Sustainability Statement

 

Rooted in This Place. Committed to Its Future.

The Old Bank House has stood at the heart of Gorey Village for more than two hundred and thirty years. It was here before the fishermen’s cottages that line the harbour, here when the oyster fleets were at their peak, here when the Jersey Royals were pulled from the steep fields in the shadow of Mont Orgueil. As one of the original buildings of Gorey Village – appearing on the Richmond Map of 1795 – this house has witnessed the full arc of this island’s story: its trade, its harvest and its resilience. That history shapes how we cook.

Trading in What Matters

The Old Bank House took its name from the merchant banking business once run within these walls, during the days when Gorey Harbour was one of Jersey’s busiest trading centres. Sailing ships brought goods in and carried produce out. The harbour was a place of honest exchange – between farmers, fishermen, merchants and the wider world.

We think of our kitchen in the same spirit. What we put on the table is a form of trade: with the farmers a few miles up the road, with the fishermen who bring their catch into Gorey Harbour and with the orchards and dairies that have fed this island for generations. Every dish we serve is a transaction with this place – and we intend it to be a fair one.

The Original Larder

Farm to Table – What That Means to Us

For us, farm to table is not merely a phrase on a menu. It is a discipline and a commitment. We source from Jersey producers — the island’s own mark of local provenance — and build our menus around what the season gives us, not what the import catalogue offers. The cotîl fields rising behind the castle -those narrow south-facing strips where the granite catches the sun and holds its warmth deep into autumn – are where the first Jersey Royal Potatoes were ever grown. The oyster beds of Grouville Bay have fed people here since before recorded history; oyster shells were found in the prehistoric tomb at La Hogue Bie. The fishing boats in the harbour below have been bringing in crab, scallops and lobster for centuries. Produce wherever possible – made, grown or caught in Jersey.

This is not heritage as nostalgia. It is heritage as instruction. The land and sea around us are as productive now as it has ever been- arguably more so, with a generation of Jersey farmers and fishermen who care about their craft with a depth and seriousness that is genuinely inspiring. Our job is simple; to do justice to what they give us.

What the Island Gives Us

Four extraordinary things from one small island

1. The Jersey Royal

Grown on the same sun-baked cotîl slopes above Mont Orgueil where the variety was first cultivated, Jersey Royals are a genuine act of terroir — a potato that tastes of this specific soil and particular tilt toward the sun. They have a season measured in weeks, not months. We wait for them. When they arrive — earthy, buttery, their skins barely there — we get out of their way and let them speak for themselves.

2. Jersey Dairy

Jersey cows produce milk with a fat content so rich it runs gold rather than white. It has 20% more protein and calcium than standard breeds, and a depth of flavour that transforms everything it touches — butter that tastes of sweet grass, cream that needs nothing added to it, cheese that carries the whole personality of the island. We use Jersey Dairy products throughout: in our sauces, our desserts, our breakfast table. There is no substitute worth making.

3. Gorey Oysters

The oyster beds of Grouville Bay are ancient — Neolithic people harvested them, and this harbour was built on their back. In the nineteenth century they were almost fished to extinction; the fleet of 250 boats dwindled to fewer than twenty within a generation. Today’s oyster industry is smaller, slower and more careful. A Gorey oyster tastes of the cold, clean water of the Grouville Bay — briny, mineral, faintly sweet. To eat one is to taste the spirit of this place itself.

4. Jersey Seafood

Jersey Chancre and Spider crab pulled from pots set in the rocky channels off the coast. Hand-dived scallops from the sandy beds around the island. Native lobster from the cold deep water around the island’s headlands. The island sits at the confluence of the English Channel and the Atlantic, and the tidal range here — among the largest in the world — means the water is constantly moving, cold and nutrient-rich. The seafood it produces is, frankly, world-class.

Our Seafood Philosophy -on dredging, diving and the choice that changes things

We insist, wherever supply allows, on diver-caught scallops and hand-gathered shellfish. Dredging — dragging a metal cage across the seabed — is fast and cheap and devastating. It tears up everything in its path: juvenile fish, sea urchins, the reef structures that take decades to form, the very habitat that produces the seafood it harvests. A diver-caught scallop cost more. It costs more because it is worth more — to the ecosystem, to the flavour, to the future of the fishery.

When scallops, crab or lobster appear on our menu, they are sourced from local Jersey boats using sustainable methods — hand-dived or pot-caught wherever possible. We will always tell you if supply has required us to adapt. Please ask. We firmly believe that this is a question of market signals. If enough restaurants in Jersey refused to serve dredged shellfish, and enough guests asked where their scallop came from, the island’s fishing industry would shift. Markets move when buying habits move. Every choice made at this table is a small vote for the kind of fishery Jersey has in twenty years’ time.

The Lesson of the Oyster Beds

Gorey’s greatest lesson is also its hardest. In the nineteenth century, this harbour was the centre of one of the most productive oyster fisheries in Europe — two hundred and fifty boats, twelve thousand oysters a catch, an entire community built around the sea’s abundance. Within fifty years, through overfishing and poor stewardship, the beds were all but gone. A fleet of two hundred and fifty had dwindled to twenty.

We have not forgotten that story. The land and sea that feeds us is not infinite. It is a living system that requires reciprocity — careful management, genuine restraint, and the willingness to occasionally not take what is there to be taken. The choices made in a kitchen — what to buy, from whom, at what scale, at what cost to the supplier and the soil — are not neutral. They are either part of the problem or part of the answer.

We choose to be part of the answer.

“We choose suppliers who farm and fish as if the next generation of cooks will need them just as much as we do. Because they will.”

Our Commitments

To the Land and Sea: We minimise food waste, track what we throw away and find a use for what we cannot serve. We do not use single-use plastics. We choose suppliers who farm and fish with care for the long term – organic where available, sustainable where certified, local where at all possible. We practice seasonality without apology. When Jersey Royals are finished, they are finished. When the crab season closes, we do not import a replacement. Our menu changes with what the island offers, not with what the supply chain can manufacture. This means occasional gaps and occasional surprises. We think both are features, not flaws.

To Gorey and Jersey: Our purchasing default is Jersey-grown, Jersey-caught, Jersey-made. We spend our food budget with island producers before we look anywhere else. We foster and nourish close relationships with our purveyors – giving forward orders when we can, so that they can plan their seasons rather than gamble on them. Our loyalty is to this village before anywhere else. A restaurant that anchors itself in a place should feed that place as much as it feeds from it. We are committed to being a business that strengthens the economy of this village and this island, not one that extracts from it.

To Our Guests: We tell you where your food comes from. We tell you who grew it, caught it, made it. We believe that a meal eaten with that knowledge tastes better, and that transparency is the beginning of trust.

To Ourselves: We are at the start of a journey, not the end of one. We are working toward Green Tourism certification. We are measuring our energy and water use. We are reducing our carbon footprint step by step — through the suppliers we choose, the equipment we run, and the building we occupy. We promise to hold ourselves accountable and report honestly.

Our sustainability commitment is not a marketing exercise. It is our conviction that a business rooted in a place this extraordinary has an obligation to that place — to protect it, to nourish it, to ensure that the fields, the sea and the community that surround us are in better shape for our having been here.

Mont Orgueil has watched over this harbour for eight centuries. The tides of Grouville Bay have fed this community for longer than that. The Old Bank House has been part of this village’s story since before anyone now living was born.

We do not take any of that lightly. We hope what is on the table tonight reflects it.