The Wild Kitchen


Foraging is a fun, nutritious and sustainable way of eating.

The Wild Kitchen was established in 2012 by Lucia (prononunced, “Lucheea”) Stuart who lives in Deal, Kent. She is an artist, plantswoman and cook whose passionate food ethos is to eat local and to forage; forgotten foods such as: acorns, sea buckthorn, seaweed and coastal vegetables.  Foraging is the key to unlocking our flawed food system and diabolical health trajectory in the 21st Century

At The Wild Kitchen you will have a wonderful day of fun whilst appreciating nature's bounty and marine life.

French cusine is a flavour at The Widl Kitchen because in the nineties Lucia ran a cafe/restaurant in Languedoc with two friends from art school. The rural life immediately invoked a connection to the land as they cooked food from 'Le terroir". Her unlikely mentor, was a botanist and war veteran called 'Juju', Julien. Every morning he came to the cafe with his arms full of plants for us to experiment which ignited Lucia's spark as a 'forager chef'. She embraced adding nature directly to the cooking pot with the seasons infusing everthing. Creativity flourished; The Wild Kitchen's visuals; aesthetics and art feature stongly. Artists have a way of seeing differently and responding sensitively to material; this has helped with the interpretation and cooking of wild food. Le Cafe du Livre became an international success featured in The New York Times.


In 2011 Lucia wrote, Eating Flowers an illustrated cook book  to connect children with hedgerow food. However, adults were even more keen for forgotten foraging knowlege so The Wild Kitchen was founded in 2012 offering coastal foraging days with 'free-food' dining in Kent; 'the garden of England'.


2022 Is the tenth anniversary of The Wild Kitchen. We honour and love nature as much as we appreciate and thank every customer.

Past clients include the BBC, Food Network, The Eden Project, NHS England, BBC radio Kent,  chef, Nuno Mendes, economist, Andy Haldane, BBC's Dr. Michael Mosley & Paul Hollywood.