Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Dishes down from London – via Spain
New restaurant from former Groucho Club head chef
A top chef from Canterbury who has run kitchens at the country’s most exclusive private members clubs has opened a restaurant on the east Kent coast.
Tim Wilson, who until earlier this year was executive head chef of celebrity haunt the Groucho Club in Soho, has opened Harbour Street Tapas in Whitstable with business partner Lee Murray.
Initially launching as a pop-up for this year’s busy Oyster Festival, the restaurant has since bedded into life in the town and, according to the chef, has been warmly received by people.
Mr Wilson, who lives in the city with his wife, Emma, 33, and two daughters, Georgia, five, and Sasha, two, said everything happened quickly, with just two weeks to get it open.
“I’d been going to The Goods Shed for a good couple of years and got to know Lee, who runs the Spanish deli there,” he said. “We became friends and thought it would be good to set up a tapas restaurant in the Canterbury or Whitstable area.
“We’d been talking about it, we came across this site and that was it.
“He phoned me up and asked if I wanted to help and we became business partners.
“It was a kind of a pop-up at first. We opened for the Oyster Festival, which gave us only two weeks to get everything ready to open.
“There was a lot of scrambling around.”
Mr Wilson’s career spans two decades and has seen him leading kitchens for a host of high-end private members clubs, such as George and Annabel’s, both in Mayfair.
He was also chef at The Ivy in London’s West End.
But the 41-year-old is enjoying life away from the capital and has settled into running his own restaurant.
“It’s been brilliant. It’s a great place to have a restaurant,” he said. “We’re both from Canterbury so it’s good to be based in the area.
“I’m in the kitchen and Lee runs front of house. He knows lots of people down here and he’s introduced me to them. We’ve been busy – we’re very well received by Whitstable.”
And for the first time in a while, Mr Wilson can connect with his customers, working in an open kitchen, on view to everyone.
“I’ve been kept underground for a while in my career so it’s great to be able to engage with customers,” he said.
His team, which consists of him and a couple of others, much smaller than the 25-strong team he had at the Groucho – prepare Spanish dishes using local produce.
“The menu is based on classic tapas. We have different dishes for sharing,” he said.
“The dishes are from different regions of Spain, and North African dishes.
“We get a lot of the stuff locally and we apply Spanish techniques to the produce.
“The Groucho would hold a pop-up tapas restaurant in Ibiza every summer but this is the first time I’ve run a restaurant like this.”
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