23-07-2025
‘The chocolate mousse was just how mummy used to make it': William Sitwell reviews Updown, Deal
Updown farmhouse, nestling in woods of the flatlands and low horizons of Kent, is a sparkling and quite beautiful gem. The buildings and setting are attractive: there's the 17th-century red-brick main house and various outbuildings, and pretty gardens which are tended with a light touch. They're a bit liberal with their grass (my mindset being more Right-wing mower), but the conversion of old sheds into restaurant and kitchen has been done tenderly, unobtrusive.
And there are bedrooms so you can get stuck into dinner and stay over. Which I implore you to do. Because that way you'll fully understand why Updown is such a magical creation, why this countryside restaurant-with-rooms puts so many other such offerings in the shade.
It's the work of Ruth Leigh and her husband Oli Brown and, believe me, they will go down in history as one of the great marital duos of British restaurants. Their temperament, style and hospitality comes across in every tiny detail, from fork to light fitting.
And so, perhaps, it should. Brown has a solid cooking CV, which includes a swerve into Cantonese barbecue when he ran a place in London called Duck Duck Goose (they say once you've dabbled in siu mei you're hooked for life), and Leigh may owe some of her talent to her father, the chef and restaurateur Rowley Leigh. One of the UK's most influential culinary figures, he did actually provide schooling for the pair: Ruth waited tables at Rowley's Café Anglais in Bayswater, where Brown was once head chef.
Brown is a man you can trust at the stove. The lunch he cooked on my visit was magnificent, proof that lovely stuff happens when a chef who has a handle on Italian technique bags fabulous local produce.
You might see Brown in the kitchen, if you can spot him through the vines. They dangle from the ceiling in the restaurant – a room that with its chequered floor, bare brick walls and exposed timber frames looks like a construction site in progress, but delivers great charm.
My old pal Anna and I sipped a good vermentino from the modest wine list (offering good-value as well as stupid-money options if you're so inclined) and shared anchovy toasts: a pair of anchovies on soldiers nestling beneath a strip of lardo, an impeccable inspection parade of crunchy toast, salty fish and sweet fat.
Then came a pizzetta which was a cute mess of melting taleggio cheese with girolle mushrooms and sprigs of rosemary: a blissful collision of Italy and England.
Likewise the roast chump of lamb I had for my main course (tender, pink and earthy), which came with broad beans, peas and asparagus in what looked like a rustic pond – a broth of bagna cauda, the Piedmontese concoction of garlic, anchovy and red wine, three of the greatest life-enhancing ingredients in union.
Anna had a fine pork chop, with large scratchings, eased on the path of pleasure with more of those girolles and some wild garlic. There was fresh crunch from a lettuce salad and sweetness from pink fir-apple potatoes, and then pud. Sure, the lemon tart showed fab pastry skills but that chocolate mousse – ah! Rich, soft and uncomplicated, like Mummy used to make it. The lesson of the mousse as with everything at Updown – don't mess with greatness, instead understand how you can simply make it greater.
