David Swallow’s earliest memory is of sitting on a neighbour’s draining board watching her skin pigeons and rooks.
He was just three years old, but it made a powerful impression that has never left him.
At home in Holbeach, David’s late mother, May Swallow, cooked and baked regularly, and her food was appreciated by the family.
If there was rabbit for the pot, David recalls he and his father would take it in turns to eat the head, savouring the sweet cheek meat and tongue and even sucking the brains out.
May allowed David to help in the kitchen, and baking sessions using the old Be-Ro recipe books became a ritual.
David came into contact with game again in his second job after leaving school when he went to work for A H Worth. He recalls tying game by the neck and feet and attaching a luggage label to it, which is how it went through the post from Holbeach post office.
The job gave him experience of sales, which took him on to the next stage of his career, travelling the world for companies involved in fresh produce for about 20 years.
Some of his strongest memories of this time are of food, but he was experiencing authentically cooked lamb tagine in the middle of Morocco, or stuffed vine leaves in Egypt.
If he wasn’t a self-confessed foodie before that, he certainly was by this time. David says: “Over the years I always had a passion for food. I eat, breathe and sleep it. Even now when I leave work I watch anything to do with cooking.”
When he tired of travelling, David worked for fresh produce companies as supervisor or development chef.
In 2008 he retired early from his job as development chef at Bakkavor, and that ended up coinciding with May becoming ill and then dying.
David admits he moped about for six months before a job came up as head chef at The Chestnuts at Gedney.
The tearoom already served reasonably traditional food, such as Lincolnshire sausage and cottage pie, but David has developed that and now offers dishes such as rabbit pie, pigeon pie and steamed bacon, onion and sage suet roll, along with things like steamed jam puddings and rice pudding.
David says: “I am very keen on traditional recipes being kept alive, even if they have a modern day twist.
“You don’t have to use ingredients that cost the earth either because simple ingredients are often flavoursome. I use a lot of game, such as pigeon, rabbit and pheasant.
“The rabbit pie is much loved by customers at The Chestnuts.”
David works at The Chestnuts on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but says junior chef Matt Youngs is just as likely to produce traditional dishes on the other days.