The Sportsman - Stephen Harris

Stephen Harris is not like most Michelin-starred chefs. First of all, he’s self-taught, and second of all, Stephen believes that more people should be able to experience the great food served in Michelin star restaurants.

So, he set out and transformed The Sportsman from an out-of-the-way, boozy-carpeted, rundown pub, into a restaurant that now holds the title of Britain’s Best. It may still be out of the way but as Marina O’Loughlin explains in the foreword of his first book, ‘it has become a place of culinary pilgrimage’ by many throughout the world.

All of their staples are made in-house. From house- churned cultured butter made from the freshest, local milk, through to hand-made and locally harvested salt, salt marsh local lamb and house-cured bacon. Stephen’s food tells the tale of the local land and its producers. They forage and live on a motto of locality and seasonality.

‘I was trying to create a style of food that was different to everybody else’s, so rather than use the bog standard butter that's produced in a factory, I made my own from milk from Jerseys that were in the field every day eating the local grass – it's special. Just like when you get an olive oil that comes from a single vineyard, that’s what thousands of years of food culture brings you,’ Stephen says.

But what really drew us to share the story of this chef and his gastro-pub on the other side of the world is the fact that after years of dining in high-end, Michelin starred restaurants, often out of reach to so many people, he decided to create a Michelin dining experience that could be shared by almost everyone.

Stephen learnt to cook by eating at the best restaurants in the world, paying close attention to flavours and textures, then, heading home with his memories, he would endeavour to recreate these grand meals at home. And I find it impressive that he’s happy to admit that! ‘Yes, I am. See, most people won’t admit it because they’re embarrassed. But I wasn’t a trained chef in a professional kitchen and I taught myself by being a customer, and when you’re trying to teach yourself how to cook, it's quite a good way of doing it because it's

nice to have a memory of the flavour in your head when you cook. I would give it a little bit of my own twist but I was happy to admit that these greats, like Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsey, were where I found influences. Then, after about five years of cooking with these great influences, I started to get a style of my own and started to allow what was grown around me to influence what I was cooking. And that’s now what you find at The Sportsman.

Michelin Comes Knocking...

Once settled into the surrounds of his new home at The Sportsman, Stephen didn’t really have any intention of setting out to earn a Michelin star, but as he explains, there's really no way of avoiding their attention in England.

‘They come around and inspect every restaurant. It was about a year before Michelin turned up, but we always knew there was a possibility. It was just before the millennium, so November '99 – keeping in mind that the restaurant industry was a lot different back then. Restaurants weren’t such a big deal back then, and we were in the middle of nowhere and just looking to survive,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t the kind of culture there is now. I think social media has changed things a lot – you can open a restaurant out in the middle of nowhere now and, with the right social media, within a month or two everyone knows you're there. But it wasn’t like that for us; it was about three years before we had a national review and that was Jay Rainer in The Observer.’

“I always believed that if you just put your head down and cooked you’d just have to see where you end up, and that seems to have worked for us. We’re not one of those places that does PR or tries to hustle anyone, we just keep our heads down and cook, and be judged by the quality of the food. But we were certainly ready for the star when it came, I certainly think we deserved it.”