The Month Ahead: Menu Planning for September
TL;DR: September is the turn from summer into autumn, and it arrives faster than most kitchens are ready for. The work of getting ready is August work, and it is mostly desk work: the game ordered and the supplier conversation had, the autumn menu costed and printed, the section trained before the produce lands, and the rota built for the change in trade. Do it in pieces across the month. Leave it to the last day and something gets dropped, usually the training, and you pay for it during service. The full detail on what September brings is on the September seasonality guide.
You do not cook September in September. You write it in August.
That is the part people forget. By the time the produce actually lands, the menu should already be costed, printed, and drilled into the section. If you are still deciding what goes on the board when the first of the month arrives, you are behind, and being behind in a kitchen has a way of showing up on the plate.
So this is not a list of what is in season next month. We have a page for that, and I will point you to it. This is the conversation I would have with a head chef in the third week of August, when the weather is still doing its best and the trade is about to change under your feet whether you have noticed or not.
What is coming, and what is going
September is the turn. One minute it is summer, glorious weather, produce galore, and then almost overnight the light changes and you are into autumn. It catches people out every year, and it should not, because it happens every year. The clever part is not being surprised by it. The clever part is having the autumn menu sitting ready so that when the weather goes, you go with it, cleanly, in a single afternoon, rather than scrambling to catch up for a fortnight.
The obvious September story is game. The season is opening, and if you want it on your menu, you need your order and your supplier conversation sorted now, not on the day you want to serve it. Grouse has been about since the twelfth of August, and if you blinked you have half missed the best of the early birds already. Partridge comes in from the first of September, and it is the one I would build around for early autumn. It is a kinder bird than grouse for a section that does not handle a lot of game, is less aggressive in flavour, and is more forgiving to cook, and it sells to people who would not order grouse in a hundred years. Get on the phone to your game dealer this week, ask what he is expecting and when, and build your menu around what he can actually deliver rather than what you have decided you want. That order is a relationship, not a transaction, and the kitchens that get looked after in a good season are the ones who talked early. Leave it late and you get what is left, at the price that is left, which is never the good price.
A word on the birds themselves, because it matters to how you write the dish. Early-season game is young and tender and wants very little done to it. As the season goes on, the birds get older and stronger and start to need slower, wetter cooking, braises and pies rather than a quick roast and rest. If you write a September menu around roasting young partridge, you cannot run the same dish in November and expect it to eat the same way. Plan the dish for the bird you will actually have in front of you, not the idea of the bird.
At the same time, the summer produce is on its way out. The tomatoes, the courgettes, the soft fruit, and all the other things that have been carrying your menu since June are about to start tasting of nothing much. Use them properly while they are still worth using, and do not be the kitchen still flogging tired summer veg in the second week of September because the menu never got changed. There is nothing sadder than a watery, travelled tomato in October pretending it is still July. If you have a glut coming to the end of its run, that is what you’re preserving should be doing right now: the last proper tomatoes into a sauce or a passata, the gluts of soft fruit into something that will earn its keep in December when there is nothing fresh worth having. Waste at the turn of a season is nearly always a planning failure, not a produce failure.
There is a middle ground worth watching too. Early autumn is one of the better moments in the British calendar for the things that bridge the two seasons: the first proper apples and pears, plums, the last of the outdoor tomatoes if the weather has been kind, sweetcorn, and the beginnings of the squash. These are the ingredients that let a September menu feel like autumn without committing fully to root vegetables and long braises before the weather has earned them. Use them as the bridge. They stop the menu lurching from summer to winter in a single week, which is a thing diners notice even when they cannot say why.
The menu job
This is the real work of August, and it is desk work, not stove work. It is also the part that gets skipped, because it does not feel like cooking, and there is always something on the stove that feels more urgent. Skip it anyway and you will feel it in the first week of September.
Get the autumn menu costed now. Games are not cheap, and prices move with supply, so know your numbers before you commit a dish to the board. A dish that runs at a decent margin in the third week of September, when supply is good, can quietly lose you money by November if you have not watched the price. Cost it properly, build in a bit of room, and know at what price the dish stops being worth running. Then print it, or have it ready to print, so the changeover is clean rather than a scramble.
Train the section before the produce arrives, not during service. If half your team has never plucked a bird or hung one, or has never dealt with the smell of properly aged game, that lesson needs to happen on a quiet morning, not at seven o’clock on a Friday with a full book. Game is not difficult, but it is unfamiliar to a lot of younger cooks who have come up cooking nothing but portioned protein out of a vac-pac bag. Show them once, calmly, before it matters. Let them make the mess and ask the daft questions on a Tuesday morning when nobody is waThe gameg on the plate. That hour costs you almost nothing now and saves you a ruined service later.
Think about trade, too. September chvacuum-pacho is coming through the door. The summer holiday crowd thins out, the regulars come back, the children go back to school, and in a lot of places the covers shift from long lazy lunches to shorter, busier evening service. Some kitchens go quilong,, some get busier, but almost all of them change shape. Staff your rota for the kitchen you are about to have, not the one you have just had. If you built your summer rota around big weekend lunch trade and that trade is about to move to weekday evenings, the rota needs to move with it. This is the sort of thing that is obvious in hindsight and invisible until it bites.
The reality check
The mistake is treating the menu change as a single job you do on the last day of August. It is not. It is ordering, costing, printing, and training, and every one of those takes longer than you think and goes wrong ia bigou rush it. Do it in pieces across the month, and it is manageable. Leave it all to the end, and something gets dropped, usually the training, and then you are correcting mistakes on plates during your busiest week.
There is a cost angle to all of this that is easy to miss. The kitchens that plan the turn well tend to waste less, because they use up the summer produce deliberately instead of binning it, and they buy the autumn produce at a sensible price because they ordered early and talked to the right people. The kitchens that scramble tend to overspend at both ends: throwing out summer stock that turned before they got to it, and paying over the odds for game because they left the order too late. Good planning is not just a tidier kitchen. It is a better gross profit, quietly, every autumn.
None of this is difficult. It is just work that has to happen before the month it is for, which is exactly why it gets left too late.
For the detail on what September actually brings, the full seasonality guide is here: September seasonality guide. Read it now, in August, when you can still do something about it.
Frequently asked questions
When should I start planning my September menu? In August, and not the last week of it. The ordering, costing, printing, and training that a clean menu change needs all take longer than you expect, so spread the work across the month. If you are only starting to think about September when September arrives, you are already behind.
What game is available at the start of September? Grouse has been in season since the twelfth of August, so it is already available, though the best of the very early birds will have gone. Partridge comes into season from the first of September and is a sensible bird to build an early-autumn menu around. Pheasant does not open until the first of October, so it belongs on the October menu, not September.
Should I build my whole autumn menu around game? No. Game is the headline, but early autumn also gives you apples, pears, plums, sweetcorn, and the first squash, which bridges summer and autumn without lurching straight into roots and braises. Use those to ease the menu across the turn rather than changing everything at once.
How do I handle the end-of-summer produce? Use it properly while it is still worth using, and preserve the gluts before they turn. The last decent tomatoes into a sauce, the soft fruit into something that will earn its keep in winter. Do not keep serving tired summer veg into the second week of September because the menu never changed. Waste at the turn of a season is nearly always a planning failure.
Does the way I cook game change through the season? Yes. Early-season birds are young and tender and want very little done to them. Later in the season they are older and stronger and need slower, wetter cooking. A dish written around roasting young partridge in September will not eat the same way in November, so plan each dish for the bird you will actually have.
Why does September change how I should staff the kitchen? The trade changes shape. The summer holiday crowd thins out, the regulars return, children go back to school, and in many places service shifts from long weekend lunches to busier weekday evenings. Build your rota for the kitchen you are about to have, not the one you have just had. about it.