Menuwatch: Walled Gardens, Manchester

"Tickets used to sell out the same day when they went on sale," says Shepherd, whose restaurant has been included in the Observer Food Monthly's ‘20 of the UK's best restaurants' list, "but now they sell out in a matter of minutes."

Priced from £85-£95, the set menu – with a vegan alternative and matched wines available to order – begins with an apéritif: homemade gin flavoured with lemon verbena, vanilla, juniper, tonka bean and orange, served with homemade grapefruit tonic. "I got my licence in the first lockdown to distil gin here," says Shepherd. "Normally you'd put all your botanicals into the copper still, but I distil all the botanicals individually. That gives you a lot of control over how you treat different ingredients."

This sort of obsessive attention to detail is evident throughout each dish, starting with a dandelion petal fruit pastille topped with lemon verbena from his raised beds in the garden. "Each spring I make an infusion of dandelion petals," says Shepard. "They have a sunshiny, bright, citrussy flavour." Mushrooms with vanilla sauce and beetroot gel reflects Shepherd's ambition to make something with meaty, almost charcuterie-like flavours, but using vegetables. "I take mushrooms, slice them very thinly and then dehydrate them," he explains. "Then I rehydrate them in stock, and set the soaked mushrooms into a block. The block gets cooked in a water bath, cut into little pieces, smoked over oak, then finally marinaded again." Each painstaking step intensifies the flavours.

A striking dish of tofu stuffed with spiced mushrooms and a little pickled apple is accompanied by a blue algae miso sauce. "The blue algae naturally has this bright, vibrant blue colour and it's naturally high in protein as well," says Shepherd, who became vegetarian 18 years ago while studying philosophy at university.

Carrot charcuterie – cured, smoked and air-dried to build up layers of savouriness – is mixed through a fermented cashew nut paste and topped with a carrot crisp with a blood orange reduction, while nettle soup is "quite a traditional French recipe", says Shepherd. "I make mine with a little bit of seaweed for saltiness, finished with whipped oat cream that's smoked over burning pine branches for a flavour of the forest, then it's frozen in liquid nitrogen."

A huitlacoche dish is inspired by a pop-up Shepherd did in Mexico City, where he also learnt to make masa. "I make fresh corn tortillas each day. On top is the mushroom cooked in a chipotle sauce, then a little bit of gooseberry salsa for an English twist on things." A comforting dish of barbecued cabbage topped with baked blue Wensleydale cheese and a heady truffle potato mousse is followed by a delicate glass straw filled with raspberry, mint and sparkling chamomile to prepare the palate for something sweeter: chocolate parfait, "drizzled with honey from the bees in my two hives in my garden", with caramelised honey on top and a granita made with lavender on the side.

Pine cone sorbet is made from an infusion of baby pine cones and another infusion of pine needles. "You get this green apple freshness from the needles and a more resiny flavour from the cones. The walnuts are caramelised in the pine cone syrup as well, with a little bit of cucumber for freshness." The final dessert, chocolate truffle, is flavoured with distilled chillies, but it's fragrant rather than hot. "I take a kilo of Scotch bonnet chillies and blend them into about 500ml of alcohol," says Shepherd. "I distil it through the vacuum distiller which allows me to distil it at a lower pressure, so you're not cooking them or damaging them with heat – you're keeping all the delicate, fresh aromatics of the chillies. The capsaicin that makes chillies spicy is too heavy a molecule to distil, so you're able to distil all the flavour into one side and all the heat into another."

It's a case of "finding a rhythm and having systems", says Shepherd, who does all the prep, cookery and serving himself at the Walled Gardens. "I have so much freedom and control over the processes. I really enjoying cooking this way and having my bees and raised beds. It becomes a lifestyle – the service is just the little bit that pokes out at the surface."

From the menu

• Dandelion petal fruit pastille
• Mushroom, vanilla, beetroot
• Tofu, blue algae miso
• Carrot charcuterie, blood orange
• Nettle soup
• Halloumi, rhubarb molases, rose
• Huitlacoche, gooseberry
• Treacle and walnut bread with cultured butter
• Blue Wensleydale, potato, truffle
• Chamomile and raspberry
• Honey and wildflowers
• Pine cone sorbet
• Scotch bonnet, fermented passion fruit

**The Walled Gardens, Alness Road, Whalley Range, Manchester www.veggiechef.co.uk