To find The Sportsman, you need to trek out of Whitstable, a couple of miles across the bleak mudflats to Seasalter. The pub may look rather weather-beaten from the outside, but the views from the beach and sea wall are impressive – in a blustery, bracing kind of way.
Inside, all is warm, cheerful and cosy, with bare boards, plain wooden tables and a few local landscape photos adding a touch of colour. The place has a genuine pub atmosphere, although everyone is here for the food these days.
Chef Steve Harris is happy to take inspiration from top London restaurants, but the results are very much his own and he has picked up a Michelin star for his efforts. There is plenty of self-reliant enterprise at work here: Steve cures his own hams, churns his own butter and even produces his own sea salt along the way. Local fish gets a good airing on the daily blackboard menu in the shape of rock oysters with slices of hot chorizo, poached smoked haddock with curried carrot sauce, braised brill fillet with mussel tartare and the like.
Meat eaters could focus on satisfying dishes such as coq au vin, crispy duck with smoked chilli salsa and sour cream and braised pork belly stuffed with black pudding and crackling. Those with a sweet tooth are likely to revel in rhubarb sorbet with burnt cream or jasmine tea junket with rosehip syrup and breakfast crunch. Tasting menus (Tue-Fri lunch and dinner) are worth exploring, and the wine list is full of interesting tipples at keen prices.
.:kentandkentish:.
There’s a lot to admire about Steve Harris’s cooking. He has developed his own style which is a sophisticated form of the new no-frills British cooking – curing his own hams, churning his own butter, even making his own sea salt – while working with local farms to produce first-rate pork, lamb and chicken. The pub, too, has its own style: tucked away in marsh and farm land a couple of miles from touristy Whitstable, it’s a large, shabby building, full of light and big plain wooden tables.
But with the kitchen rising a good couple of notches both in scope and quality of cooking, the Sportsman must now be treated as a serious restaurant, albeit one where ordering at the bar is de rigueur and napkins remain resolutely paper. The short blackboard menu offers an intriguing array of dishes, from smoked mackerel on Bramley apple jelly with soda bread, or perfect pork terrine to some fine and original cooking in main courses, with proper appreciation of the importance of flavour: the combination of a smoked herring roe sauce with a perfectly timed fillet of brill ‘was inspired’, and reporters continue to endorse the never-off-the menu crispy duck with chilli salsa, sour cream and ‘excellent roast potatoes’. Desserts, no less inventive, include rhubarb sorbet served with burnt cream or a strawberry ice lolly with cake milk and elderflower foam. Service is laid back; house wines are £11.95.
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