Best restaurants in Whitstable Published 25 January 2025
Whitstable, a picturesque coastal town on the Kent coast, has earned a reputation as a must-visit destination for food lovers. Renowned for its oysters and fresh seafood, the town also boasts a diverse dining scene that blends its maritime heritage with creative, modern cuisine. From small plates and wood-fired bakes to celebrated seafood classics, the best restaurants in Whitstable deliver on both flavour and charm.
Highlights include the bold flavours of Harbour Street Tapas, the award-winning fare at The Sportsman, and the iconic Wheelers Oyster Bar—a Whitstable institution. Whether you’re drawn by its harbour views or its reputation for exceptional food, explore our guide to the best restaurants in Whitstable and discover what makes this coastal town so special.
Family-run with a passion for all things sourdough, this easy-going bakery and café is fast building up a solid, enthusiastic fan base. Bang on target, with cheery staff encouraging a sense of bonhomie, it’s as good f… Read more
Family-run with a passion for all things sourdough, this easy-going bakery and café is fast building up a solid, enthusiastic fan base. Bang on target, with cheery staff encouraging a sense of bonhomie, it’s as good for breakfast (shakshuka eggs) as it is for lunch (fish finger sandwich or a savoury roasted beetroot and cream Danish). The coffee is good, sourdough croissants and cinnamon rolls fill the gaps, and ‘Friday Night Dinner’ ranges from steak or pie feasts to chicken and salsa rossa with hazelnut pangrattato.
‘Perfect size. Perfect price. Perfectly cooked.' This is what is meant by a local restaurant: a convivial, friendly, family-run place that has a good regular following and where value for money is a big plus. Lee and Lucy Mu… Read more
‘Perfect size. Perfect price. Perfectly cooked.' This is what is meant by a local restaurant: a convivial, friendly, family-run place that has a good regular following and where value for money is a big plus. Lee and Lucy Murray’s no-fills, light-filled corner tapas bar – all white walls, blond wood and big windows – fits the Spanish ethos very well. The atmosphere is laid-back, buzzy and sociable, staff are enthusiastic and the offer is bolstered by chalked-up daily specials and a wine of the month. Working out of a tiny kitchen shoehorned in at the back, Shane Martin offers a regularly changing menu where just about every dish begs to be ordered. There’s a seasonal slant to the likes of grilled peach with goat’s curd, anchovy and basil, but menu staples such as jamón Ibérico, Galician octopus salad, chicken thighs with romesco sauce, and ‘next level’ grilled tiger prawns with chilli and garlic have many fans – in fact we got 'dish envy' as the next table’s Duroc pork ribs with membrillo glaze was delivered. If you don’t think you need dessert, think again – everyone praises the Basque cheesecake. Reasonable prices extend to the stash of sherries and mainly Spanish wines.
‘Consistently good quality for over 10 years,’ is praise indeed for Nikki Billington and Paul Watson’s long-established restaurant, which has occupied a commanding spot overlooking the North Sea at Tankerton Slop… Read more
‘Consistently good quality for over 10 years,’ is praise indeed for Nikki Billington and Paul Watson’s long-established restaurant, which has occupied a commanding spot overlooking the North Sea at Tankerton Slopes since 2010. With its hard-working open kitchen, mishmash of large, unadorned wood tables, wood burning stove and sea views, the light, airy and remarkably comfortable dining room is a draw all year round.
It’s also the kind of place where loyal customers won’t allow favoured dishes to disappear from the repertoire without speaking up, which adds to JoJo’s distinctive community vibe – and two menus. One covers ever-present classics such as the famed beer-battered calamari, charcuterie boards, homemade gnocchi with Parmesan, and our excellent mutton and feta koftas. The rest of our January lunch was chosen from the second, seasonal menu, with its focus on local and regional produce. Highlights were an ingenious dish of pan-fried cabbage with white wine, cream, Parmesan and toasted walnuts, and a robust, rustic combo of perfectly cooked mackerel fillets on a bed of chorizo in a rich tomato sauce.
Superb slices of focaccia and a delicately dressed green salad with feta, red onion and pine nuts added to the pleasure, and we finished with a chocolate, orange and hazelnut tart, which came with an intense raspberry sorbet. Dishes are generously portioned and designed for sharing, service is relaxed, friendly and efficient, and there’s decent selection of European wines from £26 (£6.75 a glass).
A friendly local asset known for its keenly priced seasonal cooking
‘Local owners, local ingredients, English wines, great menu leaning towards fish (harbour town), friendly, not too many tables, just a great, great place.' There's no doubt that Samphire defines a genuine neighbourhood resta… Read more
‘Local owners, local ingredients, English wines, great menu leaning towards fish (harbour town), friendly, not too many tables, just a great, great place.' There's no doubt that Samphire defines a genuine neighbourhood restaurant for many of our readers. Its popularity stems from reasonable prices, cheerful service and the fact that it is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week.
Ingredients come from a network of well-chosen local suppliers, and the resulting dishes reflect the seasons – as in an ‘amazing’ asparagus, ricotta and potato pithivier with leeks and pea purée or grilled day-boat mackerel with beetroot and samphire. Come here, too, for hefty cuts of meat from the Portico grill – porterhouse steaks or bacon chops with burnt apple butter and creamed leeks, for example.
The set weekday lunch (two or three courses plus a glass of house wine) is ‘an absolute bargain’, delivering the likes of rich chicken liver parfait followed by a huge bowl of mussels in a 'holy trinity' Creole sauce with a dollop of smoked prawn butter and a thick slice of chestnut bread to mop up the juices – top shouts when we visited.
To finish, there might be summer pudding with Kentish strawberries and clotted cream. The wine list majors in Europe, whips quickly round the world and offers a good by-the-glass selection.
Restaurant Of The Year
More than 24 years on and still as popular as ever, The Sportsman is by far the most relaxed of all the Guide’s top-rated restaurants. ‘The food is probably the best I've eaten – on pretty… Read more
More than 24 years on and still as popular as ever, The Sportsman is by far the most relaxed of all the Guide’s top-rated restaurants. ‘The food is probably the best I've eaten – on pretty much all of the 20 odd times I've been there,’ confided a supporter, who lists the ‘amazing’ staff and a wine list that ‘is unusually fairly priced for so fine a restaurant’ among its attributes. Add the appeal of a scrubbed, rustic interior designed to make people feel at ease, open fires, a dash of comfort and, on the night we spotted a McLaren in the car park, a sprinkling of glamour, and it’s easy to see how it can get booked up for months ahead. Not bad for a shabby old Kent pub tucked under a sea defence wall, two miles west of Whitstable. A famous take-us-as-we-are attitude puts the emphasis on exceptional hospitality and on turning out food of rare quality – courtesy of head chef Dan Flavell, who interprets co-owner Steve Harris’s ingredients-led, seasonally aware approach brilliantly. Everything is produced with great assurance, as can be appreciated from the five-course tasting menu – which includes snacks and plenty of choice at each stage. There’s no shortage of luxury ingredients – creamily poached oysters in the lightest, just-warm beurre blanc with pickled cucumber and salty, soft Avruga caviar, or exquisite native lobster with hollandaise and black truffle – but one sign of a good kitchen is what can be done with humbler raw materials. The Sportsman's emblematic answer is a slip sole grilled in seaweed butter – widely copied, yet you will never eat a better one elsewhere. Even a simple-looking plate of braised halibut fillet with a rich, intensely satisfying cep and lemon verbena sauce hides great technical skill and requires pinpoint judgement to get it as right as this. Meat dishes are handled as well as any: charred maple-cured pork (of fabulous flavour) is transformed into something very special by virtue of excellent ingredients – wholegrain mustard tartare, cabbage salad and gooseberries; needless to say, execution and delivery are faultless. This is not hearty, gutsy food, nor is it showy. It is the marriage of ingredients and balance that so often impresses, as well as the remarkable lightness of touch. Although the kitchen keeps abreast of the times, the food never seems to fall for the clichés that sustain others, preferring to maintain steady interest – as in a fabulous vegetarian dish of intensely flavoured roast beetroot with raspberries and raw crème fraîche. Desserts pay huge dividends by virtue of their simplicity and are no less appealing for having a conventional air about them – as in our faultless raspberry soufflé with raspberry ripple ice cream. This is cooking that leaves you wanting more and sends you home with a smile, especially when prices for both food and wine represent such good value.
The candyfloss-pink frontage and walls crowded with maritime pictures announce one of Whitstable's most cherishable assets, a seafood haven since the mid-Victorian era, still serving sparkling-fresh fish and shellfish from the loc… Read more
The candyfloss-pink frontage and walls crowded with maritime pictures announce one of Whitstable's most cherishable assets, a seafood haven since the mid-Victorian era, still serving sparkling-fresh fish and shellfish from the local boats to a discerning clientele. A roaring takeaway trade might send you off with a prawn and crab tartlet to treasure. Otherwise, the venue offers everything from daytime sustenance to a eight-course tasting menu on Friday and Saturday evenings. Mark Stubbs embraces a dazzling range of culinary styles, turning his hand to anything from chargrilled scallops with buttered Kentish asparagus, polonaise crumble and crab mimosa to sticky Korean prawns with kachumber salad and gochujang sauce. And that's just for starters. The choice of mains also covers a lot of ground: roast sea bass with spring-green colcannon, fermented wild garlic stalks and a tartare sauce flecked with coastal herbs; pistachio- and citrus-crusted halibut with scallop and horseradish velouté; crispy-fried buttermilk monkfish with red cabbage coleslaw, griddled sweetcorn kerrnels and BBQ sauce. The lightest option for dessert could be a raspberry soufflé with raspberry-ripple ice cream. Unlicensed – so nip into the 'Offy' across the road for a bottle of wine or one of the specially selected craft beers.
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