The Sportsman: How a 'grotty' boozer in Kent became the UK's best restaurant

Stephen Harris is the self-taught head chef of The Sportsman on the Kent coast

Head chef Stephen Harris opened The Sportsman in 1999

Just two decades ago, Stephen Harris was a financial advisor in London, beavering away at home trying to hone his cooking skills by emulating his favourite chefs and leafing through their recipe books. Now, he’s got a Michelin star of his own for his restaurant The Sportsman: recently named the best in the UK.

The Sportsman seems like unlikely success story but has all the ingredients for a cult hit. Harris has no formal training, and famously once humble-bragged that The Sportsman is just a “grotty rundown pub the sea” in Seasalter, Kent.

Except, of course it’s really not. Few “grotty pubs” are formally recognised by Michelin. Or named National Restaurant of the Year 2017 by Restaurant magazine. And it’s no accident that Harris practises terroir cooking, using the freshest and finest ingredients in the Kent estuary. He mainly uses vegetables from the pub garden. The oysters and urchins on the menu are foraged from the nearby mudflats. And the lamb and chickens are bred within spitting distance of the pub car park. Harris even makes his own signature butter using seaweed (no points for guessing where that’s from). The story of the pub’s ascent from local boozer to world-renowned restaurant is documented in its long-awaited, self-titled recipe book.

Harris opened The Sportsman in 1999. When he locked eyes on the unassuming pub with sticky carpets and a worn dartboard he knew he had found the ideal place to open up shop. Just seven years before he had his first Michelin-starred meal and Nico Ladenis’ three-Michelin starred Chez Nico in September 1992. “Althought I was a good amatuer cook, I didn't know that such perfection was possible,” Harris writes in the book.

He chanced upon The Sportsman as a venue one evening as he made his way home from Faversham to Whitstable. As his companion chatted, he began brainstorming what the kitchen in North East Kent would look like if the rooms were stripped back, and toyed with the idea of coaxing seafood lovers and media-types from Whitstable with simply, local fare. Ten months later on 1 November 1999, it was opening night.

At that moment, did he believe that The Sportsman could achieve such a level of success?

“In a way, but it was still a surprise when it all actually happened as i thought it might,” he tells The Independent.

And although he envisioned the pub’s success, Harris still feels the pressure to maintain its status as the mecca for no-frills and high-quality.

To cope, Harris has a characteristically simplistic trick. “I try not to think about it,” he says.

“We don’t Google ourselves and we just try to be at the restaurant everyday.”

In a way being so unassuming in person and location gave him a head start. No one expects much of a drinking hole by the sea. The benefit of keeping The Sportsman as a pub, rather than transforming it into a swanky restaurant, says Harris is: “it’s easier to run a pub. There’s less fancy stuff to worry about. You just open the doors and start serving.“

He says that despite his success, he has no intention to expand, adding: "I miss the long quiet lonely nights when we had two people booked and that feeling that we were creating something extraordinary but nobody knew."