PUB GRUB WITH STYLE
Top place to eat in U.K.
Chef Stephen Harris thinks of acidity as treble, and likens finishing a sauce to mixing a track in the studio.
“Some people see food in colours, which is wonderful,” he says.
“I think of it in musical terms. I’m convinced that one day they’ll realize that good food has some kind of harmonic effect on the brain.”
Harris’s “pub by the sea,” The Sportsman in Kent, England, has held a Michelin star since 2008 and was crowned best restaurant in the U.K. by the National Restaurant Awards for the past two years running. Anything but “poncy,” Harris has eschewed formality since he first opened the pub’s doors in 1999. Choosing to take orders at the bar and lay his tables with pottery seconds from the likes of Wedgwood and Royal Doulton.
“Understatement is underused. If something’s brilliant, people will recognize it,” he says. “One of the really pleasing things is that we’re absolutely chock-a-block every day for the next six months. To me, that proves that people like what we’re doing.”
The more than 50 recipes he shares in his debut cookbook, The Sportsman, showcase the remarkable seaside fare he’s become famous for.
Ranging from the elegant (brill braised in vin jaune) to homey (roast pork belly with apple sauce), recipes are presented in six chapters devoted to Kentish terroir: sea, salt marshes, farms, woodlands, gardens and orchards.
His path to the professional kitchen was an unusual one, Harris admits. After moving through several careers — including punk rocker with a recording contract and Stewart Copeland of The Police as producer — he taught himself the culinary arts.
Harris writes that his first Michelin-starred meal in the early ’90s “set the tone” for his approach to cuisine. “I was so determined to produce food that was elevated to as high a level as I could get,” he says.
Through studying seminal cookbooks and dining at prestigious establishments, Harris honed his craft. Between the ages of 33 and 38, when he founded The Sportsman, he devoted “every waking hour” to learning.
“Being older, I had a sense of perspective. I also had a feeling that, ‘I haven’t got time to waste.’ And it made it a very intense experience,” Harris says.