, which in the past has been named best restaurant in Britain and at that time had two Michelin stars. And he also worked for a year at the Menu Gordon Jones restaurant in Bath, “one of the most exciting and best-rated restaurants in the South-West”, says Jon.

Star-studded his progress may have become, but Jon says: “I wanted to come back to Pembrokeshire – I do just love it.”

After working as head chef at the Emporium for the past three years, he has recently taken a step back from day-to-day duties in the kitchen to lead guided foraging walks and cooking demonstrations. 

Now a typical week sees him doing two cooking demos on a Monday, leading a seashore foraging walk on Tuesday, followed by Wednesday in the kitchen, a hedgerow foraging walk on Thursday, then Friday and Saturday back in the restaurant, before a well-earned rest on Sunday.

He says: “Our cooking demos showcase some of the best wild recipes and methods we’ve developed over the past few years, and give a glimpse of what we do behind closed doors.”

Examples of Jon’s wild and wonderful creations on the Emporium restaurant’s menu include: leek, potato and kelp soup; crispy gutweed seaweed and toasted sesame seeds; barbecue venison and elderberry beetroot; nettles in tempura; sea spaghetti and local pollock; mussels and wild garlic; laver gelato; rosehip jelly; sorrel granita; elderflower baked custard; and Preseli bilberries.

He stresses that in all of these, the wilder ingredients are a small part of the dish. “With the more unusual things,” he says, “people are getting only a taste of them. The majority of the food is regular food with a little twist, a little flavour from the wild.”

That wild flavouring comes from the many local ingredients obtained through his own foraging. Seaweed is a particularly favourite ingredient for him. So which seaweeds on the Pembrokeshire coast are edible? “All of them,” he says, with a knowing smile. “And the quality here is outstanding.” 

He regularly goes out to harvest seaweed: “I always take a third and leave two-thirds,” he says, stressing the importance of acting responsibly and sustainably. And, as with all of the plants and berries that he gathers, he rotates the places he goes to forage: “What I take is not even a dent on the landscape.”

Some seaweed may not look that appetising, but Jon points out with delight how murky brown seaweed quickly becomes bright green in boiling water. “A beautiful vibrant green,” he says. “And people are always amazed at how ‘normal-tasting’ seaweed is.”

Does he plan ahead when he goes out foraging? “It’s hard to go out with a ‘shopping list’. Every time I’m foraging there is always something that is really in its prime,” he says. “And what is available is dependent on the time of the year.”

Nettles, sorrel, meadowsweet, elder, rosehips and bilberries are among the natural foods he harvests. But not everything out there in the wild is good to eat, however tempting it may look. Hemlock, lords-and-ladies and deadly nightshade are all plants that can cause serious illness or death. 

Jon says: “On my guided foraging walks I take as much time pointing out to people the plants that are poisonous as I do telling them how to identify the ones that are good to eat.”

In the rare spare time that he has, Jon is a keen member of the Pembrokeshire Freedivers club. “When I’m not in the kitchen,” he says, “I’m often diving around the local bays with my snorkel, marvelling at the underwater seaweed ‘rainforest’ – and it allows me from time to time to pick some of the very best samples.”

It seems he just can’t stop foraging . . .

Contact details:

Really Wild Emporium
24 High Street, St Davids, SA62 6SD
01437 721755
www.reallywildemporium.co.uk
info@reallywildemporium.co.uk

instagram:@reallywildemporium
instagram:@jonmorrellchef