Julius Roberts’ Recipe for a More Thoughtful Way of Eating

In an age of convenience, where food is often a mindless afterthought, cook and farmer Julius Roberts offers a different perspective – one that urges us to slow down, pay attention and rediscover our relationship with what we eat. 

Moving from restaurant kitchens in London to his farm in the English countryside, Roberts sought to rediscover that connection and now encourages others to be more thoughtful with their daily food choices. This approach has resonated with over 1.1 million people who follow Roberts on Instagram, where he shares recipes for seasonal dishes made with his farm’s produce alongside glimpses of daily life on the land. Expanding on this vision, in 2023 he released The Farm Table, a seasonal cookbook documenting a year on the farm.

For Roberts, the natural world is not just a resource but something to protect and savor. To him, food isn’t just about what’s on the plate – it’s about everything that led to it: the soil, the hands that nurtured it and the choices made before it reached the kitchen.

What is your first memory of food?

JR My strongest early memory of food is from my Granny, who was the matriarch of the household. I have a lot of memories at her place at Christmas and Easter. She was an amazing cook who always had us around the table. She had that very old European attitude towards food, it was completely part of her soul, that was what she did for her family – cooking, entertaining and bringing people together. But she loved offal, odd cuts of meat, you know, quite strange dishes. Often you would sit down and it would be a plate of liver, or a plate of ox tongue, and she used to sit there, kind of smiling, because me and my two brothers when we were young would be squirming at this rich, crazy flavoured food in front of us. She did this amazing thing with liver where she would cut it up in long strips and toss it in a spiced flour with cumin, salt, pepper, and fry it in butter until it’s really brown. Now I absolutely love it, but then we hated it. I would always try to eat it very fast, but both of my brothers are really stubborn, and they would sit there for literally hours with it cold in front of them. There would just be this stand off with her doing the crossword, inwardly laughing at what she was doing, and my poor brothers just squirming. 

It’s interesting that it’s a dish you really love now. 

JR It’s such a strong memory of her. I love that through this experience it’s given me a love of offal and things like that. I think that’s important because it’s quite sad that 40 years ago food was valuable enough that you did eat all the bits and they were as important as the fillet. Whereas now that has kind of completely vanished in Western society, I think. Well, actually, the French are quite good at that, maybe it’s just England (laughs). 

You focus on food sustainability throughout your book, is that something you’ve always considered? 

JR I definitely learnt that. I think I’ve always cared about nature, and been fascinated by it. As a kid I was obsessed with bugs and my Dad was always finding things and showing it to us. We were always really entwined with nature but I think the whole world has woken up a bit to what’s happening. Mine was accelerated by working in restaurants, because you really care about seasonality and the quality of the ingredients, because that’s what’s going to determine how good the food tastes. 

So it began there, and then I moved to the countryside and started farming. I think when you fall in love with nature and animals and realize how clever they are, how instinctive and intuitive, similarly to us, you start to get really horrified at the state of things: how they get treated, how the world is getting treated. I look out of my window here and our fields are untouched, filled with wildflowers and a million species and insects, but you jump over the hedge and it’s just dead. It’s just land that is purely for man and the animals he farms. That makes me really sad. I want to hear how loud the birds used to be, how many insects there used to be. That stuff really matters to me. 

How did you reach the point where you wanted to leave the restaurant industry in London to take up farming? 

JR I spent two years cooking in restaurants, and it was some of the most fun, most intense times of my life. I don’t regret a minute of it, I actually regret leaving quite so soon, but it does take such a big toll. It’s a job that’s stressful, time intensive and physically demanding. I went in as a first-time chef to a restaurant that was just opening, but very popular, so I didn’t have much experience under my belt, but a lot of responsibility straight away. I did it for a while and loved it, but part of me was like, god, this is fucking miserable, I can’t do this forever, this is not good for you. Maybe because I was so new to it, there was so much learning. I spent two years just chasing my tail trying to keep up. But each day the producers would turn up, these healthy, tanned, bright eyed looking people who had stories of how they grew what they were bringing us. I just thought, I want to be one of them, that sounds like such a good life. I made a big leap of faith, not with much thought.

Since moving to the farm, what has been one of the most surprising lessons that you’ve learnt from the land?

JR Resilience. There’s no better example of survival than in nature. We’re causing it so much damage, as I mentioned earlier, but the way it holds on and recovers is extraordinary. Watching animals give birth and helping when it goes wrong has been quite profound. Seeing their ability to survive such extreme conditions and the intelligence of the mothers to be in the right place, you know if it’s raining and windy they’ll always be standing with their body to the wind, protecting this wet lamb that’s just been born. The fragility and strength of it all. Being part of that journey with the mother has taught me a lot and made me appreciate the world we come from. It’s also made me care about animal welfare. It hasn’t made me want to stop eating meat, I think you can still eat meat, but it has to come from a really lovely place. But knowing the emotional intelligence and sensibility of these animals, for them to live in factory barns and cages under utter misery, I think that is so wrong. 

It sounds like it has had a profound impact on you. Were you trying to show people this beauty that you experience on the farm through the creation of your book The Farm Table?

JR 100%. I think food is our strongest way of relating to the natural world. It’s the one thing we do everyday. The quality of what you buy, how much of it you throw in the bin, how much of it comes in plastic, the season in which it was grown – they all directly impact what’s going on out there. Every time we shop and eat we are making a choice as to the kind of natural world we want to see. The book is about showing and not telling, it’s talking about my connection, my journey, my year through food and relationship to the land. I hope that’s a little nudge in the direction we are going in. Because all those decisions really matter and as a large collective we have a lot of power. 

Do you have a favourite season? 

JR I love them all, but spring is extraordinary. Those transitional seasons are extraordinary. Right now I’m looking out to a grey and barren landscape and then in a few months it’s going to be fizzing with green and loud with birds and insects, all the births going on, all the planting taking place… It’s an amazing time of the year. 

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the loss of the dining table as our living spaces get smaller, especially in cities. What does the dining table mean to you?

JR I don’t think you get better conversations happening than around a dinner table. It really slows people down. That’s where, in my family, we learnt how to talk to each other, how to share everything, talk about what’s going on in the world. It’s where a lot of our biggest arguments are too (laughs). Day to day, we’re kind of running past each other, we’re always looking to the next thing, but when you sit and you eat, you’re slowing down and thinking and taking stock. That’s why [the book] is called The Farm Table. I love the table as a symbol for so much more. For me, a massive part of cooking is that you’re cooking for other people, and curating a moment, a journey through a couple of hours. 

Who is your Mastermind?

JR There are so many chefs who have inspired me over time, but Ben Lebus, who started Mob Kitchen, started Instagram at the same time [as me] and we knew each other through friends, and have always spoken over the years and been part of this crazy Instagram journey together. He’s always been a really great touchstone. Although there’s not really many similarities in what we do, I love that we’ve both been on this journey together. He’s always advised me on the more technical side of Instagram and it’s nice having someone in your corner.