Hi, I'm Tom. myfoody is something I've wanted to build for the best part of fifteen years — so let me tell you why.
My dad was a head chef at one of the Oxford colleges through the 1980s, and in those days nobody much minded what came home in the boot. We ate exceptionally well for a normal family. Above everything else I remember the bacon — and I'm still, decades on, trying to find any quite as good. I've come close. Nothing yet has matched it.
Some of my earliest food memories are walking through the Covered Market in Oxford as a kid, fascinated by the game hanging in the butchers' windows and the fresh fish on ice at the fishmonger. (The fishmonger has since been replaced by another coffee shop, which tells you something about the last twenty years.) I worked part-time in kitchens through my teens and twenties, which put me firmly off cooking for a living — but it didn't dent the love of the produce itself.
These days we holiday almost exclusively in the UK. Wherever we end up — Cornwall, Dorset, somewhere up the coast — I will always, always seek out the local farm shop, bakery and butcher. The idea for myfoody actually arrived in Looe, in Cornwall, about fifteen years ago. We were after a pasty for lunch and confronted with about eleven bakeries, all promising to be the best in town. There was no way to know whose was actually any good. I remember thinking: someone should build a directory just for this. A site where the people who live somewhere can tell the people who are passing through where to actually go.
I tried to get it off the ground a couple of times and it never quite came together — always too expensive, always too complicated. Thanks to recent advances in technology, I've finally been able to build it properly.
So here it is.
What myfoody is for
myfoody is a labour of love. The aim is simple: one place where anyone in Britain can find the best independent producers near them, and where the people who already know — locals, regulars, those of us who pay attention — can share what they've found.
If your local butcher does the most incredible sausages, this is where to say so. If your favourite bakery does brownies properly (a bit squishy, definitely not dry and cakey), other people deserve to know. Every review helps somebody discover a place they didn't know was there, and helps a small independent get a bit busier next week than they were last.
What I'd love you to do
Have a look at what's already listed near where you live. There's almost certainly something on it you've never tried — even I find new places near me. Then, if you have a minute, drop in a review. The form is intentionally quick. And if your favourite spot isn't on the site, send a suggestion and I'll get it added.
Then take myfoody on the road with you. We need reviews up and down the country — from people who actually know their patch — to make this site as useful as it could be.
Outside of myfoody, I live in Oxfordshire with my wife and two daughters, Evie and Polly. I've spent twenty-five years working in IT and am now putting as much of my spare time as I can into the things I love — cooking, pottery (I have a wheel and kiln in the back), and this. Thanks for being here.
— Tom
