It started with a kettle nobody wanted

The kettle came first. A dented copper thing from a house clearance in 2011, bought for less than the cost of the parking ticket collected while haggling for it. The shop came second: a draughty former haberdashery on Chapel Row with good bones, terrible wiring and morning light worth signing a lease for.

The idea was never complicated. Bake in the morning, cook simple lunches, learn every regular's order, and close late enough on a Saturday that dinner could stretch its legs. The evening bistro began as a monthly experiment with one set menu and twenty chairs. The chairs kept filling, so it stayed.

Nearly everything in the room has a previous life. The tables were a chapel's floorboards. The coffee machine was rescued from a café in Bristol that closed before its time. The kettle sits on the shelf above the pass, retired but supervising.

We buy from people we can name: milk from the farm up the valley, flour from the mill at Priston, vegetables from two growers who argue about carrots. Menus change when the growing does, which is the only schedule the kitchen has ever respected.