Food metres not food miles at The Dairy in Clapham: meet the chef growing his own salad leaves and herbs on his restaurant's roof garden

Food metres rather than food miles is the new eco-mantra.

Growing food within a few steps of the table where it is consumed sounds as sustainable as it can get, yet all too often it amounts to little more than a marketing ploy to sell restaurants with vegetable patches to a gullible clientele. In Clapham, however, a chef is doing it for real.

At The Dairy, the neighbourhood restaurant owned by acclaimed Dublin chef Robin Gill and his wife, Sarah, all the salad leaves and herbs are grown in shallow containers on its roof.

There’s no greenwashing here. This is realistic micro-farming with excellent ideas for any budding urban food grower who can learn from a couple who have gone through the trial and error with true resourcefulness.

The Dairy is also one of 40 restaurant gardens profiled in a stylish new book The Garden Chef which celebrates the inspiration chefs receive from their restaurant gardens, from LA to Lima.

Says Gill: “My vision was to create an experience as close to ‘farm-to-table’ as possible in a central London location.”

He started his career working under Marco Pierre White and Raymond Blanc and now owns three other restaurants including the recently opened Irish-American grill Darby’s in Nine Elms.

“Seasonality wasn’t a big thing in the city when I started in London in 1998. But in 2000 I worked in a restaurant on the Amalfi coast and a cart would arrive every morning from the farm with incredible ingredients. That made a really big impact on me.”

His garden in south London came even before the kitchen. Frustrated by a delay in the build when they bought the place in 2013, Gill and the team decided to get cracking with the garden, using deep plastic trays from food deliveries as growing containers placed on rows of wooden staging.

“The chefs were already on the payroll but we couldn’t cook, so we thought, let’s be eager beavers.”

With no container deeper than a couple of feet, Gill realised that herbs and salad leaves were best suited to the space they had. Even if the wild rocket bolts, the “super-peppery” flowers are great in the kitchen.

Butterhead and lollo rossa lettuce has been excellent, too, each plant lasting for ages as the outer leaves are harvested a few at a time. Lemon verbena turns up downstairs in a jelly, thyme buds are strewn on salads and sorrel granita makes a sweet yet acidic accompaniment to panacotta.

It’s always interesting finding out what crops a chef chooses to grow and herbs here have to fit into one of five flavour profiles: mint, allium, anise, pepper and aromatic.

“Mint has such a freshness and can be used in sweet or savoury dishes. It’s easy to grow and comes back every year. But be careful with it or it can taste a bit like toothpaste,” says Gill.

Onion cress from his mother’s garden in Dublin now grows on the rooftop, too, with beautiful flowers and leaves you can cut several times that will reappear each year. He pickles the bulbs and leaves of three-cornered garlic and uses it to flavour vinegars and dressings.

Nasturtiums are another favourite, particularly the bluey-green leaved Blue Pepe variety. “It has a real kick to it and you can use the flowers, leaves and pickle the seed pods. Cook the leaves quickly and blend them with olive oil to a purée to go with poached fish,” he suggests.

Watering comes from a rainwater collection tank, aphids are deterred with a spray made from soaked nettles and the restaurant’s food waste is turned into compost via bokashi — Japanese fermentation. The chefs weed and harvest at the same time.

“They love it,” says Gill. “It’s a bit of headspace as well in the afternoons. They do a bit of watering and chill out.”

The Garden Chef: Recipes and Stories from Plant to Plate is usually £29.95 but Homes & Property readers get 20 per cent off and free UK delivery with code EVH20 at phaidon.com