HARVEY'S, ROYAL HARBOUR, RAMSGATE, KENT (01843 599 707). MEAL FOR TWO, INCLUDING WINE AND SERVICE, £90
Harvey's of Ramsgate is a shadow of the restaurant it wants to be; the dishes on its menu a third-generation Chinese whisper. There is noble intent here. Ramsgate is one of those hardscrabble port towns which has always felt the need to make its own luck but has not always been fortunate with the roll of the dice. In the right kind of sunshine it is a solid, handsome place, the reflected light off the waters of the harbour giving even the dour red brick a regal aspect; under leaden skies it can feel like the place where stories end, and not always happily.
Harvey's is an attempt to bring a little class to the town's eating opportunities. It's a big, solid hunk of a building, the antiquity of which plays nicely against the spick-and-span blonde wood floors and tables. It boasts that it serves only local fish, both for eating on the premises and off, though right now they do not have permission to get the fish market element working. The wet-fish counter remains just so much shiny, empty brushed metal.
To oversee their menu they have employed, under the title of development chef, John Burton-Race. I should declare an interest here. I don't like him. I would rather eat my own feet than have anything to do with him, and my feet are really horrible. I detest him because he and I once spent a night in a Manchester bar, during which I had to listen to his views on women, how to raise children, and what growing up in Africa was like, opinions which were not likely to win him friends any day soon. All I need say is that the average Observer reader would probably not have enjoyed the experience any more than I did.
Still, he can cook, has won Michelin stars, and at least he won't be here. Sadly, having eaten the food, I have concluded this may also be the problem. He has devised the menu, shown the kitchen the ropes, and then left them to it. That may explain why they happily served, among half a dozen oysters, one which was bright, lurid traffic-light green. We pointed it out. The waiter said, "Oh," took it away and we heard nothing more. Nothing came off the £8 per half-dozen price tag.
It may also explain why, from the £12 for two courses grazing menu, they gave us a starter of torn smoked mackerel and crayfish on slices of an avocado that was so under-ripe you could have played a passable game of cricket with it. A scallop dish from the main menu, the seared kings arriving with a sandwich of black and white pudding and a ginger sauce, summed up the problem. It wasn't appalling, but it was completely under-powered, the scallops not seared quite enough, the black pudding without a proper crust, the ginger in the sauce all but absent, the seasoning underplayed. This could have been a corker of a dish. Instead it felt like a first pass by someone feeling their way.
Main courses – a wing of ray with capers and beurre noisette, a whole grilled plaice – had the same problems. The plaice was OK but needed a shorter, sharper shock of heat. The sauce with the skate was a pale shadow of what this buttery, nutty confection can be.
And then, at the end, we shifted from adequate to "Who's to blame?" A plum clafoutis should be a warm indulgence of crisp sweetened batter, enrobing the fruit. This, however, was a mess of something hard and set like a poor custard on cold, shoe-leather pastry. A chocolate torte was another pavement of the same pastry filled with something so dark and dense and cloying it could drag small planets into its gravitational field.
All of these dishes could have been fine. They could have been better than that, actually, and what they could have been was represented by the pricing: £6 to £8 for starters, up past £20 for mains. Even that cheap grazing menu, at £12 for two courses at lunch, became less of a bargain if you threw in a £7 dessert. At those prices we needed John Burton-Race in the kitchen, justifying it all, instead of just phoning in his thoughts. Then again, had he been there, I wouldn't have been. Kent Inns, the company behind Harvey's, has clearly spent money on this business and, as I say, with serious ambition. Nevertheless, I find myself wondering whether they, like their customers, are getting their money's worth.★
