Good, Honest Food

Romilla Arber is passionate about food – where it comes from and how it’s cooked. This ethos led her to set up the Honesty Group across Berkshire. Here she talks to Sarah Rodi

- Sarah Rodi

The Honesty Group includes eight coffee shops, a bakery and a cookery school across Berkshire. It is the brain-child of cookery writer Romilla Arber, from North Sydmonton, who wanted to widen people’s horizons when it came to food.

“I used to be a lawyer,” she tells me. “I went to university to study law; I became a solicitor and practiced for 10 years. But then I got pregnant and my loyalties changed to lie with my baby, so I became a full-time mum.”

Romilla went on to have four children; three boys now aged 23, 22 and 19, and a daughter, aged 15. “After having my children, I became really interested in food and how it gets to the consumer. And I’d write about it,” she says.

“I think food has a massive impact on our lives socially.”