Folkestone flies a bit under the radar as a recently spruced-up seaside dining destination. The likes of Deal and Margate get all the attention of the down-from-Londons yet, ironically, the London & Paris hotel and dining room, near the town’s harbour arm, has been a magnet to fops from the capital since at least 1854. Victorians en route to France dined on this quaint corner, then slept over before braving the boat to Boulogne.
A hundred and seventy years later, on entering this rather cool seafood restaurant, there’s a real sense of history in its quaint, wilfully eccentric dining room, boasting bold wallpaper, original tiled floors and mismatched dining chairs, but the design is so clever that even they somehow all complement each other. The owners have restored some parts of the building and kookily revamped others, but the overall effect is of a building that’s definitely loved again.
I haven’t a clue what the saloon bar fayre here was like in the mid-19th century, but current chef James Pearce, formerly of nearby Rocksalt, sets out to celebrate the best of Kent’s fishy and shell-bound produce. There’s plenty of choice on an à la carte menu that opens with Blackwater Estuary oysters – served natural, dill-pickled or deep-fried with a mackerel panko crumb, XO and yuzu – before moving on to a gamut of “snacks” to go with their natural-leaning wine list, including smoked cod’s roe with seaweed crackers and scallop roe, and cockles and whelks in chilli and garlic oil. Over in the mains, there’s monkfish with white miso or cod in vodka batter.
An innocent bystander might read this menu’s nonstop maritime madness, complete with numerous devil-may-care twists, and think it’s a bit frightening. Up close, however, it’s all rather charming: modern cooking served on antique tables from which you look out on a seafront that’s as old as time. There’s also a daily-changing blackboard of meat specials – on the day we visited, that included a fancy surf’n’turf sirloin steak with prawns and salsa verde and pork chop with pink fir potatoes. There was even a plain old house burger, which I found admirable: serious cooks don’t often offer burgers, because otherwise their customers will just bloody order it and completely ignore the menu’s fancier offerings of chilli razor clams and butterflied mackerel with a green herb potato salad.
All that said, on a Friday lunchtime in mid-August, the London & Paris was deserted save for two other guests, which was a shame, because not only was the à la carte really rather exciting, but there was also a long, lovely, fishy specials board, too, featuring fresh whitebait, dressed crab, coal-roasted lobster and sumptuous spins on sea bass, plaice and turbot. Mind you, Folkestone in general seemed a bit deserted on this peak-season day, too. Perhaps that’s the tragedy of all these reimagined, aspiring-to-coolness coastal towns – there’s just not enough weekday footfall.
We shared a fantastic bowl of kombu-crumbed calamari with fermented hot sauce, followed by excellent beetroot-cured salmon dotted with roast beetroot jam and coal-roasted, shell-on langoustines with a punchy, garlicky salsa verde. We shared a whole roast bream, all glossily brown-skinned and perfectly judged, with new potatoes. The vodka batter on the fish and chips was non-negotiably boozy, and I’m not sure it worked all that well, but the cod itself was a whopping great thick chunk and came with slender-cut fries and a pretty ramekin of, ahem, pea puree. Spiced monkfish was delightful, as was its accompanying silky miso sauce spooned over pak choi, salsify and unshelled smoked mussels: true comfort food. Roast hispi cabbage in a miso sauce was the only concession to vegetarians, incidentally.
The London & Paris is one of the best restaurants operating along this stretch of coastline – aside from, of course, my beloved Folkestone Wine Company. The menu makes a concerted effort at every turn to pack in extra interest, flavour or pizzazz, and while some of it may not quite land, most of it does.
A rich dark chocolate mousse for pudding was airy, yet densely packed with flavour; heartbreakingly, among that lunchtime’s four-strong clientele, we were the mousse’s only fans. Folkestone may never be as talked up as somewhere to escape the rat race in the same way as, say, Whitstable and Hove are, but here on a corner of the town’s harbour, the London & Paris has a long history of feeding those passing through on a day trip or to catch a ferry, who enjoy the view and the food, then leave, maybe never to return. It’s a formula that has worked for 170 years, so there’s no point in changing things too much now.
The London & Paris 28 Harbour Street, Folkestone, Kent, 01303 489110. Open lunch Weds-Fri, noon-2.30pm; dinner, Weds & Thurs 6-9pm, Fri 5-9.30pm; Sat noon-9.30pm; Sun noon-3.30pm. From about £45 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service
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