How The Great Bustard Is Redefining Modern British Dining in Wiltshire: A conversation with Head Chef Jordan Taylor, The Great Bustard
- James Massoud
- Jun 4
- 7 min read
Tucked away in the Wiltshire countryside, The Great Bustard is doing more than serving up elevated pub food – it’s quietly reshaping what modern British dining means today. At the helm is Jordan Taylor, a chef whose culinary journey began around family fires in Brighton and matured under Michelin starred guidance. With wood-fired cooking, hyper-local sourcing, and a seasonal philosophy rooted in sustainability and storytelling, this is a restaurant where every dish is both a celebration of the land and a love letter to its producers. Whether it’s roast-veg ketchup made from Sunday peelings or venison burgers sourced straight from the estate, The Great Bustard proves that innovation and simplicity can go hand-in-hand – especially when the food tells a story.
Your menus at The Great Bustard are dictated by seasonal ingredients. How do you balance seasonality with maintaining a consistent dining experience for your guests?
We are constantly changing the menu at The Great Bustard throughout the seasons, we do this to ensure our regulars have new dishes each time and to keep things fresh and exciting. It is also important for the chefs in the kitchen to be engaged with what they are doing, constantly learning and not becoming stale and bored with what we cook and serve. We plan the menu a long time in advance, and it gives us time to prepare, test and execute the new dishes being added or changed but equally, these can always adapt or be tweaked once on the menu. This allows us to be consistent and meticulous with what we serve and how we serve it.
Growing up in Brighton and learning to cook with your family, how have these early experiences influenced your approach to cooking at The Great Bustard?
Cooking with my family in Brighton when I was younger has obviously played a huge impact on the chef I am now and what I put on the menu. I had great experiences with my parents and my dad was always getting us outdoors and camping, and this is where I got into cooking over open fires and also working with wild produce. There were also dishes that I ate that bring back wonderful memories, like eating brown sugar covered apples at my grandma’s house, a memory that has influenced our apple tart with muscovado caramel and cinnamon ice cream dish at The Great Bustard. There are also memories I have of dinners I used to hate. My dad’s infamous leek and potato soup, for example, would keep me at the table for hours trying to finish, but it did inspire me to refine and showcase what a great Vichyssoise can be further down the line.
The Great Bustard emphasises farm-to-table dining, utilising produce from the Great Durnford Estate. Can you share how this close relationship with the estate’s farmers and producers shapes your menu creation?
We are very conscious of being sustainable and this is not only important from an ethics standpoint, but also from a business standpoint. We try our best to source as local as possible, championing the producers nearby. We use the best quality produce from right here in the Woodford Valley and surrounding areas, including whole animals, such as lamb from the Estate and beef from nearby Springbottom Farm. We are able to use every part of the animal, which keeps us on our toes, constantly changing the cuts and coming up with creative ways of cooking them. In the kitchen the team are always on the case to reduce the amount of waste from the produce we are using and coming up with innovative ways to use what we would otherwise throw in the bin. For example, we get a lot of vegetable trim and peelings from our Sunday roast vegetables, which we heavily char in the woodfire oven and cook down to make a roast vegetable ketchup and the use in various dishes across our menus.
Your background includes working under Michelin starred chefs. How have those experiences informed your culinary style and the dining experience you aim to provide at The Great Bustard?
Working at Moor Hall, for example, truly opened my eyes to working with produce that is growing right outside the door. It really gave me a greater appreciation for the time and effort it takes to grow and source your own produce, rather than simply ordering from a supplier and getting it delivered the next day. Working with fresh, local produce can take weeks, even months of planning, and a whole team to bring it into us. There is another level of excellence in sourcing from farms that are within a few miles’ radius of the restaurant – not only does it keep the carbon footprint down, but I genuinely believe you can taste the freshness of produce picked and served the very same day. The foreplanning involved in working with fresh, local, and seasonal produce has really shaped my approach to cooking. At The Great Bustard, I use this same approach collaborating with local producers, as well as sourcing produce straight from our Estate.
The restaurant’s menu elevates modern British food while remaining unfussy. How do you achieve this balance between innovation and simplicity in your dishes?
We aim to give the guest what they want at The Great Bustard, which is quality produce cooked excitingly but served simply. We use a lot of modern techniques in the kitchen to extract the best from the produce we have, and it helps us do more in the kitchen for the guests without putting too much strain on the chefs. When I design my menus we showcase British ingredients and classics but nowadays the culinary scene is such a melting pot we draw influence from all over without getting complicated and confused on the plate.
With a focus on hyper-local sourcing, including game from surrounding woodlands and trout from nearby chalk streams, how do you ensure sustainability in your ingredient sourcing?
Here at The Great Bustard, we are so fortunate to have amazing produce straight from our Estate and we are very conscious to maximise all produce. For example, with the Estate venison, we use all the prime cuts on our A la Carte Menu, then mince or braise the trim to make into our wonderful pies and burgers for the pub. Even the bones are roasted and made into stocks and sauces. We also make the most out of every season by foraging what we can from the Estate and surrounding areas, then pickling, preserving and fermenting the produce to use all year round. Many of the regulars are keen fishermen and are always catching the most incredible fresh trout. They were keen not to see these catches go to waste and asked if we would be interested in taking them, which of course we jumped at the opportunity. We cook the trout many different ways but the main thing we do is cure and smoke it. We repay this kindness by cooking them up the fish that is brought in so they can really enjoy the fruits of their labour!
The menu features items like venison burgers and wood-fired pizzas. How do you approach creating dishes that are both approachable for pub-goers and reflective of your culinary ethos?
Our venison burger is a great example of how we have taken an absolute pub classic and elevated it not only with the incredible quality of produce from our Estate, but also by putting our own original stamp on it. The addition of smoky charcoal mayo, and decadent truffle and parmesan fries bring a little elegance to our cosy country pub.
Foraging and pickling are integral to your menu. Can you discuss how these techniques contribute to the flavours and uniqueness of your dishes?
The team and I will always try to get out sourcing wild ingredients, foraging and finding ways to preserve what we get. Foraging ingredients is such a joy because the thrill of finding a good patch of something is really exciting. Wild ingredients allow you to introduce new and unfamiliar items to the menu or things that are not available all the time. We use various preservation ways to maximise the shelf life of the ingredients we get, pickling and fermenting are two of the main ways of making things last so we can revisit them later in the year, and they bring wonderful acidity to dishes.
The Great Bustard offers an extensive wine list, including selections from the family estate in Tuscany. How do you approach pairing wines with your dishes to enhance the dining experience?
When it comes to pairing our wines with the menu I work closely with the front-of-house team to ensure that the pairing matches the dishes and we offer something well matched but affordable. We also have a fantastic wine list for guests to choose from or be guided by our expertly knowledgeable front-of-house.
How do you incorporate local produce, such as honey and meats, to highlight regional flavours?
Sourcing locally for us is one of our fundamentals. Working closely with the Estate first off is amazing and our game keeper is always supplying us with wonderful game from the estate or has fantastic contacts around the Wiltshire area. We have a fantastic gardener also who brings us incredible produce and honey from the garden on the Estate. Using this produce is so special for us and we make sure that we highlight the producers, whether it is the cheeses from local dairies or vegetables and meat from surrounding farms, because without their hard work what we do would not be half as special.
How does the restaurant’s ambiance influence the way you design your menus?
The ambiance in the restaurant reflects on the menu in a huge way. What we aim to do here is create a relaxed and comfortable dining experience with excellent produce and fantastic service. The menu does this by blending familiar classics with a nice twist, with produce-driven, refined dishes that are unfussy and tasty. We blend a great pub lunch experience with a place where you can come and celebrate special occasions, and I feel like we bridge the two together wonderfully.
Looking ahead, are there any new culinary techniques or local ingredients you’re excited to explore and introduce to The Great Bustard’s menu?
The future is very exciting for us here at The Great Bustard and I think the main thing I am excited for is just to get back in touch with the nature around us, work with all the great game and produce, and continue to create something exciting for the area, as well as elevating and refining the food we are doing already.
