When Ben and Sophie Crittenden opened Stark in Broadstairs in 2016, for a while it was the town’s best kept secret. However, word soon spread of Ben’s carefully prepared six-course tasting menu and guests would often find themselves on waiting lists due to the intimate restaurant only able to offer just five tables. Within three years, Ben had gained a Michelin star, one of only five in the county, and a customer base from much further afield, too.
While the couple are grateful for the success in Broadstairs, in May, they closed the doors of the much-loved restaurant and headed east…East Mersea, in fact, to open Stark in Essex and to be closer to Sophie’s family.
It’s been a busy time, but Sophie says the family are settling well on the island and tells us about what diners can expect.
'Yes! We’ve been wanting to come to Mersea for a while as it’s where I grew up and had a lovely childhood. My family are still here, and the kids have loved visiting them over the years. It’s been a part of our plan for a while, but we found the site by chance and, although we were happy and settled in Kent, it just felt right with the site for what we do.
'Part of us felt a little crazy to leave the success we had in Broadstairs behind and start over with an all-new customer base but, as we knew we wanted to ultimately end up living in Mersea one day, we knew we wanted to try.
'It’s a little out of the way and we can’t take walk-ins so we felt it’s best to not be somewhere too central for people to be walking past and popping in without bookings.
'If it doesn’t take off, we’ll just try something else, having the children means our lives can’t solely revolve around the business and we have to think about the family’s happiness overall too. Being in Mersea for the kids is a big tick on our list of what we want overall.'
'In the weeks we’ve been back, there’s not a day gone by that we haven’t seen a family member and it’s lovely! My children go to schools with their cousins or friends we’ve known from my Mersea connections anyway, so the main focus was the kids feeling happy with such a huge change and they do, which is great.'
Describe the restaurant, is it similar to Broadstairs?
'The Mersea site is bigger but that’s not hard to find! Broadstairs was tiny and, while most loved how intimate it was, we had a lot of people displeased with the proximity of other tables or the table/chair layout because we had to get a little creative with how we could fit five tables in there! We’ve tried to bring as much of Stark Broadstairs with us to Mersea though - our stickers ceiling is now a stickers bar. The walls are black, and the playlist is still a mix of old and new, across a range of music genres!'
'Ben changed the menu too often for me to remember specific dishes! It’ll be the same as it’s always been though. Ben’s ideas of what’s in season, what goes with other ingredients and the best quality of that produce. We’ll still be using our incredible Shh’ annu lamb when it’s available to us this year, our wine supplier is still Les Caves who do a fantastic job of matching our dishes to their recommended pairing wines. In addition to those, we’ll also be using local suppliers to Mersea, such as seafood and fruit and veg, but it won’t be a seafood restaurant, it will still be a mix of seafood, meat, and desserts. Ben is allergic to fish; he developed the allergy a few years back so he’s still able to create incredible fish dishes based on his knowledge of it all and he can eat shellfish so he uses that to accompany the fish dishes so he can still taste elements of it. We’re excited to see what we can do together.'
As a proud holder of a Michelin star in Broadstairs, is this something you’re hoping to achieve in Essex?
'We’d love to keep the star and become the Michelin star restaurant of Essex as it’s definitely helped in recent years to bring in customers from further afield. However, if it’s not on the cards for us here for a while, we’re fine with that too, the accolade of a Michelin star comes with a lot of pressure and the customers that come into a starred restaurant that maybe wouldn’t have come a long way to try us if we didn’t have one, can have additional expectations that don’t necessarily include Stark. For example, our main focus is the quality of the food and the eating experience, it’s not ‘fine dining’ as many people would expect, with tablecloths and silver service, we’ve set up our service based on what we would want to experience going into a restaurant to eat. The decor is darker than most restaurants, the service is friendly but relaxed, we want to leave our diners to enjoy the evening with their guests and not constantly be asked if everything is ok or talk through any food/drink information and the origins of ingredients etc. We trust that the experience will speak for itself and if they want to know more, they will ask and then we’re happy to provide more information about it.'
'Seeing the kids grow up here is the main draw for us but if we can have success with the Essex and London diners that we had from the Kent and London diners in Broadstairs then that would be great. We’re not on Mersea specifically for the Mersea locals because, like anywhere, you can’t please everyone, so we’ll still be relying on foodies from around the county and further to come and try us out and hopefully come back again!'
'I hope so! We had so many lovely customers in Broadstairs that became our friends, we even went out eating with some of them and shared our hobby of finding good restaurants to try! In our last few months in Broadstairs, we had lots of customers telling us they’ll be visiting us here and one of our first bookings was a lovely couple that visited us almost monthly! They didn’t even live in Broadstairs, they found us and then kept coming back and were the perfect Stark customers…they were there for the food and experience, and we got to know them over the years, so we’d enjoy a catch up and a chat later on in the evening when the service had calmed down.
'We’re very grateful to have customers like that who support us as a family. Having three young children means we can’t always be as flexible on open days/times/booking size etc because Stark is only a part of our lives, they’re the other half. It’s only Ben and I working there because we want to make sure it stays as we wanted it to be and doesn’t get lost in too many staff members/costs. This way, we can retain our grip on the service and experience for diners and make sure it’s exactly how we’d want it to be.'
Stark is at East Road, East Mersea, and is open Wednesday to Saturday evenings from 6pm. Last booking 8:30pm.
starkfood.co.uk
