Kevin Mangeolles at The Neptune

Husband and wife team, Kevin and Jacki Mangeolles run Michelin-starred The Neptune, a restaurant with rooms near Old Hunstanton on the Norfolk coast.

They have retained their Michelin star for four years running after moving from their previous Michelin-starred kitchen at The George Hotel on the Isle of Wight.

The Staff Canteen spoke to chef patron Kevin about menus, machinery and his dislike of being served grass.

How would you describe the philosophy behind your food here at

The Neptune?

It’s a strange thing to pigeon hole your own cooking. I guess I’d say I’m a British chef doing European cuisine. I run a small Norfolk restaurant where we try to use as much local produce as we can and try to offer people good food. It’s about buying good ingredients, cooking them as well as you can and hopefully making customers happy.

Do you have a current best-selling dish and does that sum up what you’re trying to do with your cooking?

What’s really pleasing for me is that I get a really good mix across my menu and I’d like to think that that’s because they’re all good, strong dishes. We sell pretty much an even split on all of them which for me is very pleasing.

We’ve got a really strong regular customer base and I think they’ve come to trust me so even if they don’t particularly know a product, they’ll try it. For example, we put hare on the menu and the most common thing is people saying: “I’ve never had hare before but go on, I’ll give it a go.” I like to think that’s because they’ve got confidence that I won’t mess about with it and turn it into something distasteful.

How important is local produce to what you’re doing here?

I think the bottom line is, if you’re next door to the worst farmer in the world, you probably don’t want to use their produce but I’m really lucky that we’re in an area that is really strong on a lot of products, but I wouldn’t buy it just because it’s local. I buy it because it’s good and happens to be local.

Does that extend to wild ingredients?

Only really samphire and sea purslane. I’ve got a bit of a thing about foraging. I’ve been some places where I feel I’ve been given grass which isn’t the nicest thing to have. I’ve been out walking and because there’s been so much about it on the TV, I’ve thought: “I’ll try a bit of that,” and often it turns out to taste disgusting.  I’ve no wish to try and turn something disgusting into something nice with a lot of hard work when I could buy something nice in the first place.

How important is your relationship with local suppliers?

When I deal with the local producer who supplies my lamb, he takes me round the farm. He shows me the soil they’re grazing on and what they eat and he’s as passionate about producing nice lamb as I am about cooking it. And that helps me.

When customers ask me about the lamb, I can tell them where it grows and how we work out when it’s the right time to kill the animal. I could bore people to death over this! But it’s really lovely to have that relationship and it gives me the pressure not to mess up his product, which I like.

And is it the product that inspires your menus and your dishes or are there other inspirations like flavour combinations or experimentation? 

The Product. It’s one hundred per cent about the product. Everything you put on the plate is about making that main ingredient as good as it possibly can be. There’s no point me getting some lovely asparagus and putting chocolate sauce over it. It might be clever but it won’t make it better. In essence my food is quite simple but I put a lot off effort into getting the most out of what’s on the plate. I have a basic rule of never putting more than four ingredients on a plate.

For example, with something like lamb, I’d cook it first in a water bath so that it keeps its flavour and seal it at the end and serve it with some simple vegetables like broad beans and asparagus when it’s in season. I’ll try and use the whole animal, so I’ll use the belly of the lamb, confited down or some deep-fried lamb tongues so you’re getting the most out of the animal.

You said elsewhere that getting a Pacojet was a real eye-opener for you. Is technology something you embrace?

There’s bits of equipment you can buy that make your cooking better and just to be able to have soft ice cream, perfect every time, makes such a difference. With all bits of equipment the bottom line is: does it make my food better? I did a stage at Le Manoir and I was really surprised that they used the microwave.

They used it to blast the veg for 30 seconds then plunged it into an emulsion then put it on the plate. You sometimes see veg going into a pan of water and losing all its nutrients. It just makes perfect sense to use a piece of equipment to cook it better. It’s not about how clever you can be but how good you can make your product. The general public couldn’t give a damn about how long you cook an egg for. You can be as clever as you want but at the end of the day you just want someone to say “that was lovely,” and that’s what I try to aim for. Photography - Pure Photography