The Counter, Tunbridge Wells

As much as I try to travel as far and wide as possible for a meal, there are certain parts of the world that are somewhat better-represented on these pages than others. Obviously as I live in London, and it's the best food city on the planet, that's the main focus of this blog. But thanks to family living there I'm also generally on top of all things Liverpool (look out for the relaunched Pilgrim, coming soon) and you may have also noticed a slight skew towards Kent, whose culinary gems are spread all the way from the Sussex border to the foodie towns of Deal, Broadstairs and Margate.

And it's thanks to a group of friends living in Tunbridge Wells that I've got to know that specific part of Kent pretty well in particular. A post-lockdown trip to the Kentish Hare proved that there were some really serious gastropubs tucked into the countryside around the town, and I will be forever grateful to them for introducing me to the incredible Tallow, one of my very best meals of recent years.

The Counter, then, a new restaurant/labour of love from chef Robin Read, has some serious local competition from operations that have more than proved themselves, but itself already feels so confident and secure in its Regency location that it could have been there for years. Tables are nicely spaced and sensitively lit by the soft autumnal sun, and staff buzz happily about all the various nooks and crannies (it appears to be two or three premises knocked-through to make a charmingly haphazard whole) with a practiced ease. There's a small bar, and short cocktail offering, but my summer berry martini thing was very decent, and from what I can gather their take on the Negroni was very good too.

The menu proper began with this cute little smoked eel and cep tart which perhaps could have been slightly improved by being warmed through but still had loads of lovely mushroomy filling topped with generous chunks of fish. The mushrooms in fact were described as "Tunbridge Wells Cep" which indicates they were if not foraged then at least grown locally, which was a nice touch.

The bread, served as a course in its own right which is more or less the norm amongst forward-thinking modern British restaurants these days, was an extraordinary thing itself, a sticky, malty-rich sourdough with an ash-touched crust as delicate as French pastry. The 'Chiddingstone Dairy' (just out of town, towards Hever Castle) butter was as rich and powerful as you might expect from Jersey cows, and was nicely room temperature and spreadable. But as if all that wasn't enough we were presented with a cute little cup of vegetable broth, a waste-free way of enjoying the bits of the seasonal veg that couldn't be sensibly used elsewhere - very tasty, and full marks for sustainability too.

Chalk stream trout tasted every bit as good as it looked, and as you can see it looked stunning, with the sashimi-shaped slices of fish prettily arranged amongst carved kohlrabi flowers and dots of dill oil, all of it resting in a cool, clear dashi broth. I've been reading some pretty scary stories about the state of our country's chalk streams in recent years so it's somewhat of a relief to still be seeing products like this on a menu, and a delight to have it treated so well.

Rump cap was an incredible union of impeccable sourcing and intelligent cooking, being what is clearly top-quality beef cooked in such a way as to leave the flesh soft and tender but with an exquisite thin layer of crisp, salty skin and fat on one side. A triumphant trio of sides - swede and black pepper puree, girolles and beer-braised shallot - complimented the beef, and it was all bound together with a nice rich, sticky jus. You really couldn't want for a better beef course.

Of course we had to go for the optional cheese course, in this case Rachel goat's turned into a kind of mini rarebit topped with watercress, beetroot relish (see, there are still exciting ways of doing beetroot and goat's cheese) and more shaved cheese. It was great - the hot, gooey rarebit mixture the ideal format for this cheese, and the toasted bread held its shape very well.

I should probably step back at this point in case I end up boring you with my usual over-effusiveness. Restaurants like this, in case you're new to this blog, are my own particular nirvana - I will happily travel the length of the country in search of strictly seasonal Modern British food served with intelligence and flair, and I've been lucky enough in recent months to come across (either by invite or by sheer luck) a few of them. I can't personally imagine being served a menu like this and not falling head over heels in love with it, but then I don't know why people voted for Brexit or Trump either, or why Clapham Junction station hasn't been bulldozed and rebuilt at any point since the 1970s. Some things will always be a mystery to me. All I can say is that if you have even the slightest interest in being served wonderful food by people who love what they're doing and are incredibly good at it, you should also love the Counter.

Anyway we haven't quite finished yet. Sliced figs (treated cleverly somehow - they weren't quite raw but not quite cooked - maybe sweetened and/or poached?) were topped with a silky mascarpone mousse and a linseed-studded sugar crisp, all of it full of texture and invention.

And then right at the end, a parade of petits fours - fudge, truffle, canelé and macaron - that demonstrated a very capable pastry section and a supremely generous attitude towards unannounced extras, a really nice effort indeed at the end of what had been quite a display of culinary skill for £60.

Of course, our final bill was way north of £60pp thanks to us having a bit more fun than was necessary with the wine list and a final round of single malts, but if you were a bit more sensible and limited yourself just to the matching wines (and OK perhaps a glass of Sussex fizz to start) then you would probably be looking at something more in the region of £120pp - pretty much bang on what you might expect to pay for this kind of thing. Certainly you can pay a lot more for a lot less. Of course you could also decided to go for the full £125pp 10-12 course extravaganza which I'm sure is even more wonderful. Maybe next time.

The Counter, then, is definitely a restaurant worth travelling for, but then if you're lucky enough to live somewhere near the SouthEastern rail route, the fact that its 10 minutes' walk from the station means that there's a good chunk of Londoners and South Easterners generally for whom the journey will be pretty trivial as well. And as with anywhere committing itself to strictly seasonal dishes, the menu will shift and shuffle and evolve throughout the year, meaning that repeat visits will always reward and delight. So don't feel jealous of the residents of Tunbridge Wells having somewhere so wonderful on their doorstep - be happy that for millions of people it's only a short train ride away. And most of all, be profoundly grateful that it exists at all.

9/10

The Rose, Deal

A stroll along the High Street in Deal reveals a town very much at the forefront of the wider Kentish food revolution. There seem to be more than the usual number of artisan butchers and fishmongers for what is otherwise a fairly small (albeit very quaint) seaside town. There's a healthy amount of interesting delis with a bewildering range of specialities, from Arno's with their home made tarmasalata and aubergine kasundi (a type of Bengali mustard sauce), to Filberts' fresh game pies and organic sourdough, to the impeccably tasteful cheese selection at the enigmatically-titled No Name Shop. And there are more natural wine bars, microbreweries and, er, whatever it is you call somewhere selling fiercely strong local cider, than you can even count. This is somewhere you can eat and drink well.

At the centre of it all, presiding over the activity below like a stern Victorian schoolmistress in charge of an unruly - if talented - flock, is the Rose, a sturdy, attractively symmetrical building whose fortunes have followed that of Deal itself for the best part of 200 years. In the early days it was one of the smartest joints in town for drinking, dining and smoking (all three were equally important back then) but time eventually took its toll and in the 1980s it slumped back into a more straightforward lager-and-crisps boozer. However, in 2018 it once again became a very comfortable hotel and the downstairs menu revamped under the eye of chef Nuno Mendes.

Now, I am not so naive as to think Mendes has much to do with the cooking day-to-day. I know how these "chef consultant" gigs work - "give them a couple of recipes, take the cash and leave them to it" seems to be how it works most of the time (is that too cynical?) but I like to think there's more than a hint of his inventive flair in the "wild garlic vinegar" dressing which accompanied these fresh Maldon oysters, which seasoned and sharpened the seafood without overwhelming the flavour. Very clever stuff.

But these were merely "snacks". Of the starters proper, all extremely reasonably priced at £11-£12, cured sea bass was the most striking, a colourful arrangement of raw fish and pickled fruit and veg, all complimenting the main ingredient while adding texture and zing. Leaves of sea purslane draped over the top added a sharp note of the sea, but rhubarb and pickled plums were intelligent and exciting additions.

Burrata - perfectly lovely in of itself, was presented alongside what is fast becoming the post-St-John holy trinity of seasonal English vegetables, fresh peas, broad beans and nasturtium. We particularly enjoyed, too, a layer of salty breadcrumbs which soaked up the olive oil to make a kind of rustic crunchy dressing.

Asparagus were covered in a irresistable cheese hollandaise and would have been perfect if they'd stopped there, but I'm afraid the "yeast crisps" dropped on top were chewy and, well, a bit pointless.

Mains followed the theme of being mainly brilliant, but occasionally not. Good news first - roast rack of lamb was a hugely generous portion, cooked nicely pink and accompanied by a wonderfully rich and vibrant mixture of wild garlic, radish and sorrel (and also too, I think, some more chunks of asparagus). There was a lot of fat on the lamb which probably could have survived a judicious trimming, or perhaps a bit more rendering time, but otherwise it was a very pleasant thing indeed.

Is it a bit old fashioned to expect the main ingredient to be visible when a dish arrives on the table? Hake - very nicely cooked, don't get me wrong - was completely buried under a giant mound of wild mushrooms and though it all tasted very nice and the seaweed broth was a particularly interesting side note, there's nothing like seeing a great big gleaming white chunk of fish to get the pulse racing. Other than that, all good.

But unfortunately we found nothing to recommend the 'charred heritage tomatoes' at all. I can understand the necessity of a vegan main on a gastropub menu in 2023, but there are ways of doing these things that don't mean you end up with something tasting like it had come from a plastic pot off the shelves at M&S. Completely devoid of flavour, texture and interest of any kind, this was an entirely pointless concession to vegetarianism that only served to demonstrate that the kitchen had no interest in vegetarianism at all. And I'm afraid these days, that's not good enough.

Desserts, thank god, turned things round again. Rhubarb and frangipane tart was moist and full of summery flavour, and the set cream (sort of like a cross between clotted cream and custard, as far as we could tell) was a very interesting accompaniment.

Ice cream sandwich suffered very slightly from freezer burn, and the biscuits were a little soggy, but it still had a good flavour. Maybe it had just been hanging around in the freezer a bit too long.

And finally chocolate ganache was marvellously gooey and thick - almost like a chocolate fudge - with the 'seaweed caramel' fortunately not tasting of seaweed but instead packing a nice strong punch of butter and sugar.

So yes, there were downs alongside the ups, but overall it's hard to dislike what they're doing at the Rose. One incident aside, where a glass of dessert wine was left tantalisingly just out of reach for almost as long as it took us to polish off our desserts, service was friendly and attentive, and I should also put in a good word for whoever designed the table layout - there was a very pleasant distance between diners and the handsome dining room felt spacious and comfortable.

As the flagship gastropub for a foodie town, the Rose has a lot resting on its solid Victorian shoulders. And much like the town of Deal itself, there's a lot to love if you ignore the odd rough edge, and as long as you're not a vegan you will probably enjoy the Rose very much indeed. With a bill of £63/head, too, not holding back on the booze, it's also very good value - this is very much at the lower end of what you might expect to pay for three courses and wine these days. In a part of the world not short of great places to eat, the Rose more than holds its own. And you can't ask for much more than that.

7/10

The Square Peg, Tunbridge Wells

There was an opinion that did the rounds a few years ago, that any restaurant critic needs to have spent at least some time in a professional kitchen or front of house to be able to pass judgement on anywhere charging the public for dinner. Personally, I think that's rubbish, but then I would say that given I've never spent any time in a professional kitchen and am pretty sure if ever given front of house duties I'd end up accidentally setting something on fire.

In fact, if anything, I think it works the other way - having little to no clue what magic happens behind the scenes before my food arrives I'm that much in awe of anyone who can do it at all. I will never know how Quality Chop House gets its whipped cod's roe so fluffy and smooth, how Sola manages to great its impossibly dainty little gougère to explode with flavour in the mouth, how the Parkers Arms do... well pretty much any of it. And I don't really want to know - just let me enjoy my time in your restaurant without fretting over how early in the morning someone had to get up to start prepping those crab.

All I do know is that good food takes skill, effort and very often many hands on deck to produce, and that the smaller the kitchen team the more wondrous it is to a pleb like me that they can produce world-class food. Consider, then, the kitchen "team" at the Square Peg in Tunbridge Wells, which consists of head chef Rob Marshall and... that's it. It would be a minor miracle to produce anything edible for a room full of hungry Kentish diners with a kitchen head count of one, so the fact the food here is so accomplished is a genuinely impressive achievement.

House sourdough is - of course - baked on site every day, and boasts a winning combination of satisfyingly crunchy crust and a soft, squishy, almost cakey interior. I don't know whether Rob has a background in baking or whether he's just stumbled upon this recipe, but this is a sourdough that stands out from the crowd, even with the seemingly ubiquitous nature of decent sourdough these days. Three different whipped butters (salted, onion and another I've forgotten, sorry) were the icing on the cakey sourdough.

Oysters were cutely presented in a "Korma, wild rice and mango chutney" dressing, a flavour bomb of curry, citrus and umami notes that satisfied immediately and completely. If I'm to be brutally critical, the relatively gentle flavour of the oyster itself was slightly overwhelmed by the curry mixture, but when it tasted as good as this it was difficult to find anything to moan about for too long.

Underneath a gently poached egg sat some cubes of celeriac and pancetta, an intelligent combination by itself but lifted by some chunks of smoked haddock. This was another incredibly satisfying dish, skilfull without being tricksy, intelligent while still very easily enjoyed.

Next, a neat fillet of meaty hake, topped with a layer of ribbons of buttered leeks, then a crown of salty puffed fish skin. But the highlight of this dish was the dense, sweet crab bisque underneath, the kind of thing that illustrates my earlier point perfectly - I don't know what tortuous procedure went into the making of this bisque, how long it took to make or how difficult the technique was to perfect. All I know is that I absolutely loved it, from the first incredulous sip to the final sweep of the fingers (sorry).

There's a teensy bit of me that wishes I hadn't spotted last week's menu on the way into Square Peg because I was really still hoping they were serving mallard for the main meat course. There's nothing wrong with fallow deer - certainly not how it was treated here, with two dainty medallions of loin draped with kale soaked with one of those lovely rich reduced sauces - but I can get venison most places these days. It's the more unusual bits of game that make a meal that much more special. Still, with a side of pie made out of venison offal, you can hardly say they (or rather he) hadn't put the effort in here.

First dessert was this beautiful little stack of some kind of clever raspberry biscuit stuffed with raspberry cream, a little shortbread biscuit on top of that, what I think were a couple of cubes of ginger and then finally a blob of smooth ice cream. It was all lovely, of course, but the effort that had gone into every element made my head spin. There was a lot going on for a full pastry section to cope with, never mind one man on his own with five savoury courses behind him.

It is for this reason that I don't begrudge too much the time it takes to serve it all, which combined with a strict start point of 7:30 meant that by 10pm us Londoners had to skip the final dessert and race across town for the last train home. But I'm reliably informed this is something that they're working on, and there's every chance by the time you take your seat at the Square Peg - and I very much recommend that you do - events will be that much more punctual.

Either way, we could hardly call it a wasted evening. Even without the final course (which I later discovered with some dismay was a banana soufflé, one of my favourite desserts in the world) this was clearly a menu worth travelling for, and too good to be reserved for those local to west Kent. Without wanting to labour the point, this kind of food - modern, seasonal, British, technically impressive yet hearty and enjoyable - would be the pride of any kitchen in the country, never mind one with a headcount of one, and supported by a very capable front of staff adds up to a very impressive little operation indeed. I'll be back. Not least for the soufflé.

8/10

I was invited to the Square Peg and didn't see a bill, but the tasting menu is £79 and matching wines £49. Sorry for grainy photos, it's dark in there.

Wyatt & Jones, Broadstairs

Compared to some of the places I've visited in Kent over the years, Wyatt & Jones is a relatively easy expedition. Despite being the best part of two hours' journey from Victoria, it's neither buried deep in the single-lane-road countryside (the Compasses) or in a suburb of Tunbridge Wells stubbornly unserved by public transport (Tallow), so all that extra money you've saved on deeply unreliable local taxis can go towards your restaurant bill.

Not that Wyatt & Jones is particularly spendy. I'd estimate that had we been paying the bill per head would have come to about £70, deeply reasonable for anywhere serving food of this standard never mind a restaurant in the centre of one of the prettiest and busiest coastal Kentish towns. Broadstairs is - you'll know if you've been - a fantastic place to spend a hot summers day, and a window table at Wyatt & Jones offers the most beautiful (not to mention entertaining when trying to guess which hapless tourist is going to have their ice cream nicked next by a seagull) view over the beach and harbour to accompany your tasteful selection of BSP (British Small Plates).

We began with chargrilled sourdough dipped in hot potted shrimp butter, and if there's any better start to a meal with a sea view then I want to know about it. The bread was toasted only to give it a slight crust - fortunately inside it was soft and squishy enough to soak up an obscene amount of salty shrimp butter with each dip - and the little shrimp were bouncy and fresh.

Oysters (Jersey rocks) were served in two ways - one 'au naturel' although accompanied by a quite impressive house sriracha, and one with 'Hogwash' dressing, jalapeno and mirin. In both cases the oysters themselves were stellar - generously proportioned but lean and minerally, with a lovely sweet aftertaste. And while the natural serving were easily enjoyable, the Japanese flavours of the 'Hogwash' made even more of the oysters, to great effect. Time was I would have always chosen oysters un-mucked-about with; lately I've had more fun with inventive house dressings.

Tuna tartare came as three generous mounds of sesame-slicked raw tuna beneath shiso leaves. You pick up the leaf like a kind of upside-down taco, and eat the tartare by hand, the shiso and spices provided in just the right strength to not overwhelm the seafood.

Smoked eel croquettes were cute bitesize spheres of heavenly thick, eel-spiked bechamel which disappeared in record time. It's worth noting that not only was all the food at Wyatt & Jones seasoned perfectly and texturally just-so (nothing dry or overcooked, nothing underdone) but every technique, whether it was a rich bechamel or the occasional bit of deep frying, was pulled off perfectly. It was all just so easy to enjoy.

Dorset crab tostada, not content with having a lovely amount of white crab meat next to neat dollops of avocado purée and mayonnaise, but was topped with a half a battered soft-shelled crab to add extra texture and seafood punch. It worked brilliantly, a familiar set of flavours perhaps but in my experience a set of techniques not at all trivial to get right.

Scarlet prawns made up for their being from Argentina (I suppose any seafood restaurants need to be a bit flexible with their sourcing these days) by being dressed in Kentish rapeseed oil and cooked so perfectly the tail flesh lifted out in one satisfying chunk. Also, I realise frozen prawns are always going to be a less expensive option than fresh, but I think £10 for two giant specimens cooked this well and dressed so elegantly is an absolute bargain.

Final dish of the savouries was a giant mangalitza pork chop, cooked to very slightly pink next to the bone and with the little elements of fat crisped up nicely alongside. The mustard butter and taragon dressing was a delight, and the giant blackberries were fun, but this was really all about the mangalitza, king of the piggies and treated to a basically perfect grilling.

Alongside the pork, a side of 'layered crispy potatoes', an impressive bit of spudwork you've probably spotted in some form or other if you've been eating out in the UK in the last few years. Whilst not quite as spectacular as the version at Quality Chop House, it still had a very satifying flake to it, and the aioli was pleasingly powerful.

It's impossible not to enjoy freshly fried doughnuts, and even without the house Nutella (sorry, chocolate and hazelnut sauce) these were crunchy on the outside and soft within, and utterly charming. The sauce, though, made the whole thing all that more decadent.

Even more startling though was this beautiful puck of white chocolate cheesecake, the delicate shell of which broke to reveal a soft fluffy filling and a layer of sweet mango jam. Again, it was not only sweet and biscuitty in all the right proportions but the technique to produce that cheesecake "truffle" with the mango centre must have taken quite a while to perfect. Impressive stuff.

It is my curse (I know, I know, poor me) that it seems the further away from home I travel (recently Weymouth, and Norfolk not to mention Lancashire, the Peak District and Cornwall) the better experience I have. I won't repeat the tired clichés about Non-London British food finally finding its feet - this happened a good half decade ago, or even more - but I will say that when you can go to a small town and find not just one but two or three very decent places to eat (Wyatt & Jones own the lockdown smash Flotsam & Jetsam next door, and I'm reliably informed that the Table is another Thanet destination restaurant) never mind interesting natural wine bars and local breweries, it all points to a regional food scene rapidly approaching serious maturity.

Wyatt & Jones may have to rely on a steady stream of hungry tourists to fill out the booking sheet in the summer months, but unlike various other seafront places it nevertheless feels like a proper serious restaurant, aware of the responsibility it has to the local community (any Broadstairs local will tell you how chuffed they were to have Flotsam & Jetsom to cater them through the grim lockdown months) as well as to the wider foodie dispora. It is thanks to this rather diverse customer base, then, and not despite it, that it works so well. Anyone could come to this picturesque seafront spot and have a quite wonderful time. I certainly did. And I'm pretty sure so will you.

9/10

I was invited to Wyatt & Jones and didn't see a bill. As mentioned above though, you're probably looking at about £70/head including booze and service.