Most of the talk about where restaurant food comes from stops at the plate: the farm named on the menu, the butcher, the kitchen garden. Brigi Stamber has gone further down, to the dough. At Stretch, the neighbourhood pizzeria she opened on Portland Road in Hove on 29 October, every pizza is made with flour from 100% British regeneratively farmed wheat.
That is a pointed choice in a trade that has traditionally relied on imported Italian flour. Stamber is not a newcomer making a gesture. She has twice been named Pizza Chef of the Year, taking the PAPA title in 2023 and the National Pizza Awards title in 2024, and her new restaurant has already been judged against established names. On 3 November Stretch was named runner-up for National Pizza of the Year at the National Pizza Awards, and two days later it won the Environmental and Sustainability Award from the Pizza and Pasta Association.
The flour behind it
The flour is RISE Re:Gen, developed by Yorkshire-based ingredients specialist Eurostar Commodities with The Green Farm Collective. It comes from British farmers who use regenerative methods such as direct drilling and multi-species cover crops in place of ploughing, practices intended to improve soil health, support biodiversity and help land cope with drought and heavy rain. Stretch is believed to be the first pizzeria in Britain to make its entire pizza menu with it. FEAST has followed the subject before, in an earlier report on the carbon case for regenerative flour.
“I love pizza but I also care about where our food comes from, how it’s grown, the people who produce it and the impact we have on the world around us,” Stamber said. “I don’t want people to walk through the door thinking they’re making some kind of sacrifice to eat more responsibly. I want them to come because they love pizza, have a brilliant evening and leave wanting to come back.”
Jason Bull, managing director of Eurostar Commodities, made the commercial point plainly: “Brigi is proving that you don’t have to look overseas to find exceptional pizza flour.”
Sourcing that runs through the menu
The flour is the headline, but the approach carries through the rest of the restaurant. Vegetables come from Pitfield, charcuterie from Curing Rebels and British cheese from The Cheese Man. The drinks list includes beer from Big Hug and Lost Bier, Lancing Lemonade from Sip Sup and wine from Sea Change, which supports marine conservation work. Coffee is from Skylark Coffee, packaging is compostable and the cleaning products come from Harriet’s of Hove.
It fits a pattern we have been tracking, where provenance has moved from footnote to selling point, as we explored in why restaurants keep telling you they grow their own. What is different here is where the claim sits. A pizza is mostly dough, so a pizzeria that changes its flour changes the whole product, not just one ingredient on a specials board.
What it means for diners
For anyone eating there, the test is the one Stamber sets herself: whether the pizza is good enough that the sourcing feels like a bonus rather than the reason to go. An award and a runner-up place within a week of opening suggest the judges think so. For the wider trade, the more interesting question is whether a high-profile chef switching to British regenerative flour persuades others to look again at a default few have questioned. Bull said he hoped her success “inspires more chefs and restaurants to consider where their flour comes from”.
Stretch is open at 202 Portland Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 5QN. Details and image via Stretch and RISE Re:Gen.