The quintessential British seaside town that’s just as good as Margate

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be than Deal,” says Richard Taylor-Jones, who grew up here. “There’s a great mix of history, arts, food and nature, all offered in a gentle manner, because Deal’s not glitzy and hasn’t fallen into the trap of being ‘the place to be’, which keeps it authentic.”

A game-changer accommodation-wise was the opening of the Rose: a rough, old boozer transformed into a luxury boutique hotel (how I love a Kentish bramble cocktail on its sunny garden terrace), and in 2022, Updown (updownfarmhouse.com), a 17th-century farmhouse, opened on the outskirts of town. Its restaurant is overseen by chef and owner Oli Brown, who has Italian food and hyper-seasonality as the focus, but doesn’t mess with a crowd-pleasing Sunday roast.

All the above have paved the way for recent openings that would have been laughed out of town 12 years ago, such as the Blue Pelican (also of the Rose stable), which has had all the top food critics queuing up to “ooh” and “ahh” over its Japanese tapas-like sharing plates (and rightly so, as the crab croquettes are worth a visit alone). Ting-Ying (ting-ying.com) is Deal’s newest gallery, bringing unusual ceramics and delights such as Pocket Fruits, a series of small but perfect oil on canvas paintings from Dani Humbersome.