Welcome

Created by Nicholas Friar and sitting high on the historic city walls of Chester, hypha is an experimental dining experience with bold aims. Continually moving towards a zero waste kitchen, hypha’s sustainable ethos, brings together local produce with exceptional standards. Every hero ingredient has been grown in Chester or its surrounding areas.

hypha offers a constantly evolving, micro-seasonal tasting menu. Using ingredients from local suppliers, growers and foragers, the hypha menu changes to match the environment. Our menu can change day-to-day, sometimes developing as a day unfolds.

Our zero waste aim has led us to form new approaches to how we use our food. hypha features our own fermentation lab and creative food workspace, where we use every stem and stalk to proudly develop an evolving menu that demonstrates how amazing food and creative thinking can help us make a smaller impact.

Grown for hypha

After meeting in the hospitality industry year ago, Nicholas has worked closely with Alice Leech, a growner from Chester. She began growing edible flowers and has expanded to growing other produce exclusively for hypha.

Growing our own produce means we can grow ingredients to create specific menus we design, rather than just using what is available from traditional suppliers. We have complete control of our supply chain and can ensure our produce is now being grown on one of the UK’s oldest organic grow fields.

hypha also brings together other growers who specialise in other ingredients, like the Garlic Queen just outside Chester, who grows specialist heritage garlic.

All our staff are included in our produce, helping forage native produce from the banks of the River Dee, to local forests. We stock up on the rich abundance of exceptional ingredients and preserve to use throughout the year.

“We’re not preachy, we’re not trying to convert people… all we want to do is to make some tasty and innovative food .” Nicholas Friar – Owner

Drink up…

We are not just food lover, but flavour lovers. Our in-depth exploration of flavour expands past out food, into every drink we serve.

Our wines go through the same strict accreditation process as the rest of hypha. We ensure every sip is carefully aired with our dishes and reflects our sustainable values.

We don’t use many traditional spirits. Instead we are proud to serve Empirical spirits, a flavour company from the former development chef at NOMA in Denmark. They create bold distilled drinks with a level of detail unlike any others. Using custom-built machinery, developed hybrid fermentation techniques, augmented low-temperature distillation and other clever science, they have explored drinks in a completely new way.