The Oystermen – Matt Lovell, 41, and Rob Hampton, 35 – are pretty sure they weren’t the first restaurateurs to be offered the site they took on in Covent Garden in 2017. “I reckon the agent pitched it to everyone else and no one wanted it,” says Lovell, as we sit down for lunch, two massive platters between us laden with oysters, raw and cooked, Pacific rock oysters and the Oystermen’s first native oysters of the season, from as close as Essex and as exotic as Carlingford in Ireland.
“No one would have taken it, it was too small,” adds Hampton, who has a big reddish beard, oversized trucker cap, DM boots; big everything really. “There was no storage, no prep kitchen, no space for more toilets.”
The pair turned the limitations of the space to their advantage. With nowhere to shuck oysters in the back, they’d do it at the table in front of the customers. It was theatre in the heart of Theatreland, putting Lovell and Hampton – probably the only restaurant owner in London with a degree in war studies – front and centre. They even believe it improved what they put on the plate.
“It reinforced the freshness of the food we sell – oysters, crabs, seafood,” says Hampton. “We could only get a day’s worth of stock into the fridges. There would be deliveries in the morning and then sell, sell, sell and reorder overnight.”
“We would start again every day,” continues Lovell, who has dark, swept-back hair and hefty, oyster-shucking forearms. “It’s not any different now: we haven’t got any freezers, because we can’t fit them in, so everything has to be fresh daily.”
The Observer’s readers agree and the Oystermen Seafood Bar and Kitchen has been voted OFM’s best restaurant for 2019. Its popularity enabled it to take over the coffee shop next door in January: it’s still basically tiny, but they can now squeeze in 47 for dinner instead of 26. And that extra space has allowed the food – from 28-year-old head chef, Alex Povall, a long-time sous chef for Angela Hartnett – to flourish. At the heart of the operation are, of course, plump oysters, but the restaurant has a well-earned reputation for crab, especially a white-and-brown-meat ragu, served with gnocchi. “The hardest thing in life is not eating that every day,” confesses Hampton. You’d also need an iron will to leave without having Povall’s white chocolate and yogurt ganache.
Still, it is service that comes up again and again with Lovell and Hampton, perhaps because both men worked front of house in restaurants as managers and waiters, not as chefs, before opening the Oystermen. And meeting them, it’s hard not to wish that more restaurants were set up by those drilled in the rhythms of hospitality.
“There’s a danger of falling into a trap of having perfect Instagram-able food at the core of your business,” says Hampton, “when restaurants are about having a two-hour moment or holiday or journey or experience.”
The pair met when Lovell interviewed Hampton for an assistant manager job – at “another non-leading seafood brand” they’d rather not name – and they hit it off immediately, spending their time off together scouring London for oyster happy hours. Both quit “good jobs” to start the Oystermen in 2015, initially working weddings and pop-ups.
Funds came from personal savings, a small government loan and maxed-out credit cards and, almost immediately, they wondered if they’d overstretched themselves. At an early gig, a music festival in Yeovil, they filled Lovell’s bashed-up Honda with oysters, crab and smoked salmon. “It rained so hard at that event and we sold nothing,” recalls Hampton, shaking his head. “All the money we’d put aside for the business was gone. It nearly killed it. The next day we ran around pubs in south London shucking oysters, at £1 an oyster, just to make some money back.”
There were some brighter moments in the early days, namely a commission to supply oysters for Grace Jones’s dressing room at London’s Afropunk Festival in 2016. “Her rider had 50 Colchester oysters, a couple of bottles of Cristal,” says Hampton. “So I’m there shucking, with Grace Jones pretty much naked next to me slurping oysters.”
Today, the Oystermen is an idiosyncratic, personality-heavy spot that offers Michelin-level food without the fuss – the dream for most diners. “I wouldn’t want a star,” says Lovell, and you believe him. “The chefs would want one, but it would damage our business. Maybe one day we will open a restaurant geared towards that. But this place is too relaxed. I want people to come not expecting too much – because it’s a bit ramshackle – but then say, ‘The staff were great, the wine list was banging, the food blew my mind … Why don’t you have a star?’”
Hampton nods, and sums up the feelings of the OFM voters: “You want to exceed expectations every time.”
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