Deal Travel Guide - get the best from your weekend by the sea
A love letter to my home town on the coast, with all my favourite recs... and an incredible chance to win a piece of original art by NED
*In loving memory of Peter Phillip Birkett: 1945-2005 and our dear friend Joe Steeples: 1940-2023
Hello lovely subscribers and welcome to this rather special newsletter all about one of my favourite subjects - our beloved hometown of Deal in Kent. I get more messages, DMs and questions about our wonderful stretch of coast than I can feasibly reply to, so I thought I’d write it all down in one place and share it, so that you can use it as a template by which to plan your own visits here, as I’m pretty sure we’ll be mostly on the same page about what we enjoy getting up to. As this sort of guide takes a lot of time, energy and knowledge to put together and write, I hope you’ll understand me sharing it exclusively with the people who support my work directly with a small monthly payment. If you’d like to follow suit, access the guide, my full recipe archive, and enter the frankly INCREDIBLE competition with local artist NED, you can join our growing global community for less than a pound a week for a yearly subscription, below.
This guide is something I’ve been meaning to do for years, and I’m thankful to have a proper space to finally write about the magic of Deal, and my own very deep connection to this place here on Substack, so I hope you’ll forgive my indulgence in sharing the following introduction in which I explain how I ended up falling completely and utterly in love with this quirky Kentish coastal town. Feel free to skip it altogether and head straight for the guide bit! But perhaps it’s nice to have some context, as there are so many quickly pulled together, advertising-heavy, scantly-researched ‘guides’ to places flying around.
This guide is by no means claiming to be exhaustive (it’s more of an edit), though it is thoughtfully written and curated, from the POV of someone who has been enjoying Deal for almost two decades, and more recently decided to put down permanent roots here. I’ve only included the places that I genuinely enjoy with my family, and it’s going to evolve as new places open, which they invariably do, so do check back to the live post rather than working only off this email if you’re planning a trip. I will probably add more photos.
I’m VERY excited to be launching this guide with a HUGE bang, thanks to Neil Horenz-Kelly - AKA the brilliantly talented local artist NED, who is kindly giving away this stunning piece of original art - ‘A Seasonal Shift’ (pictured below) - inspired by the colours in my cooking - to one lucky paid subscriber. To be in with a chance of winning this incredible prize, please comment below about your preferred serve of fish and chips - do you like mushy peas, curry sauce, dare I say it - gravy? Let me know in the comments below. Anyone who qualifies to enter (you must live in the UK, apologies to our friends abroad) will have their names entered into a competition picker generator and will be picked at random by 5pm on 19th May 2023 and contacted by email. Good luck!
How it all began
My love of Deal has been a slow burning romance. I often talk to people I know who’ve moved to the town, or left and moved back, about how it calls you back again and again - there’s a certain magnetism to its endless shingle beach, quirky streets, sea views and brutalist pier that just wears you down, somehow. I even have a friend who moved here recently from London and then discovered that he has ancestors from Deal dating back to the 1600s - spooky! Some people assume that I grew up here, but in fact, while I’m a Kent girl born and bred, I didn’t start coming here until 20 years ago, when my parents moved here from my childhood home near Maidstone.
At that time, no one I mentioned their move to seemed to have heard of this little town called Deal, and I used to have to qualify it by explaining it was ‘near Dover’. My parents only knew about it because my dad went to school just up the road in Betteshanger, and he and his classmates were allowed to venture down into the town on a Saturday afternoon for ice cream and sticks of rock, under strict instructions not to go anywhere near Middle Street (pictured below), the breathtakingly beautiful street that runs down the middle of the town’s conservation area. Ironically, it’s now considered the most desirable street in Deal, but in the 50s was a debaucherous haven of brothels, gambling dens and spit and sawdust pubs, the latter of which I’m sure my dad ventured into with his classmates for a shandy or three.
My father’s fond memories of the town’s charming Georgian architecture, rich history (it has THREE castles, for goodness sake), smugglers tunnels and fishing boats drew my parents back down here for seaside weekends when they lived in London as journalists in the 70s, and once they finally made the move here in 2004, they were delighted to discover friends of theirs who had moved here too, for as well as its heritage as a mining and fishing town, this place has long been like catnip for artsy types, attracting all manner of actors, writers and creatives - often referred to as ‘DFLs’ - ‘down from Londons’ - an acronym that’s wheeled out much more frequently these days.
On each trip to see my parents, it became increasingly evident that they’d chosen to relocate to a very special place indeed, and it grew on me with every visit. My dad absolutely adored it here, and we shared some lovely times together, cycling from Deal to nearby Kingsdown for a pint at The Zetland pub, shrimping from the beach in North Deal, or feasting on fresh seafood from Jenkins and Son (see entry below) - crab and whelks were his favourite. Very sadly, he was only able to enjoy life here for 18 months before he died very suddenly and unexpectedly, aged 60, 18 months after moving here. While he’ll never know that I ended up here (we relocated here in 2021) I know he would LOVE that I moved here to bring up my family, be nearer to my mum and the seaside he loved so much. So that’s me and Deal.
There’s no pretending that Deal hasn’t changed massively in the past two decades - the most glaring thing being that the secret is well and truly out - and people now actually seem to have heard of it, thanks to lots of press around notable hotel and restaurant openings; several mentions in the Sunday Times ‘Best Places to Live’ lists; and winning the Telegraph’s ‘Best High Street’ award. Perhaps some of you reading this have heard of it through me. The surge in popularity (and rush on property, most notably for second homes) has helped drive up house prices to sometimes ludicrous levels. But despite the obvious downsides of that gentrification, Deal has also benefited greatly from its renaissance: there’s more going on than ever: a thriving arts and food scene that draws people from far and wide and creates jobs, and a strong community feeling with a tangible sense of pride in the abundance of good, independent things going on, making it an exciting, as well as gentle, place to be.
From a cook and food writer’s perspective, it’s truly amazing to live in a place with so many incredible suppliers that inspire so many of my recipes, from our beloved fish monger Jenkins and Son, our award-winning butcher The Black Pig, and the excellent green grocer and local delis. I’m incredibly thankful to all the people - old and new - who spend their time working on local businesses and projects that contribute so much to the community here, making it a brilliant place to visit and indeed, live. My hope is that through this guide, you’ll get to experience, support and enjoy them too. So without further ado, here we go! Please take note of the opening hours, where mentioned (and double check on websites), as many places in Deal are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and can be very seasonal.
