Reviews - What the Press says....

The Observer Sunday June 24, 2007

Sainted love

Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares was wasting its time offering St Clement's the wrath of Gord. For as Jay Rayner discovers, this seaside venue deserves to become the toast of the south coast

Read More by following this link

(July 20 2007)

The Times
Hastings reborn: a modern parable of sourdough loaves and eco-fishers

A STYLISH boutique hotel. A chef who has worked at Le Caprice. A beautiful country park for walks by the sea. An all-organic bakery. It really wasn’t what I’d been expecting when I visited Hastings and neighbouring St Leonards last weekend.

More often the news from this corner of East Sussex is less than cheerful. Sion Jenkins, the former deputy headteacher accused of murdering his foster daughter at their home in Hastings, is currently being retried at the Old Bailey. Last month five teenagers were killed in a car accident involving a stolen vehicle in St Leonards. And Hastings is recognised as one of the most deprived boroughs in the South East.

But a wind of change is blowing. Six months ago, the chef Nick Hales, who spent 16 years in London at restaurants such as Le Caprice and L’Odeon, opened St Clement’s in St Leonards, featuring local produce such as Dover sole, beef from nearby Hooe and apples from Kent. I booked in last weekend (01424 200355) — my delicious, and enormous, main course of Rye Bay plaice was a reasonable £10.50. The restaurant is one reason diners are now driving from surrounding towns to Hastings, not previously considered a foodie spot (though the Mermaid on the seafront does excellent fish and chips).

Earlier this year Craig Sams, founder of Green & Black’s organic chocolate and a Hastings resident, took over Judges Bakery (est. 1826) and turned it into an all-organic food store, adding sourdough loaves and croissants to the traditional buns and sausage rolls. Hastings also has an independent cinema; its historic fishing fleet recently won an award for the sustainable way it catches Dover sole, herring and mackerel; and there’s exciting talk of developing an eco-park on a landfill site between Hastings and Bexhill.

From the visitor’s point of view, perhaps the most interesting development is the opening of the surprisingly exotic Zanzibar hotel in St Leonards.

As I’ve noted before, the opening of one stylish, good-value hotel can transform a day-trip destination into a weekend break option — with all the benefits this can bring to a tired seaside resort. It happened in Whitstable with the opening of the Hotel Continental and the Oyster Fishery Restaurant and again, two years ago, in Camber Sands, where The Place has brought cheap, chic rooms and decent food to a run-down resort. Now its sister property, The Bell Hotel, is doing something similar at Sandwich in Kent. I hope the Zanzibar and other exciting schemes have the same healthy effect on Hastings.

Cath Urquhart - Travel Editor
(November 26 2005)

The Entertainer
Restaurant Review – St Clements

In this, the first series of regular reviews of local eateries, St Leonards restaurant St Clements goes under the spotlight.

Located in Mercatoria, next door to the Horse & Groom pub (ideal for pre or post meal drinks), St Clements opened in June 2005 and is run by Nick Hales, a chef of some considerable pedigree, having previously worked for a number of years at the ultra-exclusive Le Caprice restaurant in London. Joined in the kitchen by an ex-Ivy chef, St Clements boasts impeccable credentials, enough to bring it to the attention of both The Daily Telegraph and The Times, each of whom have lavished high praise on it in recent months.

The restaurant itself is smart and elegant, maintaining a largely neutral décor but with just the right amount of dressing to create the perfect ambience for its thirty covers.

Reflecting the number of covers, the menu consists of a carefully selected choice of dishes complemented by two or three daily specials. The emphasis is very much on fresh, seasonal and locally sourced produce; nothing on the menu is frozen or more than 24hrs old. Good simple food cooked well is Nick’s motto and his menu pays no homage to overly pretentious haute cuisine, instead focusing on bringing out the full flavour of the best ingredients available. This is not to suggest for one moment that presentation is in any way overlooked, far from it.

Our party of four visited St.Clements mid week and, in testimony to its growing reputation, the restaurant was virtually full. It should be noted that this was immediately after Valentine’s day, when you might reasonably expect there to be a lull in diners.

My starter of field mushrooms on toast with garlic & parsley was an absolute delight. The mushrooms maintained a full flavour with no hint of the watery texture that can so often afflict them while the garlic and parsley complemented the dish perfectly. My colleagues and variously enjoyed starters of seared scallops, deep fried squid and Parma ham, each to equal satisfaction and delight. I out to point out that throughout the meal, all the dishes were delivered together and while this is to be expected, it is a constant gripe of mine that all too often, in many restaurants it simply doesn’t happen.

Main courses comprised two orders of roasted leg of lamb served with braised red cabbage and dauphinoise potatoes, slow roasted belly of pork with mustard mash and a red wine sauce and finally, fillet of cod on mashed potato with a herb cream sauce.

The two orders of lamb were cooked exactly to specification (one medium, the other medium to well done) and were described rather more in sounds than words, with much oohing and ahhing from our guests. The mustard mash served with the pork was a treat while the cod was cooked perfectly and so delicately flavoured. If I can find any criticism at all, and believe me I have to look hard, it is that the main course menu contained only one vegetarian dish.

Desserts followed and how often do restaurants fall down at this last hurdle, applying just a little less imagination and care? No so here with the dishes maintaining the overall theme of good seasonal and local produce cooked to its very best. Tiramisu, sticky toffee pudding, vanilla panacotta with rhubarb, orange and shortbread were all delicious but the highlight was a Bramley apple & cinnamon crumble & custard. A perfectly ordinary sounding dish that, when executed with the care that Nick Hales applies to everything else on his menu, was transformed into something quite wonderful.

You might think that the catch for dining to this standard is going to be the price, but with starters averaging £6 and main courses between £9.50-£12.50, there is very little to be afraid of. In total, our meal, which included pre-meal drinks, two bottles of wine (one red, one rose) and coffees came to a most reasonable £112.50.

St.Clements offers an exceptional dining experience from a chef who is clearly passionate about food. People so often confuse fine dining with complicated, fussy dishes but Nick Hales knows that is taste and the quality of the ingredients that people will remember not how many ingredients were used in its creation. The sooner you book, the sooner you will be able to go back a second time because, believe me, you will want to.

(March 2007)

Hastings Observer
Focus: St Clements, Mercatoria

After 16 years working in Michelin-starred establishments, Nick Hales set up St Clements restaurant on the striking slopes of Mercatoria last June. And Nick has taken advantage of the rich resources the area to create his delicious and reasonably priced dishes.

He said: “One of the reasons I started the venture here is that the local produce is second to none. I get the fish off the boats, I use surrounding dairies and fruit and veg stockists, and the meat is grazed nearby in Pevensy and Hooe.

“Everything on our menu is seasonal. At the moment, we’re cooking cod, skate and scallops, and rhubarb and leeks are in season too, so we’ve got everything at its peak”.

Nick’s high-quality menu has attracted a lot of interest from the visiting national press.

The Daily Telegraph praised the restaurant’s “unpretentious ambience and clean, clear flavours”, while The Times gushed about its “delicious and enormous” Rye Bay Plaice. But the restaurant has also tapped into the culinary enthusiasm of its immediate neighbours. Nick said “About 70 per cent of our customers are from St Leonards.

“There are a lot of people down here who appreciate nice food, but beforehand they’d either eat at home or travel elsewhere. People are surprised we’ve set something like this up in St Leonards. But you just feel sorry for them, because they don’t realise there is some great architecture down here, and a real sense of space. People are passionate here and there’s a real sense of community that you don’t have in places like London. St Leonards has its own identity and charm and quirkiness.”

The Guide - The Guardian
Saturday August 26th – Friday September 1st 2007

Having heard about the Hastings renaissance, but exasperated and hungry at 2pm when all provincial England has closed its doors until dinner time, we discover this jewel almost by chance.
Ex Caprice chef/patron Nick Hales does a wonderful plate of delicately-Smoked Fish, all locally caught and bought, and a pingingly fresh pan-fried Rye Bay Plaice. Prime ingredients are Key, and meat-eaters are from demonised, with a cracking Leg of Lamb and local (ish) Hooe Beef.

High Point Palpably unpretentious
Low point Book at weekends

Capacity 30

Price per Head
Two-course lunch £10
Two-course Dinner £14
A la Carte £40
Wine list £11.25

Vegetarian 5/10
Service 9/10
Music Ray Charles; Cat Stevens (low Vol)
Value for Money 10/10
Style St Leonard’s Revival

www.caterersearch.com (17 August 2007)
St Clement's, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex

Sixteen years spent working in London, culminating in opening the private members' club Century after running the kitchen at L'Odéon and working with Bruno Loubet at the Four Seasons, taught 36-year-old Nick Hales as much as any chef needs to know about cooking.

But what it didn't inspire in him, he says, is passion. "I went on holiday to France and Italy and began to see how they served food," he says. "Then I read Simon Hopkinson and Rick Stein and suddenly understood why it was possible to get so excited about a bulb of fennel."

So, after a period consulting on the pre-launch menus for healthy fast-food chain Leon, Hales found what he was looking for on a trip to St Leonards, next to Hastings on the East Sussex coast. Walking on the beach, he saw the catch from day boats coming ashore directly on the shingle and knew straight away that this is where he'd like to be. "Usually with cooking, I'd look in books, dream up recipes, then go out to find the produce," he says. "With this, the fish would write the recipes themselves."

Down to the boats

A relaxed, neighbourhood restaurant was the result, and 16 months after opening Hales still goes down to the boats almost every day. He takes whatever the fishermen have: it might be Dover sole, lemon sole, bass, red mullet, mackerel, cuttlefish, pollack, squid or even lobster delivered from a local pot in Hastings. It's so fresh that fish landed that morning can be on your plate by lunchtime.

Dishes are written out on a menu but much is presented as specials, with not even enough planning to merit a blackboard. "The specials change two or three times a night," he says, "so I just wander out to show the diners what fish I've got and how I'm going to cook it."

Flavours are kept classical. Sea bass might be served with a simple Greek salad; smoked fish - from the acclaimed Weald Smokery just up the A21 - is accompanied by horseradish cream and rye bread (£6.50); whole lemon sole comes with a lemon, caper and parsley butter (£15.50); and, on the meat front, roast leg of lamb - from organic butchers Hen on the Gate - with peas, broad beans and mint salsa (£13.50).

Most fish is cooked on the bone to get the most flavour. "The glutinous oils also keep the flesh more moist," he says. He is also happy to take smaller fish from the fishermen which are below the quota size and would otherwise be thrown back overboard, dead. For a kitchen that also butchers its own meat - taking bones for stock and trimmings for pâtés and rillettes - this approach to the catch is an extension of good kitchen management: avoid waste, and work with what's available. He even uses, for a salad, the claws from the spider crabs whose bodies the fishermen have used for bait.

"The French and Spanish seem happier to fiddle around with the smaller fish," he says. "But in this country people want something that only takes five minutes to prepare - probably in case they miss their favourite cookery programme on the telly."

Not that Hales is evangelical. One starter, the only real departure from the European and British-slanted menu, is a gurnard, cuttlefish and king prawn Thai salad (£6.50). The king prawns - like his organic farmed salmon and smoked haddock - are not local but still fish he is happy to buy. "With the organic-and-local agenda you can trip yourself up," he explains. "I love smoked haddock, so I'm not going to not serve it just because it's not local."

For the salad, he chargrills prawns, gurnard and cuttlefish, which he first cooks in a court bouillon to tenderise it - as you would with octopus. These are mixed with typical Thai flavours of lemon grass, lime leaf, lime zest and juice, coriander and chilli.

Hales cook with three chefs in the kitchen, and on Friday and Saturday nights the 30-seat restaurant is filled twice over. With relatively low rents - compared with, say, Brighton - he can price the menu competitively, especially the lunchtime and evening set menus for £13 or £17 for three courses respectively. "There's a good little scene down here," he says. "There is a joke about the curse of Hastings, being 'Once you arrive, you can never leave' - but I'm happy with that."

Sussex Life - October 2006

So say the bells ………….
There’s a new restaurant in St Leonard’s that’s attracting quite a bit of attention. Jonathan Keeble dropped in to see what all the fuss is about.

The beautiful East Sussex countryside drifted past as we headed along the coast road towards St Leonards on Sea. A visit to St Clements Restaurant is worth it for the journey alone.

The restaurant is one street back from the promenade in an area .which has clearly seen better days. But St Clement’s is bright, modern and inviting and is just what the corner of the county needs. It’s painted a classic heritage green with polished windows and blackboards offering the day’s specialities. There’s a whole host of fish dishes to tempt us including haddock, skate and lemon sole.

Chef Nick Hales comes highly recommended having spent his career in London. He opened St Clement’s just over a year ago and uses his vast experience to make the menu clean, unfussy and consequently appealing There is a real emphasis on local produce and it shows.

My starter of Smoked Duck, Beetroot Chutney and Red Chard Salad was fantastic. The duck was tender and for all I knew, the beetroot was so fresh it could have been grown in the restaurant garden. When it comes to the fish, Nick takes full advantage of being able to make his choice from the day’s catch and he’s more than happy to bring it out on a tray for customers to select.I opted for a main dish of Skate, Mash, Samphire and Herb Cream sauce and again I couldn’t fault it. The fish was succulent and mash, so creamy it melted in the mouth, reminded me of a Sunday lunch at home. Also on offer, was Leg of Lamb, Confit of Duck and Sirloin Steak for those wanting a more traditional option.

And so on to dessert and my eyes went straight to the Chocolate Truffle Cake with Crème Fraiche. The chocolate was ever so slightly warm and the crème fraiche melted invitingly alongside. Fantastic.
St Clement’s also has a three course lunch menu for £13 and if our meal is anything to go by it’s sure to be a terrific bargain.

All that’s left to do now is pop next door to the adjoining pub and enjoy a nightcap. I’d say Nick and his team deserve one too.

Our Verdict
Value 9
Menu 9
Ambience 10