It was my colleague Christopher Gray who first alerted me to the Wild Thyme restaurant, tucked away in Mill Street, Chipping Norton. He assured me that I would love it, as nearly all the food featured on the menu is sourced locally. Other friends mentioned this restaurant too. Everyone, it seemed, had something good to say about both the food and the enthusiastic young couple who have come up with a restaurant that celebrates local produce.

Wild Thyme is the brainchild of Nick Pullen and his partner Sally Daniel who finally turned a dream into reality when they moved to Chipping Norton and opened their restaurant last December.

Nick, a professional chef for more than 20 years, explained why the premises they found in Chipping Norton are so special: “We don’t come from Oxfordshire. Sally is from Essex and I come from Portsmouth, but we knew that the place we were looking for had to be somewhere really rural, like Chipping Norton. It’s such a beautiful little market town, and as it’s surrounded by farmers, cheese makers and other food producers, it offers everything we wanted.

“We had this image of running a restaurant where local farmers knocked on the back door holding a brace of freshly shot pheasants and where freshly harvested vegetables were readily available.”

Although no one has turned up with a couple of pheasants yet, the couple are confident that they really have found the right place to open their first business. The restaurant occupies a Grade II-listed building with enough space for a well-appointed kitchen, three small inter-connecting dining areas and three letting rooms upstairs.

Sally admitted that there were moments when they wondered if they would be able to meet their opening day deadline. She was still holding a wet paintbrush the evening they were due to open – but by working together as a team they got the work done.

Teamwork is probably the secret of their success. This is a couple prepared to do most of the jobs themselves, only calling on staff when they really have to.

The atmosphere they have created by working together is relaxed and friendly. Regular customers soon become friends and are called by their first names rather than ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’.

“We are not into instant food, we aim to offer the meal experience and provide customers with a chance to enjoy a leisurely meal,” Sally said. “Nick cooks everything to order and customers seem to appreciate this.”

Another thing they like is the fact that Sally and Nick really do go out of their way to fill their plates with local produce. They spent some considerable time before opening getting to know what was available locally.

Until last week, when he had to start concentrating on his GCSEs, their eggs were supplied by 15-year-old Jack Wilkinson, who rears his own laying-hens on his parents’ smallholding. Although Jack lives several miles from Chipping Norton, he would arrive every Saturday with trays of fresh eggs, which he had carried on the local bus. Apparently, there were times when he would admit that two eggs had broken when the bus took a sharp turn to the left, but that made his delivery even more special.

They get their venison from Wychwood Forest and their lamb from nearby Glyn Farm because it is pasture fed. Their cheese comes from Windrush Valley, Rodger Crudge and Blur bassist Alex James, who lives in Kingham.

Nick makes his own bread rolls, and offers them flavoured with sunblush tomatoes, walnut and prune and onion, which I can assure you are quite delicious.

The vegetables proved a real problem at first. Then everything changed when the couple made it known that they were looking for local produce. Nick said: “Suddenly people began turning up with baskets of vegetables from their gardens. One woman arrived the other day carrying a basket of ripe plums. I was able to say thank you by giving her a couple of plum tarts in exchange the next day.”

He went on to say that what he and Sally love about Chippy is that it really was proving to be everything they dreamed of.

‘It’s allowing us to live our dream. The other day I went to the local butchers and asked if they had any wood pigeons. The butcher shook his head and said he didn’t have any at the moment, but that if I really wanted some he supposed he could go out and shoot a few – and he did. You can’t get more local than that,” said Nick. Althought he can’t get local fish, he does use a Cotswold company that delivers fresh fish regularly.

For my lunch at Wild Thyme I ordered Upton-smoked duck breast salad dressed with home-made blackberry vinaigrette. It was delicious.