We all have that little fantasy, the one whose tempting voice gets a little louder in the summertime: Somewhere between the second sticky heatwave and the fourth rent increase, we all start to muse about what it would be like to leave the city behind and pursue our real passion: maybe a village bakery with a queue out the door on a Saturday, a tiny farm-to-table place with a smallholding attached, or perhaps buying the pub you walked past on holiday.
It is a lovely daydream, but what is it really like out there, once the novelty has worn off and the boiler has broken for the third time? Will left London for the South Coast in 2022 and has since opened two restaurants in St Leonard's-on-Sea. Here, he writes about what he found: the slower life and the sharper edges, the hospitality hardships that follow you wherever you set up, but why they hit different out of town, the fishermen and the frozen pipes, and the reality of being part of a community rather than simply setting up shop in one.
What does hospitality look like away from the direct glare of the capital? Wil finds less pressure on the one hand, but he contends with the lack of abundance, scale and wealth that London offers on the other. The pull of cities may be as strong as ever, but the most distinctive food scenes are increasingly emerging somewhere else entirely.
Life Out on the Frontier Leaving London to Build Restaurants by The Sea By Wil Hopson
In the past two years, my business partners and I have managed to open two restaurants for the same amount I reckon it costs a Super 8 group opening to build half of their pastry section. No corporate finance, no leveraging ourselves out of the right to sleep at night, just two restaurants on the South Coast built for the price of somebody else's chocolate room.
I got here by a slightly circuitous route. In 2022, when I moved out of London to restart my career in kitchens, it all felt rather bold and adventurous. I'd just taken a job at a great restaurant in Rye that sat alongside a vineyard. I lived in a farm cottage with no heating, WiFi or phone signal. A place where the same pigs and sheep I'd learn how to butcher in the coming months roamed just below my window. It was a fever dream. I loved it. But the novelty of isolation wore off, and I didn't fancy having my pipes freezing for the second consecutive winter. So, in 2023, I found myself pulling up to a real functioning house in a real functioning town: St Leonard's-on-Sea. I had no clue what to expect nor any indication of quite the vibrancy I was about to encounter.
What you leave behind
It's said that 'If you're bored of London, you're bored of life'. And it's true; all roads can feel like they lead to the city. In a lot of ways, it's easier to compare to Paris and New York as a food destination than to Hastings, Whitstable or Bridport. For me, it's the world's best food city. Home to if not the best then the second or third best versions of so many wonderful cuisines. Perhaps getting bored of it is a sign of some deeper malaise.
I certainly miss the place. I find myself longing for the anonymity of being a diner there. There's a deep comfort I get slotting into these wonderful hospitality machines, which often churn out more covers in a day than some places down here do in a week. For a chef, London has a vital quality and one that's hard to leave.
A frontier town, not a gold rush
And yet leave I did, in pursuit of what I'm not sure. What I've found is a wonderful dichotomy of a place. A slower life on the one hand. An enterprising frontier town on the other. There's no multimillion-pound restaurant group to plug your career into down here. No queues round the block on even the busiest of days, let alone a Monday night, à la the Borough Market set.
Down here you get out what you put in. The town's got a great eye for bullshit, and supports those people who are genuinely here to nourish it. It's messy and hard to predict. What's emerging is a distinctive food scene, defined more and more by its own unique identity rather than what trickles down from the capital.
It's a frontier town, though, not a gold rush. It's still hospitality in 2026. An empty dining room on a Wednesday can still kill the rewards of a full one on a Saturday. Wars and a sizzling planet still turn the screw on the cost of getting food onto the plate. Restaurants don't make a quarter of a million a week during the Christmas rush. That booming London food scene that blows my mind every time I go to town doesn't exist here.
And yet the oppressive pressure of six-figure monthly rents and fickle customers does feel a little softer. Sure, you're not far off the edge, but at least every moment doesn't exist right on the precipice. You're not peering into the abyss of impending financial ruin after one bad week. Not for the most part anyway.
Down here you just do
I've learnt that down here you just do. No six-month launch plans, no time to create in the shadows. Things open and evolve rapidly. The testing happens live and in real time. It stands in stark contrast to London.
It's an ecosystem brimming with energy, sustained by incredible people. Local fishermen appear sporadically. A WhatsApp message pops up. They've got what they've got, it's gone when it's gone. There's a friend of mine who grows world-class mushrooms in a unit in the middle of town. He ships them out all over the South Coast, but isn't against helping out chefs who didn't quite order enough at 7pm on a Friday. There's a culture of support. A sense that a rising tide floats all ships.
DFLs, FILTH… and the true lifeblood of the place
The people who actually work in the industry are an eclectic mix of imports such as myself and natives of the town. We imports go by a couple of names down here, neither of them especially flattering: DFLs, Down From Londons, if the locals are feeling generous, and FILTH, Failed In London Try Hastings, if they're not. You learn to wear it. The natives, though, are the lifeblood of the place. They're young, hungry and determined to put down their own markers. It's really inspiring having seen some kids I've worked with since they were 16 move their way up into senior roles so early in their careers. Whilst their friends finish uni and flounder in the dwindling graduate job pool, young chefs I know own houses and hold down jobs way beyond what I was capable of at their age.
Existential tidbits
As an owner-operator of independent restaurants, I'm presented with a familiar set of existential tidbits almost every day. Losses happen more regularly than I'd like. Boilers break and dishwashers flood. The chimney from our pizza oven spent last weekend coughing ash all over customers, who took it with the good grace of people who have decided that a light dusting is part of the experience. Just lots of fun little fires that are asking to be dealt with constantly. Focusing on one thing inevitably sees another fall gently into the beginnings of neglect. There's no denying it's tricky, it often feels overwhelming. It's frustrating to build something from the heart and it not be met with the same enthusiasm with which you created it. It's definitely not some utopian dream.
They don’t want my offal
The sun dictates a lot of what happens. The place undulates with the seasons. Novembers can feel oppressive; Julys joyous. The crowds are different, they don't want my offal, and they are not shy about letting me know it. Obscure Spanish regional cooking doesn't hit like it does in Soho. These are tough things to accept. A mouthful of humble pie can be hard to swallow, but you learn to adapt. You sort of have to. There's plenty of deliciousness between rubbish and refined.
Should you pack your bags?
So, should you pack your bags, slash your rent in half and follow us frontiersmen down to the seaside? It's not a walk in the park. The pond's certainly smaller, but the fish are no less sizeable, jostling for a finite customer base with slightly tighter belt straps. Stacks of gold probably aren't at the end of any rainbow. I'll happily admit that it's still a bit of a mystery to me what sustains a year-round healthy business down here, because independent restaurants are a complex puzzle to solve and there's certainly no silver bullet. You learn to sit in grey areas.
But it's a pretty wonderful feeling being part of something, and the compensations are real ones. You breathe fresh air, you meet great people and, sewage gods be good, you can swim in the sea, albeit a little less regularly than you tell yourself you will. What is true is that we get to interact with people, real, non-screen-based people, every day. There's no 39°C Tube to contend with here. No £1,200 rooms to rent. As a chef, I can afford to buy a flat that looks out over the sea, with room for friends to visit. The way I see it, if you're going to work 14-hour days, you may as well step out onto a beach after.
Life feels more possible down here. When I moved I wanted to own my own place. Now I own two.
About the Author
Wil Hopson is a chef based in St Leonard's-on-Sea and the co-owner of Coquina and Dora's in Hastings and St Leonard's-on-Sea. He has spent the past decade working in professional kitchens including Moro, Kricket, Carousel, Tillingham and Bayte, and holds a Master's in Food and Development, studying the politics, economics and sustainability of food systems. He writes about hospitality, food and the business of building independent restaurants, drawing on both his own experience and an enduring belief that hospitality is one of the most important industries in the world.
