Welcome to Leon. What fuels us is the belief that food should taste good and do you good. And that everyone should be able to enjoy it. To do this, we’ve set about to change the face of fast food.

Our food is naturally full of flavour, full of goodness, and from people we know and like. We cook with seasonal ingredients, olive oil and fresh herbs and spices.

We only buy meat from farms that we trust. We visit them regularly and we’ve now received recognition from the RSPCA for the care we take in our sourcing. We are fans of naturally low-GI foods so we make our brownies with dark Valhrona chocolate and instead of flour we use ground almonds and instead of ordinary sugar we use fruit sugar. We believe you can have your cake and eat it.

Back when we had one restaurant, what really made us believe we were on the right track was the passion, support and input of people who eat with us; it wasn’t all plain sailing, but the overriding message was that you were glad we were around. We hope you continue to think this and thanks for all your support so far. If you have anything to ask, say or suggest, feel free. People have been very kind about Leon but we’ve got a long way to go and we think there is always room for improvement.

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Recycling

One of our objectives has been to grow sustainably and recycling has been a tricky one to crack. We use a lot of packaging, but it is hard to get anyone to recycle packaging with food waste on it.

Because all of our packaging is recyclable, however, we can compost it.  Encouraged by the success of a trial this Summer in our Strand restaurant (with the help of www.juniperfoodwaste.com), where we composted over a quarter of a ton of waste in the first month, we are now extending this to 4 more of our restaurants. This Autumn our restaurants in Carnaby Street, Cannon Street, Ludgate Circus and Regent Street join the trial. If the trial continues to be a success we will role this out to all of our restaurants. We’ll let you know how it goes.

At the end of the day

Because we make our food fresh daily, we sometimes have some left overs. If you know of a charity near to any of our restaurants that would like to pick these up. Please let James know. james@leonrestaurants.co.uk

Farms we Trust

One of our aims when we set up Leon was to serve food that we would eat and that we would be happy to feed our children. (It is sad that we even have to say this, but these are strange times foodwise). These are some of the things that we think are important:

• All our meat is Freedom Food endorsed and from farms & butchers we trust. Our chicken is raised by Andy Maunder in Devon (whose hands were black from picking walnuts when we first met him). Much of our other meat is from father and son team Basil & Richard at Gatcombe Farm. They breed animals on unique coast pasture land also in the west country. We won the RSPCA Good Business Award in recognition of this.
• Any fish that we use (such as the smoked mackerel coming on with our spring menu) is from sustainable shoals.
• All our eggs are free-range, including any egg used within the muffins, tarts, cakes etc that our bakers make for us.
• We buy fair-trade and/or organic products where we think that there is a clear ethical, environmental or health benefit, and where we are able to sell the product at a price within reach of most people (not just the affluent few). So our coffee is fair-trade & organic (as well as contributing to the World Land Trust) and our milk, ice cream, porridge oats, and rice are organic.
• We aim to not buy any air-freighted or hot-housed products. We have not yet been able to find land-freighted herbs (Israeli) or green beans (Kenyan), but are working on it.
• Our food is free from additives or colourings.
• We aim to source 70% of our food from the UK (it’s currently slightly over 50%), and 90% from within the EU (which we’re very close to). We change our menu with the seasons and use seasonal produce because it is produced closer to home in a more sustainable manner (no hot-houses) – and it’s cheaper.