Hillside Foods make a delightful complement

I knew Jay and Will Allan, brothers and partners in speciality food business Hillside as they grew up in Exeter, and have watched the progress of their company with admiration. Established in 2009 the business has grown from supplying local restaurants and farm shops in its early days to supplying the hospitality areas at the London Olympics this summer. 

In their formative years Will and Jay spent time at their grandparents’ Somerset smallholding and remember with pleasure harvesting produce from the farm and helping their grandmother create wonderful home-cooked dishes. Jay went on to train as a chef and develop a talent for creating and producing his own dishes. It was while working as Head Chef at a Dartmoor hotel that he became friends with the hotel’s cheese supplier, Gary Jungheim of Country Cheeses, and was inspired to create a range of products to serve with cheeses. 

This initial idea was developed when Jay and Will set up Hillside Speciality Foods to produce these cheese accompaniments for an ever-increasing range of customers. Will brought business acumen into the set up, which has become an Exeter success story. Its original attractive Devon hills logo and product labels were created by their mother Rosemary, it’s very much a family business.

I recently bought their Quince fruit cheese for a special family lunch, enthusiastically recommended to me by award-winning Exeter butchers, Piper’s Farm, and we all agreed it was excellent: intense and true in flavour. The tomato relish is another favourite of mine – in another league from other additive laden products. These foods are more than ‘home made’, so often a misused term, because the knowledge, skill, creativity and thought needed to develop and prepare them is far beyond most home cooks.

Hillside’s products are multi-award winners in the food world – receiving Great Taste 1, 2 & 3 star gold awards and Taste of the West gold awards in recent years. Many well-known high quality food outlets have taken them up, including Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and even the House of Lords, as well as Devon cheese shops, delicatessens, and Exeter community enterprise The Real Food Store. Hillside has been short-listed for the 2012 Devon Life Food & Drink Awards, Taste of the West Finalists awards and Food & Drink Devon ‘best producers’ category. 

Look at their website www.hillsidespecialityfoods.com for more products and, very helpfully, Jay’s suggestions for the best combination of fruit paste and biscuits with particular cheeses.