Read's Restaurant

Before you're off the crunchy gravel drive and through the portico of this handsome Georgian mansion, it is obvious that Read's restaurant with rooms is a place of high standards. As in all pedigree culinary operations, ingredients are the defining element here, and Read's five acres of lovely Kentish gardens include a kitchen garden that earns its keep by providing most of the kitchen's fine vegetables and herbs; the rest is carefully sourced from a network of local producers. The genteel interior is a classic of old-school elegance, kept ticking over without a hiccup by discreet, friendly young staff in black and white uniforms. As one of the light-hearted food-related quotations from the menu might put it: 'cuisine is when things taste like themselves' - a maxim that is evidently at the heart of matters in the kitchen; despite David Pitchford's clear technical abilities, he likes to keep things uncomplicated, using a faultless sense of balance in composing his refined modern British ideas, as in a starter of Rye Bay scallops with butternut squash purée, apple salsa, candied walnuts and crispy bacon. At main course stage, local meat aficionados could go for roast loin of Kentish lamb with Savoy cabbage, celeriac fondant, sable potatoes and rosemary jus.