Franc

David Hart and Polly Pleasence’s tiny wine bar-cum-restaurant plays the part of a neighbourhood bistro perfectly. The style is casual, the setting simple with tables set close in both the compact ground-floor wine bar and upstairs dining room, adding to the already strong feeling of friendliness the place generates. And with the culinary compass pointing towards France, the cooking is refreshingly authentic and delicious, the emphasis firmly on simple preparations of top-quality ingredients.

The excellence of much that Hart turns out means that in the years spent cooking in the east Kent area – especially the past eight at the Folkestone Wine Company – he has built up an impressively loyal customer base. Bookings do need to be made well ahead for the wonderfully indulgent prix-fixe lunch, the only meal served in the little dining room. However, casual visitors can often be fitted in downstairs at both lunch and dinner where there is a blackboard menu offering the likes of oysters and egg mayonnaise, venison bourguignon and pork fillet with choucroûte and mustard sauce. 

With such an undeniably populist instinct for the kinds of food and flavours we all love, it’s good to report that the vibrancy of the food is easily matched by a predominantly French, affordable wine list that packs an awful lot into a short space.