Green Pastures' new restaurant crowned 'Best in Norfolk'
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Last September the new restaurant at Green Pastures Plant Centre was just a big hole in the ground. This week, just 4 months after opening their brand new 100 seater restaurant, Green Pastures in Bergh Apton near Norwich were celebrating a massive win scooping top prize for the "Best Restaurant" in the Eastern Daily Press Norfolk Food and Drink Awards.
James Debbage, from Green Pastures, said: "We openned our new restaurant at the start of May on the bank holiday weekend. We had no pre-advertised openning day, we simply flung the doors open the second the place was finished on a saturday morning having swiftly got most of the staff in place just a couple of days before hand! We wanted to capitalise on the plan centre being full of customers so went all out to open as soon as we could and thats exactly what we did.
"Our original plan was to have a 'soft openning' for a couple of weeks and then advertise to build the trade up. Four months later, having scooped Norfolk's top restraurant prize, those plans to advertise are still on ice as the team are working flat out to please the crowds that positive word of mouth 'advertising' keeps bringing us!
 "Our initial aim was to have one of the very best garden centre based catering facilities in Norfolk. We really set our stall out from day one, creating a beautiful building and hiring a head chef with a first class reputation for pleasing his diners. We aimed high with our food, which seemed very brave at the time, but this proved to be exactly the right thing to do. Our farm and farm shop supplied fresh local ingredients backed up by our existing network of local producers and customers all remark that they can see and taste this difference in the food. All our cakes are homemade, our full time baker starts at 6am and has her hands full keeping the counter display topped up.
"Word spread straight away (we created a lot of interest whilst we were building) and soon Tripadvisor started to work wonders as we climbed the ranks. The local press ran an editorial feature on us and the next day our car park filled and its been full every day since. Sunday roasts have an enormous following and we're full every sunday. Our most popular dish is a seafood platter that includes all locally sourced fis, home made crabcake and potato salad and all homegrown salad leaves grown in the polytunel next to the restaurant.
"Despite doing no advertising we are fairly active on social media and use facebook to particularly good effect. We got a great response when we post pics of our food dishes, the best reaction coming from our Gardeners Afternoon Tea."
The Eastern Daily Press have been running the Food Awards for a number of years now to celebrate Norfolk's important role as a major food producer. It includes a number of catagories that have over the years been won by the biggest catering names and establishments in the county. The restaurant catagory is open to all restaurants in Norfolk to enter and this year 30 were shortlisted and put to a public vote where people could vote online or by post. Green Pastures restaurant, known as the Gardeners Kitchen gained over 1,000 votes and was presented with the award on Monday night at a gala dinner award attended by over 300 people. Green Pastures was described as 'Norfolk's River Cottage!'
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