‘For this part of the world, this place is as radical as a pontiff in stiletto-heeled pumps’
I didn’t set out to review South Street Kitchen. Not at first; not even at second. I had a booking at another Dorset restaurant, but after schlepping where the train lines don’t go, I turn up to find out they were having a nice holiday. Panic-stricken, and with a pre-paid B&B, I cast about for another suitable case for treatment, ending up in a tiny place that plunges me into such an existential gloom that I shall never write about it. They seem like lovely people, but if Samuel Beckett ever went into the restaurant business, it might end up looking like this. To review these poor souls – with their flat fizz, their Christmas decorations still up, bottles of brown sauce and Brobdingnagian “tasting menu” – would be like taking a piledriver to an ant. So, no, don’t even ask me.
Gibbering by now, I hit the foodie grapevine like a dervish. It leads me to an outfit in Gillingham that’s doing a startling imitation of something you’d find in Haggerston or the Northern Quarter, rather than just off a high street much given to charity shops and the kind of pub that holds meat raffles. It’s hidden away, but you can smell it before you see it: a seductive veil of fragrant smoke hangs in the air.
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