Chef profile - Justin Thomas, Elder, in Halifax

Pretty much everything is made in house so you’ll find the likes of sourdough toast with pork butter, buttermilk and homemade pickles, ricotta dumplings and pease pudding laced with ham hock and topped with a tangle of pickled red onion. Justin Thomas’s pastry skills are considerable and his upside-down pineapple cake with mint and coconut cream is worth the train fare alone.

Thomas is pretty much self-taught, though he was head chef at a garden centre bistro in Sheffield and then ended up as head of food development at Friends of Ham. With his wife Lisa, he ran the Bootleg Belly, which started as a secret supper club from their living room and evolved into a pop-up restaurant delivered in random places across the UK, including breweries, warehouses, churches and galleries.

Elder is his first restaurant venture, and it’s a joy to watch him calmly working his magic in a kitchen the size of four phone boxes. There are no whistles and bells here, but simple, top quality ingredients used and presented in a masterful and imaginative way which brought Elder to the attention of the Waitrose Good Food Guide in its first year of trading.

What’s the first thing you cooked – and did it work? I’m sure I cooked some stuff with my mum and grandma as a kid but can’t recollect anything specific. The first cooking proper that I can remember doing was in my early 20s, getting into soups and stews post-uni.

Who is your culinary inspiration? The first cookbook that really caught my imagination was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Meat. His treatise on ethical meat-eating has stuck with me to this day.

Which cookery books do you use the most? I very rarely use a cookery book for recipes, though Fergus Henderson’s recipe for Trotter Gear does get rolled out from time to time. I read lots of cookery books but more to learn how different chefs think and approach ingredients.

Who would be at your dream dinner party? All currently living, as my brain would probably explode if I tried to choose from the whole of human history: Fergus Henderson, David Chang, Olivia Colman, Noam Chomsky and Jacinda Ardern.

Which piece of kitchen equipment couldn’t you do without? My beloved crank-handled spatula.

What is your guilty food secret? It’s not exactly a secret but I’m bad with biscuits – Hobnobs, digestives, malted milks etc – a few cups of tea and I can nail the entire packet in one sitting.

What would your last supper be? Something I never tire of and absolutely love is larb – usually made with pork. My wife Lisa and I spent a lot of time travelling before we settled here, including in Laos and South-East Asia, and when she returned she made me her version. It’s delicious – fresh, clean flavours with a bit of heat. I could happily eat it for starters, mains and pud!

What are the plans for the restaurant post-lockdown? We are offering a reduced menu as we get back up and running. Due to the size of the restaurant, we find ourselves in a tricky situation in terms of logistics/covers with the space we have, so we are taking each day as it comes. I’m taking this opportunity to offer something a little different. I figure for the guests we can get in safely, I’d like it to be like an extension of my dining room – hopefully creating a menu with the usual gutsy flavours but we might take a few more risks with some of our ingredients and have a few more of the dishes that I’d really like to cook as well as those more familiar favourites.

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