The board is written last
Nothing is ordered in to fill a gap on a menu. The menu is written to fit what turned up.
- Four boats, one farm, one bakery
Two of us, one room, and whoever is on the boats that week
We opened in a building that had been a net loft, a chandlery and briefly a launderette. It suits us.
How we got here
Nadia cooked in London for eleven years and got tired of writing menus in January for food that would arrive in June. Sam grew up two streets from this harbour and had spent a decade selling other people's wine. We took the lease on the old net loft in 2019 with a plan that fitted on the back of a receipt: cook what lands, pour what we like, seat twenty-eight people and no more.
The room seats twenty-eight because that is how many plates two people can send out properly in one evening. We have been asked more than once why we do not put tables on the terrace all year and double it. The answer is that we would then be running a different restaurant, and we already tried that one.
Almost everything here comes from within about forty miles — the fish from the harbour, the vegetables from a farm at Chartham, the bread from a bakery three doors down that starts work at the same hour we finish. The wine list is the one exception, and Sam will talk your ear off about why.
Why us
How we actually work
Nobody is rushed
One sitting per table per evening. It costs us money and it is not up for discussion.
- One sitting a table, every night
The kitchen is in the room
You can see everything we do. It keeps us honest and it makes for a better evening.
- No pass, no swing door, no secrets
The room
Most of a day here
In their words
People who have been more than once
“I have watched this place from the other side of the harbour for four years and I have never once seen an empty table on a Saturday. There is a reason for that and it is not the parking.”
“They sold us a bottle of Kentish white for less than the pub down the road charges for two glasses of something forgettable, then told us exactly which field it came from.”