How a ‘grotty rundown pub’ became the UK’s best restaurant

The Sportsman in Seasalter, Kent, has topped the 2016 National Restaurant awards and its chef/patron is ‘gobsmacked’. So what’s on the menu?

Related: Restaurant review: The Sportsman, Seasalter, Kent

The metropolitan elite are in for a bit of a shock when they start their inevitable stampede to the UK’s newly crowned No 1 restaurant, the Sportsman in Seasalter, Kent. Sure, there’s a windswept, barren beauty to the coast road from Whitstable, but this joint ain’t exactly a looker – even the Sportsman’s own Twitter account says it’s a “grotty rundown pub by the sea”.