She studied English literature and psychology at university, but soon found a greater fascination in her vacation jobs, working in kitchens and as a waitress.She took a two-year course with the CIA (not the Central Intelligence Agency, but the Culinary Institute of America) and got a scholarship to work in Europe. She plunders the orchard opposite their home, not only for apples but for nettles from the undergrowth which she makes into rich soups. She also gathers fat hen, classified as a weed, which cooks like dense spinach.Larkin is the daughter of the chief executive of an electricity company in North Carolina. But it’s full of flavour, compared to the large fat, well-fed and watered modern cherry, treated for every disease, never had a hard day in its life.”Larkin’s enthusiasm for local produce is rare among restaurateurs, but the couple’s lifestyle allows them plenty of time for exploring, since they open only at the latter end of the week. Some of her great food finds have been at roadside stalls, local fruit and veg and salad stuff. I found about a dozen, such as Knight’s Early Black and Polstead Black.

Polstead Black is a mean little cherry and it’s had to struggle to live. Now you can buy one kind of cherry only, big and fat and soft. But if you go up to Polstead at cherry-picking time you see lots of the old boys with road-stands selling bags of cherries from the old remaining trees in their gardens You have to ferret out the names of the varieties. But most of the land, says Larkin, has been surrendered to agribusiness where size and yield are the criteria over and above flavour, be it wheat, carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, apples, strawberries or cherries.Cherries are a case in point “Take the Polstead cherries,” says Larkin “This used to be a huge cherry- growing place. Her menu may include Brazilian fish stew or North Carolina Fish Muddle or Chesapeake Crabcakes; if the recipes aren’t local, the ingredients certainly are. She does turkey breast stuffed with avocado and mozarella, very Mediterranean, but the turkeys are wonderful Norfolk Blacks from the Kelly’s farm down the road. It is supplied by Marney Meats, run by the Charrington family, who farm rare breeds on a Tudor property with an 80ft gate tower, tallest in England.You would think that getting gold produce would be easy living in East Anglia’s fertile farmland.

She cooks pork chop stuffed with Monterey Jack, but the pork is cut from Essex Saddlebacks.Along with lamb (from Horned Norfolk sheep) and venison (which she serves sliced thinly and rare as carpaccio), the pork comes from down the road. Larkin’s own alma mater is Fearrington House in North Carolina, a restaurant run on an ethos rather than obvious commercial gain, using only what is fresh and good – local produce in season.Not that Larkin doesn’t stick her neck out. They are astonished because to them that means burgers and hotdogs.”Larkin in fact belongs to the modern American school of cooking, inspired by the texts of MFK Fisher and the example of Alice Waters whose pioneering restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, San Francisco – now 25 years old – is the totem of this new religion. But as his wife Larkin Rogers, the cook, points out: “If we put up the prices we would change its character.”Christopher is from these parts. By marrying Larkin, who is American, he has energised an area never famous for eating out (it was another American, Robert Carrier, who put Suffolk on the gastronomic map when he opened Hintlesham Hall) The pair have created a completely new style of cooking “People ask me what my style of cooking is,” says Larkin “I tell them, American. Three courses with coffee cost pounds 20, two courses pounds l6.50. “We’re never going to make a fortune,” agrees co-owner Christopher Warren, cheerfully.

“Don’t do yourself down.”Martha’s Vineyard is a jewel of a restaurant in this beautiful, essentially Elizabethan village. It won acclaim the year it opened (The Good Food Guide county restaurant of the year, 1989); it has been praised by all the food critics, and last year the Independent’s Emily Green declared it her restaurant of the year.One customer wrote to The Good Food Guide to say that what Martha’s Vineyard offered was cooking to make you sit up and take notice: “It is inspired, risky and dazzling when it works, which is most of the time.”And for cooking of high quality, the restaurant isn’t expensive. Michael Bateman continues his series on the new face of British cuisine
Customers at Martha’s Vineyard in Nayland, Suffolk, are a rum lot “You ought to charge a bit more,” they say. At Martha’s Vineyard, Christopher Warren and Larkin Rogers cook modern American food

with a Suffolk twist.