Harry’s, Camber Sands, East Sussex: ‘A startlingly good dinner’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Precise, timeworn food without making a huge song and dance about it

A trip to the coast felt in order when the temperature recently suggested that we, the residents of the United Kingdom, have survived another winter. Behold: sunshine, green shoots, cherry blossom, fresh hope and all that good stuff. And, soon, a glut of bank holidays during which we can unveil our factor 50-smeared knees at the seaside and quickly declare that it’s far too hot.

But not all British seaside experiences are built the same. Nibbling a Waldorf salad while sipping a glass of Oxney organic English sparkling at the charming Harry’s at the Gallivant hotel on the East Sussex coast is not remotely similar to scoffing a battered sausage on Blackpool front. Both have their merits, but Harry’s is a far more refined affair, it being a recently restyled and renamed restaurant inside a blissful, bougie boutique hotel. This is a hotel, incidentally, that will create a sort of Famous Five Do Santa Monica seaside experience for you, albeit at a price. Cocktails on the sand dunes? They’ll mix and pack them in flasks, and find you suitable garments to wear, too. A spot of flow yoga before your breakfast ginger shot? Not a problem, madam. Then, later on, dinner at Harry’s by Matthew Harris, once of Bibendum (and, incidentally, brother of Henry of Bouchon Racine fame), for a menu that focuses on the heartier, homelier side of classic French cookery. Terrine de campagne with pistachios, oysters with sauce mignonette, braised rabbit in riesling and St Émilion au chocolat for pudding, that kind of thing.