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We spoke to executive performance chef Will Carvalho about his kitchen’s efforts to source locally.
By • 02 February 2024
With Saturday’s game marking our Green Football Weekend match, Albion’s executive performance chef Will Carvalho reveals the importance the club places on using local and sustainable produce.
Put simply, it’s to provide a high-quality food service to the players. Nutrition, especially with athletes, is always changing. There are new ideas, new concepts, and we adapt what we provide for the players accordingly. We always look to change our menu regularly, and with the different cultures in our squad, we will always provide dishes to accommodate players who have come from all over the world. Looking more generally, Paola [Rodriguez-Giustiniani, the club’s lead performance nutritionist] and myself will always look to see where we can add sources of energy, protein and fibre, but mostly carbs, and we also try to make our meals fun and not strict or unappetising. Good food is good mood, as they say.
We’re lucky that we have a large variety of fish on our doorstep at various times of the year: wild bass, dover sole, plaice and cod – the latter being particularly good at this time of year. We use a local fish supplier – Brighton and Newhaven Fish Sales – and all fish are caught within six miles of our coast, with many boats concentrated around the Shoreham/Lancing area. Some are fishing so close to the shore that you could actually swim out to them or watch from the beach.
Our suppliers are based just two miles from the club’s training ground, as the crow flies, and maybe just six or seven miles on the road, so there are no storage or transportation issues, which obviously sends out a strong message, and it’s also good to be supporting local business. We have a very good working relationship with our suppliers as a result and even a WhatsApp group, where I can tell them what I am planning for the following week and they’ll let me know if they can accommodate depending on the conditions in the sea or the season. I might get a call at 3am to be told they’ve got a particularly strong catch of dover sole, for instance, so can change the following day’s menu as a result.
Our suppliers are very strict on stocks and won’t fish anything that doesn’t comply with the necessary regulations. There are other fish that we might like to incorporate into our menus that can’t be sourced locally – tuna for instance from the Atlantic Ocean – and, again, we are very mindful of the regulations. We would never order anything at risk either – swordfish from Fiji for example – so as a club we are very conscious of what we order.
We use Brighton-based Sun Harvest as our fruit and veg supplier – which again helps in terms of storage and distribution – and we have a very good relationship with them, given they have been lounge sponsors at the Amex Stadium for a long time now. We like to use locally grown food types as much as possible and Sun Harvest inform us that their carrots, potatoes, salads, leeks, kale, parsnips, mixed wild mushrooms, swede and some local cheeses are all locally produced. Local produce is not always possible of course; at this time of year, it’s not possible to get red berries for example – which are very good for the blood cells – while satsumas, bananas and passion fruits have to be imported, so Sun Harvest help us in that respect with a very efficient service. We also like to emphasise to the players the importance of using local produce where possible and so they are aware just how productive the surrounding area is.
We have lots of space at the training ground, so it would be nice to utilise the huge balconies with some raised flowerbeds for herbs, such as rosemary and thyme or some basil. We use a lot of basil for our pesto so it would make sense to start growing some big basil plants – they grow like a good weed and get stronger the more you cut There has also been some talk of growing some fruit and veg at the training ground as well, which would make a lot of sense and would certainly enhance our green credentials further.
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