"This is where the magic happens." Merlin Labron-Johnson, Chef Founder, is sat at the chef's counter of Osip, the farm-to-table restaurant in the hills of Somerset that's captured the hearts and tastebuds of epicures everywhere. "At the heart of the kitchen" he explains, gesturing around the brilliant expanse of the restaurant, radiant even in the cold of autumn, "everybody sits in the main dining room and looks out over the landscape, which is beautiful during the daytime, but really nice in the evening as the seasons change." 

There's a journey to the Osip menu, from guests finishing their meal under a golden hour gently transitioning into sunset, to appreciating a digestif by the fire, ready to take the stairs up to Osip's minimalist and gently-hued rooms. "Experience-led," Osip's emphasis is on the element of surprise, with no written menu offered to guests until they leave. "We give a few clues" Merlin chuckles, "but the idea is that we cook with whatever we've harvested that morning… It's a bit more immersive, engaging… there's an element of risk, and of course you have to make it fun!" 

Journeys, perhaps, have guided Merlin's own path. At eighteen, he moved to Switzerland, where he spent a few years working in traditional French restaurants — "you know, with the big hats and strict kitchens!" Embracing this experience, Merlin then worked across France and later in Belgium, developing a more contemporary approach to fine dining and working his way up to sous chef before returning to London, where he founded Portland, earning him a Michelin star at just twenty-four years old, and later Clipstone, the friendly Fitzrovia haunt beloved by locals. 

After a few years in London, Merlin "felt the urge to return to somewhere a little bit more remote." Having grown up in the Devon countryside he "always felt more at home when surrounded by nature… it's where my cooking and creativity is." First setting up Osip: "an experimental style of cooking, rooted in a classic background but seen through a new lens, inspired by the landscape," later came The Old Pharmacy in Bruton, Somerset, a "more domestic space that reminds me a bit of my kitchen at home."

With Somerset famed for its exceptional produce, inspiration is drawn from the relationships cultivated with farmers and growers, hunters and gatherers. With the Dreamers' Farm specialising in unusual and rare vegetables and herbs set mere minutes from both restaurants, Osip and The Old Pharmacy celebrate "the wild foods and flowers in abundance in this part of the world," Merlin enthuses. While guests love, he confides, to come to Osip in peak summer, "with the abundance of British vegetables at their best — for me, the most exciting time of the year to cook is early autumn, when you've got the beautiful late summer fruits, and those first apples and pears, pumpkin and mushroom season begins, and game season is around the corner." 

Merlin not only draws inspiration from the generous landscape of Somerset, but from the buildings that have found a home within it. There's something charming about the nourishment provided today at the Old Pharmacy, continuing the legacy of its five hundred year namesake. Osip, Merlin explains, was originally an old coach inn, on one of the main routes to London; "typically people would stop, spend the night and have a meal, have a little breakfast in the morning and then carry on their journey." With the design intention rooted in this history and celebration of its original features, marrying them with a modernist approach, "I do like to think that this is a contemporary reimagination of the old coaching inn that stood here." 

A bold reimagining and a huge undertaking, flooding the rooms with light and creating a new chapter in the building's story, it was nice, Merlin enthuses, to bring in friends who were artists and designers, craftspeople and makers. "I've always been very passionate and taken a huge interest in craft;" of course, he muses, "cooking is a craft, so exploring those relationships is fascinating to me… When I really unpick what a certain craftsperson does and how they work and how they think and compare it to the way that I work and think, there are many more similarities than I previously expected." 

At Osip, Merlin and his team work not only to give people a meal they love, but "to have an experience." With every detail as important as the food — "I often visualise the way that a dish will look before I imagine how it's going to taste" — Merlin works with artists to respond to the concepts behind his dishes. Plinths designed by ceramicist Collette Woods, for example, present vegetables, elevating them and "playing with the idea that we give vegetables a higher billing than elsewhere… Almost putting them on a pedestal." "Tongue in cheek, but also really beautiful," Merlin and his cooking emphasise how "what's on the plate allows us to be more playful and creative." The story of Osip is a series of journeys, from the winding road that takes you from Dreamers' Farm to Osip's welcoming front door, to the path that has taken Merlin around the world, from countryside, to city, to countryside again, with this creativity and playfulness guiding each journey and story.