Updown Farmhouse is just a 15 minute drive from Deal and well worth a visit. We haven’t yet stayed there, but I’ve only heard good things about their 10 rooms (and they’ve also got a splendid outdoor pool!). This 17th Century former farmstead has been beautifully restored by owners Oli Brown and Ruth Leigh and is incredibly stylish and chic (Oliver is also head chef – the founder of the excellent Brixton restaurant Duck Duck Goose in London).
The heart of Updown Farm is the restaurant, a magical conservatory, situated down a stone path from the hotel that was formerly the stables. It’s been designed to give an indoor/outdoor feel with exposed brick walls, vines growing on the rafters and other wonderful potted plants inside. Relaxed, but trés chic, with a boho Soho House vibe. It was buzzy, with an interesting crowd of people from no doubt far and wide. The music they played was eclectic and I was delighted to hear our family song “Pata Pata” play amongst all the other cool tunes. You could hear the music, but the acoustics were great – no problem chatting over the music. A really lovely atmosphere with a lot of young, attentive staff.
They have an open kitchen which you need to walk through to get to the loo (through the green door), which was an interesting way of getting to see what’s happening close up:-
The food we had was excellent – delicious flavours, with a heavy Italian influence.
This was pretty much the menu we had that night – although the duck came with a delicious seasonal stewed plum sauce rather than with cherries:-
For my starter I chose the very delicious Stracciatella (like the softest buffalo mozzarella cheese) with Melon and Parma ham:-
For the main course I had the Roast Duck Breast – very autumnal and delicious with the plums and mashed potato – the photo doesn’t do it justice, but it’s definitely worth asking for it to be less than pink in the middle as it was much more tender:-
I had the delicate Pannacotta with Figs for pudding which was extremely good (but we couldn’t taste any lemon – just a lovely vanilla flavour):-
Wines were very Italian biased with a few French and local wines added in – we chose a very light Italian Chardonnay which was delicious – Campo Fiorito Chardonnay Il Cascinone 2022 Piemonte (£37). They have a great selection of cocktails too and the Sparkling options included a few English vineyards as well as Italian.
My only issue is that I think they need to find a better place to store the coats. It’s not a great way to enter this wonderful space to have all the coats surrounding you and I’m sure somewhere else can be found to house them! It simply spoils the initial view of what was otherwise a wonderful evening.
