Who am I now? Leaving The Long Table after eight extraordinary years

A dream made edible, two evictions, countless meals, and what comes next.

Friends,

I am so so so mightily astounded at what we’ve built together, the incredible things we’ve made possible, the countless lives we’ve touched and the bellies we’ve filled. Most of all I’m grateful for the deep connections made.

My time at The Long Table has come to an end. I’ve accepted redundancy, and I’m heartbroken not to be working with the team I love, doing work I adore. Over time The Long Table has become my identity, so I’m asking, who am I now?

I couldn’t have fitted in more life since receiving the vision for The Long Table, and I need a hot minute to digest all I’ve ingested. So first I’m heading to the cold Cornish sea to breathe the air and scream at the moon. The hard trials and chewy things of the past few years will become rich learnings and compost for whatever’s next. I’ll share deeper insights here on Substack, and around campfires, as they become life giving and vital. Next, I will keep gathering people around food for the positive change it makes possible. The best thing I can say right now is that I’ve done what I came here to do.

Both Long Tables are in good hands, with brilliant teams to keep the cooking and the gathering going.

A washing-up bowl and 81 souls

The vision became edible on a February night in 2018, with a barbecue and a washing-up bowl in the Furniture Bank warehouse 81 souls encouraging us on. We pushed tables together until they ran the length of the building like a lumpy snake. Friends and family lit the candles and laid the placemats that boldly proclaimed The Long Table manifesto. A restaurant for the future was born.

Since then so much has happened I could write a book. Here are just some of the highlights.

During Covid we delivered more than 100,000 meals, which put Emma Hurrell’s name on the front of a GWR train. We launched the Friends programme so people could give monthly, and the response from well over 400 neighbours was the most wonderful local support.

Then came the first eviction, and so many of you rolled up your sleeves to help breathe life into the beautiful old bones of Brimscombe Mill, a building that had lain derelict for three decades and is now positively throbbing with life.

Against all advice and evidence to the contrary, we partnered with the Diocese of Gloucester, went again and opened a second Long Table in Cirencester. Then came the second eviction, and a response from our community so overwhelming, a hug so big, that it caught the attention of people far and wide and turned the tide. #FillTheMill still echoes around that beloved old mill, under a thin old roof that has scorched us in summer and left us perishing in winter. Through it all the kitchen kept great food coming, and people kept finding each other around the table.

In June The Long Table was a finalist for Sustainable Restaurant of the Year at the National Restaurant Awards, and this October it’s one of three finalists for Cotswold Life Restaurant of the Year. Awards are tinsel, though! What matters most are the countless stories of people coming in, being welcomed, feeling safe and finding a place to belong. Hardly a week goes by without a group from somewhere arriving to eat with us and see what might be possible where they live.

What I’m taking with me

As we’ve cooked and served, so we’ve found words that help. These are some of the hard-won learnings in their pithiest form:

Amazing things happen when we eat together.

We’re feeding change, one bite at a time.

Transformation, not transaction.

Putting hospital back into hospitality.

Wobbling Up.

Going at the speed of trust.

As a team we found our highest value, Radical Hospitality, and we bring it alive. Each of these lines cost us something to learn, and I’ll be unpacking them here in the months ahead.

Thank you

To the team, past and present: big-hearted, hard-working and super talented. You make The Long Table possible, and I love you so much it hurts. Many of you know the stories of personal growth, because we’ve seen how a great team lifts everyone up and makes the seemingly impossible thrive. Sourcing from great local farms and championing them, cooking their precious produce beautifully, doing our utmost to make everyone welcome whatever they can afford: I couldn’t think more highly of you and all we’ve done together.

Thank you to everyone who came alongside us, encouraged us and challenged us, to the Friends of The Long Table for your faithful support, and to every one of you who has swung a leg over a bench or pulled up a chair. And thank you to my friends and family, who held me through two evictions, Covid and so much more.

My sincere hope is that The Long Table, in the hands of this brilliant team, goes on and on, always a delicious beacon of hope. Please help keep it strong. Become a Friend with a monthly gift, whatever you can manage. Bring your colleagues, your family or your group for lunch at Brimscombe Mill in Stroud or the Old Department Store in Cirencester, pay what you can, and ask about hosting your next gathering there.

I look forward to eating at the restaurant that first came to me on my loneliest day. I’ll see you down there some lunchtime, no doubt.

Your table?

The Long Table was where forty years of growing up above the bakery met the wild creativity and joy of cooking around the world. Those forty years taught me the importance of provenance, produce, people and family values. What so many of us have experienced and love about The Long Table is like a sourdough starter, a living culture that can be shared, and I want to take it wherever it’s needed.

There is so much need for reconciliation, unity and healing in places of division, and a shared meal is one of the most powerful ways I know of bringing people together. I’m up for going where a shared meal might be the last chance saloon.

It’s already begun. Fourteen round the table at a Partners in Purpose gathering a couple of weeks ago. Thirty at a lunch with Pippa Jones’s Common Good. Two hundred at a four-course feast in Old Town, Portland, Oregon, with Garden Spaces and Feed the Mass, gathering some of the city’s most marginalised people for an evening of hope and renewal.

If you’ve a table that needs setting, whatever its size and wherever in the world, I’d love to hear from you at tom_herbert1@icloud.com, and I’d love to know what change you and your community are hungry for.

Coming up

Here on Substack I’ll be sharing the epic stories and hard-won learnings of these eight years. Coming up:

• What two evictions taught me about community

• Feeding a town through Covid

• Transformation, not transaction: how pay-as-you-can really works

• Who am I now? When your work becomes your identity

If someone set a table for you by forwarding this, subscribe below. If you know a community hungry for change, please share it with them. And come and follow along on Instagram.

What we’ve proved beyond everything is that

amazing things happen when we eat together. This story is only just getting started.

Don’t be a stranger, mine’s a short black coffee.

Peace&Loaf,

Tom

If you’ve read all of this, you might be in need of a pick-me-up.

What I’m craving is a square of a beloved old favourite and Long Table classic.

FLAPJACK - to feed a large gathering.

Couple of things, this one’s vegan. If you fancy something divine, swap the margarine for butter and the golden syrup for honey. We used to roll oat groats in a Mockmill roller, by doing this, you can keep a teammate’s child busy for 15 minutes AND benefit from the nutritious and delicious oily germ in the freshly rolled oats, not something found in shop-bought oats.

One other thing, I recently made this for Partners in Purpose and added as many organic dried apricots, the almost black ones and crushed cardamon seeds - delicious.

To make: melt

500g marg on a medium heat in a big pan on a hob. Add in

500g golden syrup and

500g golden caster sugar. If you are adding dried fruit add that in also and stir the lot until all the margarine or butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Then turn off the heat and stir in

830g rolled oats - jumbo or freshly rolled.

Once it’s all incorporated together, pour the lot into one or two large roasting tins pre lined with [pink for the win] baking parchment and bake at 180ºC until the edges turn golden.

Top Tip, cut the flapjack into squares whilst still warm. It is much harder to do once it’s cold.