The Sportsman

The Sportsman review at-a-glance

Awards: 1 Michelin star, #1 UK restaurant in 2017 per SquareMeal

+Comforting food that you actually want to eat

+A stone throw from the shore, the setting matches what Sportsman is going for. The perfect place to eat seafood.

-Some technical flaws and inconsistency crept into parts of the meal

Rating: 87.5/100

Verdict: The price point is great, the setting idyllic and the food inviting. The sportsman is the type of place that if it was in my neighbourhood I would go once a month to see what is new on the menu and have some of the classics again. Unfortunately, Sportsman is a victim of its own success. Through no fault of its own, Sportsman is no longer the neighbourhood restaurant it aims to be. Instead, it is the type of place you book a table at 3 months in advance and travel 2 hours to get it. Does it succeed at that level? Not really. There were a few missteps in the execution and it was hard to really get the restaurants message when the servers couldn’t explain the dishes. While it might not have met the lofty expectations of its reputation, the Sportsman does succeed in exactly what it wants to be - a local gastropub serving simple, but excellent, food in a relaxed setting.

Cost: £60 for 4-course tasting menu

Value: 17/20

Sportsman & Stephen Harris

Sportsman is a bit of a foodie pilgrimage. It is notoriously tough to get a table - I booked mine 3 months in advance and still could not get in other than a Friday for lunch. Almost as hard as getting a table is getting to the restaurant itself. Located on the windswept shores of Kent, the Sportsman is in seasalter but not particularly close to any train station. To get there for lunch we took a 1.5 hr train from Victoria station to Whistable and then walked along the Saxony shore for a little over an hour to get to the restaurant. While it was a long walk, it was plenty scenic and featured plenty of wild berries to snack on. Alternatively, if you do not feel like walking, you can taxi which costs around £10.

Sportsman previously offered a la carte choices as well as a lengthy daily tasting menu that needed to be ordered in advance. However, as part of reopening post-COVID, they narrowed down the offerings to only include a 4-course tasting menu for £60 which includes 3 options in each course. This is a relative bargain given the quality of food. Pricing on the drinks menu was equally as good, priced a lot closer to what you would expect at a pub than a Michelin star restaurant with bottles of white wine ranging from £18-£60, glasses of wine starting at £5.50 and beer only cost a few pounds.

If going to Sportsman I would recommend also checking out Whitstable, a nice little town on the coast with plenty of independent boutiques and seafood shops. One thing to note is if you visit Sportsman for lunch, virtually everything in Whitstable closes at 17:00. This was a problem for us as we had a later lunch with the taxi not dropping us off in Whitstable until 16:30, leaving little time to explore. 

Review of what we ate at Sportsman

The meal started with a trio of snacks - a plump Whitstable oyster with a bit of caviar, a cheese cracker and a bit of lox on some toast. These nibbles were quite enjoyable and did a good job of priming you for the rest of the meal. Quality control appeared to be a bit of an issue - one of the oysters was poorly shucked with a huge chunk of shell in it that unfortunately came with the oyster when you slurped it down. Not the end of the world by any means but an inauspicious start to a meal at a restaurant known for doing simple food flawlessly. 

An excellent selection of bread with home churned butter and Seasalter sea salt came next. I am not a fan of soda bread so it is hard for me to judge, but the other two kinds had excellent texture with the Foccacia being particularly delightful. The home churned butter was high quality but a shade below what we saw at most restaurants in Denmark a month prior where the butter had delicious notes of caramel.

My starter was a mushroom & artichoke tart, topped with a rich sauce similar to hollandaise. Not the prettiest of presentations but a nice kick-off to the meal, the mushrooms packed with flavour and going perfectly with the beautifully poached egg nestled in the middle of the tart. The tart itself had good texture but would have been better if it was a bit more sturdy - it was quite brittle and melted away from the other components instead of lifting them up.

Our other choice was the crown prince pumpkin soup which was perfect for the start of autumn, having a nice strong pumpkin flavour that went well with the smart garnishes of fried sage and parmesan cheese. In the end, it was just soup but a damned good one. 

Given Sportsman is known for its seafood we ordered all three fish dishes and were not disappointed. One of the signatures of the restaurant is locally caught slip sole brushed with seaweed butter. The sole was expertly timed, the meat moist and coming right off the bone. The real star of the dish was the Seawood butter, deeply tasting of the sea and adding a great mineral touch to the dish not dissimilar to eating oysters. This is not a dish for people who are tepid about seafood but, for those who love it (like me), it shined. 

Even better than the slip sole was the braised halibut fillet with chive veloute. A nice chunk of flakey halibut paired with a rich veloute - what is not to love? The chive in the veloute was also nicely judged, being present in the sauce without being sharp or dominant. 

Equally as good as the roast hake fillet served with chorizo sauce and black olive. I would not have minded if the sauce had a tad more spice but other than that an excellent dish, the sauce pairing well with the well-cooked fish and black olive adding some welcome punch.

For the meat course, I went with a comforting slow braised shoulder of lamb with mint sauce and a few assorted vegetables. I have heard in the past the lamb was sourced locally but the waiter was not sure where it came from when asked. Wherever it came from, the lamb shoulder was of very high quality and nicely braised, tender to the fork while having plenty of fat to keep it moist. This was a very heavy dish. Thankfully it was brightened up by the accompanying mint sauce which cut through the fat and brought the whole thing up several notches. The vegetables that came with the lamb were properly cooked but not exceptional in flavour. A main course that was exactly what you would expect at a gastropub like the Sportsman.

The other option we went with was roast chicken with truffle cream sauce and a bit of sweetcorn. The chicken had good flavour but was a tad over, still moist but not as juicy as a perfectly cooked piece of chicken could be. This was saved a bit by the truffle cream sauce and sweetcorn, which were both top-notch and full of flavours. The chicken came with a side of excellent mashed potato, not as silky as the famous pomme puree at Joel Robuchon but arguably better as they delivered more potato flavour and were not so dominated by butter.

Dessert was simple but a real delight. First, we had dark chocolate and salted caramel tart with raw creme fraiche. While I love a salted caramel chocolate tart I find them quite tricky to execute as it is tough to balance the chocolate and caramel without being too rich. This was not a problem here as the kitchen smartly add a healthy dollop of sour crème fraiche on top which nicely cut through the ganache but also added a creamy element to the dish. The crust of the tart was also top-notch, much better than the overly brittle savoury one used in the mushroom & artichoke tart starter. A simple dessert that rivals anything a 3-star kitchen is putting out. Stephen Harris is doing dessert right at the Sportsman.

Also great was a plum soufflé with plum ripple ice cream, the soufflé having plenty of lift and the requisite jiggle and texture you want. I appreciated they went with plum instead of a more traditional chocolate soufflé as the stone fruit add nice brightness to the dish and was not as dense as chocolate. Much like the caramel tart, this was a simple dessert but very memorable.

Stray thoughts

• Servers were not very informed on dishes, dropping them off with a brief description of the main ingredient. I get that it is a casual restaurant so expecting a detailed explanation does not really fit with the ethos of the restaurant but they also could not answer most questions on where the food was sourced from. Sportsman is a restaurant about using local ingredients to make great food. Its hard for that message to resonate when the server does not even know if the fish is caught locally.