Flavour Revolution;
The Inspiration Behind Byron’s Supper Club
24.06.2025 words by Ellie Ashley
I arrived in Rabarbergården (the Rhubarb Farm) in early summer; a farm-to-table restaurant and home located ninety minutes outside of Copenhagen, Denmark in a coastal summer town. I was a long way from Australia–thirty hours from gate to gate–yet I felt a sense of connection, with this place that would become my home for the next several months.
Long, green, grasses of wheat framed the farm, the main dwelling a traditional Danish home with thatched roofs made of straw, white paint, and brown timber. The glass orangery housed pot plants and dining tables for guests. My room was located above the restaurant, in the attic.
In the first week of work, Thomas, the chef, requested gooseberries to make compote. I returned with a half bucket and a red-stained mouth. He joked that I stuffed more into my mouth than I collected–I don’t think he was wrong. A couple weeks later the cherries began to ripen and I put my hand up to volunteer. With a bigger bucket I foraged all around the neighbourhood, eyes focused on finding the juiciest ones, usually a darker red, stretched skin, hanging a little higher than the rest. These were the best cherries I can recall eating, bursting with sweetness and flavour. As the months carried from summer to autumn I thoroughly enjoyed the new fruits that came with each season. Gooseberries, cherries, apricots, apples, blackberries…
It dawned on me that this was the most flavourful fruit I had tasted. And it made me wonder: why was the fruit I picked here so juicy, sweet, and flavourful? Why don’t the supermarkets back home have produce like this?
After a couple months of working in the field, I was keen to see other sides of the operation, so I helped prep in the kitchen and serve in the restaurant. I was surprised by how many hours of labor went into each meal, from growing in the garden to plating at the table. The gooseberry seed is planted in a bed that has been cleared, composted, mulched, and weeded by the farmer, until ready for harvest–and then the picking process takes ages for those tiny suckers. After its stems are removed, it’s cooked slowly for a compote (or whatever its final destination), and then finally brought to your plate to be devoured in a second.
Observing this process, I saw the circle: the many points of connection, labor, and intention that made up this small, delectable bowl of organic yogurt, granola, and gooseberry compote. It was the first time I really thought about where each ingredient came from and how it got there. I appreciated this bowl of food for more than just its flavour, and I realized how disconnected I have been from where my food came from.
With these insights and questions, along with inspiring conversations with the workers at the Rhubarb Farm, I was eager to find some answers into why I felt disconnected, where the flavour had gone, and how I could share this experience with people back home. It is a multifaceted issue of course, as to what happened to our food system, but I will attempt to brush the surface.
After World War II, our food system underwent major changes with the rise of supermarkets, democratic societies, and an economy geared towards consumer driven growth. Big companies that supplied chemicals in the war repurposed their operations and focused on consumer goods and agriculture; promoting the use of synthetic nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium - the key to the rise of industrial farming - which also required heavy machinery, chemical inputs and synthetic pesticides. This was a devastating, systemic change in how we grew, produced, and consumed food, which has since had detrimental effects in the environment, health and flavour of our food.
A study quoted by the British Food Journal compared fruits and vegetables grown in the 1930’s to those in 1980’s, citing a nineteen percent decline in calcium, a twenty-two percent decline in iron, and a fourteen percent decline in potassium. Scientists have coined this finding the ‘dilution effect’ representing a strong correlation between the rise in supermarkets and the decline in nutrition in our food.
With this information, it was clear to me that our daily choices are the strongest tool we have to stand up for a better future for our food system. A quote from Franco Fubini in The Search of the Perfect Peach particularly stuck with me: “What we decide to eat, the demand we foster, has a direct impact on the development of what food is grown and how it moves from farm to plate. We can influence, one farm at a time, the individuals who look after our soils and protect the valuable ecosystem”.
With this newfound wisdom, I came home and felt the best way to share this knowledge and understanding was to feed people with organic, local produce. And thus the Supper Club was born. It is still in its early days, built on the concept of bringing people together over nutritious, flavourful food. I want to help remind us of the joy of eating seasonally, locally, and with each other. I want there to be a shift in power away from a consumer-driven market--as Franco Fubini calls it, a “flavour-driven revolution”.
So please, join us at the table, as we sit down with each other, and appreciate the flavours the season has brought.
There is an upcoming evening with Supper Club on Saturday, 5th July in Mullumbimby. A night of delicious food, acoustic music, and great company. Read more and purchase tickets here.
References:
Fubini, F. (2024) In search of the perfect peach why flavour holds the answer to fixing our food system. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Mayer, A. (1997) ‘Historical changes in the mineral content of fruits and vegetables’, British Food Journal, 99(6), pp. 207–211. doi:10.1108/00070709710181540.
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