Chef Stephen Harris once described the Sportsman as a ‘grotty boozer by the sea’. Last week it was voted restaurant of the year. Harris reveals how the use of local produce has transformed gastronomy
Rewind a few years and the Sportsman pub’s greatest claim to fame was the fact that it stood next to the only place in the second world war where British troops exchanged fire with German forces on English soil.
On an unprepossessing strip of marshland hugging the Thames estuary in north-east Kent, the German crew of a downed Junkers 88, desperate to destroy the plane and prevent the British military gaining vital knowledge of its capabilities, exchanged fire with soldiers from the London Irish Rifles who were billeted in the pub.
Related: The DIY chefs: ‘You’re making something you just can’t get elsewhere’
Continue reading...