On a coastal road near Canterbury, an inn that has served visitors for 350+ years is now a renowned gastropub. The inn is called The Sportsman and chef Stephen Harris has been tantalizing tastebuds and leading by example on sustainable and eating locally for 15 years.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Tired up at the moment. Do you want me, I mean, I can kind of, it's quite good from here because I can kind of explain everything from here.
00:12Does that work?
00:23Everybody loves a story, you know. History is the story of how we got here.
00:28If somebody told you, look, I can tell you how you got here, you'd be, you're interested, aren't you? I mean, it's just natural.
00:45I was a teacher and a financial advisor before I became a chef. Taught myself, you know, it's really tough when you first open somewhere and you're trying to get established.
00:53After about five or six years, I started to look into the history of the area. There's kind of a moment when you find your own voice, when you're not just cooking other people's food anymore.
01:02The history kind of helped to inform my personal style.
01:10Down there is the pub, which is actually below the sea wall, if you can see. And this is interesting in itself.
01:17You can see it's a built mound of earth. They put a wall on top of it, a concrete wall back in, I don't know, the 30s or 40s or something.
01:26But it's amazing. It was built by monks in 1280 because you wouldn't think it walking past. You know, it's a crazy idea, isn't it?
01:34And to what extent it's been added to, I don't know, but I think that's quite fun.
01:38But the monks had a farm. Now, the farm we use is called Monks Hill Farm and it's back up on the hill there.
01:46And I was using it for four years before it clicked, before the penny dropped. And I went, oh, Monks Hill, the monks, you know, it hadn't occurred to me.
01:55And now I realize that the monks farmed this whole area that you can see.
02:16It goes back generations that we were farmers. Farming was seen in my blood for generations.
02:26These are grower pigs. They're the old traditional orchard pigs that love living outside, sort of dig, graze, eat apples.
02:34Restaurants, the restaurants love them. When they reach maturity, they'll be slaughtered for the slaughter, yeah.
02:41And they'll be going around there.
02:46What is it with today?
02:56This bit of land was, it says, owned by the kitchens of the archbishop. So this bit was the larder for the archbishop's palace.
03:07You've got chicken, lamb, duck, pork, cod, mackerel, bass, turbot, slipsoles, oysters, cockles, all these, all the forage stuff, all within this square mile.
03:24And that's why we do what we do. We're driven by the land.
03:37I'm chasing the wind through the trees.
03:46I used to come down with my father and my grandfather. From the age of about three, I used to help them take the shells, remove the shells.
03:55I show it to most people, you know. The past restaurants have this sort of thing.
04:01Here we are. Here we are.
04:09This is the salt water being turned into salt for the tasting menu.
04:13What's happening is that is sea water that's been heated until it's super saturated.
04:18And if I turn it round, can you see? The beginnings of the forming of the crystals.
04:24This is the end result here. This is salt that's now been fully made.
04:31This is from the sea out there. People know that it's salt from the sea.
04:36This kind of adds to that feeling that you're eating something that makes total sense, where all the loose ends are all tied up.
04:43There's something about the narrative, the story behind what we're doing, that increases its desirability.
04:53Some days, when I was doing all the research for this, I felt like a thousand years was just a click of a finger.
05:00And actually it is, isn't it? And it starts to blow your mind.
05:04The sea looks different and the sky looks different.
05:07Because you think the sea looked the same then. The sea looked the same.
05:11But the sea looks different now.
05:13And actually it is, isn't it? And it starts to blow your mind.
05:17The sea looks different and the sky looks different.
05:20Because you think the sea looked the same then. The sky looked the same.
05:23So much of this is still the same. And we're just temporarily passing through this landscape.