The Sportsman
Whitstable, Kent
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More than 24 years on and still as popular as ever, The Sportsman is by far the most relaxed of all the Guide’s top-rated restaurants. ‘The food is probably the best I've eaten – on pretty much all of the 20 odd times I've been there,’ confided a supporter, who lists the ‘amazing’ staff and a wine list that ‘is unusually fairly priced for so fine a restaurant’ among its attributes. Add the appeal of a scrubbed, rustic interior designed to make people feel at ease, open fires, a dash of comfort and, on the night we spotted a McLaren in the car park, a sprinkling of glamour, and it’s easy to see how it can get booked up for months ahead. Not bad for a shabby old Kent pub tucked under a sea defence wall, two miles west of Whitstable. A famous take-us-as-we-are attitude puts the emphasis on exceptional hospitality and on turning out food of rare quality – courtesy of head chef Dan Flavell, who interprets co-owner Steve Harris’s ingredients-led, seasonally aware approach brilliantly. Everything is produced with great assurance, as can be appreciated from the five-course tasting menu – which includes snacks and plenty of choice at each stage. There’s no shortage of luxury ingredients – creamily poached oysters in the lightest, just-warm beurre blanc with pickled cucumber and salty, soft Avruga caviar, or exquisite native lobster with hollandaise and black truffle – but one sign of a good kitchen is what can be done with humbler raw materials. The Sportsman's emblematic answer is a slip sole grilled in seaweed butter – widely copied, yet you will never eat a better one elsewhere. Even a simple-looking plate of braised halibut fillet with a rich, intensely satisfying cep and lemon verbena sauce hides great technical skill and requires pinpoint judgement to get it as right as this. Meat dishes are handled as well as any: charred maple-cured pork (of fabulous flavour) is transformed into something very special by virtue of excellent ingredients – wholegrain mustard tartare, cabbage salad and gooseberries; needless to say, execution and delivery are faultless. This is not hearty, gutsy food, nor is it showy. It is the marriage of ingredients and balance that so often impresses, as well as the remarkable lightness of touch. Although the kitchen keeps abreast of the times, the food never seems to fall for the clichés that sustain others, preferring to maintain steady interest – as in a fabulous vegetarian dish of intensely flavoured roast beetroot with raspberries and raw crème fraîche. Desserts pay huge dividends by virtue of their simplicity and are no less appealing for having a conventional air about them – as in our faultless raspberry soufflé with raspberry ripple ice cream. This is cooking that leaves you wanting more and sends you home with a smile, especially when prices for both food and wine represent such good value.
