restaurant – always a blue sky girl

Last Friday I was very lucky to be asked to try the Pearsons Arms in Whitstable for dinner.

Located just off the beach in beautiful Whitstable in Kent, this cosy pub serves wholesome food with a seafood bias using locally sourced ingredients (the oysters are literally caught 100m away!), speciality ales and seasonal specials. They also have a great vegetarian and vegan menu.

We chose to visit on a sunny evening in late June for a rare parental event…a date night! Whitstable is always lovely to visit and the Pearsons Arms is perfectly located for a romantic evening meal…

So the important bit – what did we eat and how did it taste?

The Starters

To start we picked a selection of ‘small plate’ starters to share. The Pearsons Arms recommend two plates per person so we went for the mini chorizo sausages with a Worcestershire glaze, Baked Camembert and toasted baguette, Minted lamb meatballs in tomato sauce and mini fishcakes with Gribiche sauce. They all came out together on wooden platters and were utterly delicious! The servings were generous and we adored it all. If you are visiting and fancy just a drink and a snack I would definitely recommend these – there’s lots more to choose from including ribs, olives, squid, scotch eggs, oysters and prawns.

The Mains

Being so close to the sea, and seafood clearly being a speciality, we both decided to go for a seafood main course. I went for the half Lobster (my first time eating Lobster – exciting!) and Russ went for the Dover Sole.

Both were delicious – the Lobster was served either in a garlic or chilli butter (I went for garlic) and Russ’ Dover sole was served with new potatoes and buttered Kentish greens. Both arrived piping hot and tasted great.

And finally (of course) dessert!

For once we both went for the same option – Eton Mess. One of my all time favourites it was served with Chantilly cream, vanilla ice cream and a generous sprinkling of fresh mint – I ate mine so fast I forget to take a decent photo of it!!!

The inside of the Pearsons Arms is just as good as the food….think shabby chic, with a slightly nautical vibe and a cosy atmosphere.

And the view as the sun goes down is just perfect…

The Pearsons Arms also has some great live music on Tuesdays and Sundays, a Fish & Chip night on Tuesdays and a Steak Night on Thursdays so its worth checking the website to see whats on.

We loved our visit and will definitely be returning soon – I think it would be a great place to bring our boys too as the children’s menu looked great so maybe our next visit will be as a group of five!

*This meal was provided at no charge in return for this review but all views are my own. For more information please see my disclaimer section

Let go back in time…

Its 1998 – London is in the grip of the Rule Britannia phase, Brit Pop rules, as do lads and ladettes doing too many drugs, New Labour were telling us ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ and the British art scene led by the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume is changing the face of modern art.

Mathew Freud and Damien Hirst open up Pharmacy, a restaurant in Notting Hill and the rest is the stuff of legend. I went once with some people from Loaded Magazine (remember that!?!) but sadly I cannot mention most of the stuff that happened that night for fear of being sued! It was a pretty cool place though, although the waiters in surgical gowns did freak me out a bit…

Jump forward to now and Damien Hirst, in collaboration with chef Mark Hix, has opened Pharmacy 2, this time based in his Newport Street Gallery in Vauxhall, South London. See below what I discovered…

Its small but perfectly formed! The bar area is a mix of neon, pill prints and hanging leds. Hirst butterfly print medical ‘+’ signs sit each side of the mirrored bar backdrop and cocktails are mixed as you perch on pill shaped bar stools.

There are booths to sit in for bigger groups and loads more Hirst originals. I tried to leave with one up my jumper but sadly there were too many waiters!

And even the bar stools are cool… Just like the original piece of art, 2500 or so different pills fill the cabinets on the walls…The menu covers British and European classics, including the likes of shaved winter squash with Treviso and Graceburn cheese, white polenta with a Burford Brown egg yolk and shaved Wiltshire truffles, plus a Mark Hix signature dish of crushed potato and black pudding with pineapple upside-down cakes or chocolate mousse with honeycomb for dessert. Pharmacy 2 covers breakfast, weekend brunches and Sunday roasts, plus it serves a mean cocktail.