Whether it’s with a crab sandwich on the sea wall or a dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, visitors to Jersey will easily find ways to satisfy their cravings for excellent cuisine. Inland, anyone driving around the island can buy vegetables directly from farms, with honesty boxes tucked into hedgerows in the country lanes. By the coast, visitors can pick up seafood fresh from the boat at the lively fish market in St Helier, or forage for clams and mussels along the shore at low tide. Dinner can be enjoyed with a view at one of the island’s 24 beaches and bays, home to long stretches of golden sand, rocky coves and sheltered rock pools. Or visitors can soak in the island’s rich heritage by picnicking near medieval castles, war bunkers, museums and historic lighthouses. With so much to choose from, here are five of the best dining experiences to remember on this most southerly Channel Island.
St Brelade’s Bay has shallow waters that are great for swimming, as well as a promenade that’s lined by plenty of cafes and bars.
Photograph by Visit Jersey
1. Forage for your dinner
Jersey is an island pantry of free, nutritious food — if you know where to look. It has one of the world’s largest tidal ranges and, when the tide is out, the sea leaves bounteous rockpools scattered along the shore, ideal for foraging a platter’s worth of seafood. Visitors can spend a couple of hours searching for clams, razor shells, shrimps, winkles and crabs. Or, for a fee, join a Fishing Jersey boat trip, where there’s the chance to reel in some turbot or brill for supper.
On land, visitors can seek out wild samphire and other edible plants along the cliff paths and common ground in coastal areas. For some expert guidance, there is the option to book a walk with Kazz Padidar at Wild Adventures — he takes groups on a two-and-a-half-hour hike searching for edible and medicinal plants in the wilds of St Ouen.
For a more upmarket experience, The Club Hotel and its Michelin-starred restaurant Bohemia offers a foraging tour and tasting lunch or dinner. On this tour, visitors can choose between foraging for herbs and mushrooms inland, or for seaweed and shellfish on a coastline tour. Afterwards, groups return to Bohemia, where the ingredients are incorporated into a delicious six-course tasting menu.
2. Shuck oysters straight from the sea
When the tide is out in the Royal Bay of Grouville, the oyster beds emerge from the sea in neat rows. High in protein, low in fat and rich in minerals, the oyster was considered an everyday food item during the 19th century, when Jersey was a major producer and exporter. Now more of a luxury item, Jersey oysters find their way onto the menus of top restaurants across the UK. However, there’s no better place to try one than fresh from the sea.
Visitors will find Jersey rock oysters on the menu at many island restaurants, including Oyster Box in St Brelade, Banjo in St Helier and Sumas in Gorey. But, for a real oyster experience, Jersey’s Champagne and Oyster tour should not be missed. During this excursion, guests explore oyster beds with a guide, learn to shuck and taste the oysters straight from the ocean and wash them down with a glass of champagne. During the trip, groups can opt to discover more about cultivation techniques and the history of the island. Visitors can also join the Oyster Trail Walk by Jersey Walk Adventures, where they can walk to oyster and mussel beds with a local resident before sampling some of the produce at The Seymour Pub.
Visitors can explore Seymour Oyster’s oyster beds to learn about the cultivation process of Jersey’s famous shellfish.
Photograph by Max Burnett
3. Dine at award-winning restaurants
Jersey has a long-standing reputation as a great destination for food lovers, with it’s combination of excellent produce and top-rated chefs. This is reflected in its dining scene, with three local restaurants currently holding four AA Rosettes: Ocean, Tassili and Bohemia (which also has a Michelin star).
This year, Ocean at the Atlantic Hotel in St Brelade made it onto the La List Top 1,000 Restaurants in the world and was named restaurant of the year at the Pride of Britain Hotels annual conference. At this establishment, chef Will Holland creates sophisticated seasonal dishes with local produce, including hand-dived scallops and Jersey asparagus.
Over at Tassili at the Grand Jersey Hotel in the capital, St Helier, chef Nicolas Valmagna creates a more theatrical experience with a show-stopping tasting menu that includes native blue lobster and Sussex wagyu beef, which has earned the restaurant four AA Rosettes. A newcomer to the island restaurant scene is Pêtchi, located in the grade-one listed Liberty Wharf and set up by former Great British Menu contestant Joe Baker. The restaurant focuses on cooking local produce over their wood-fired grill, including whole fish (Pêtchi is a Jèrriais word meaning ‘to try to catch a fish’), ex-dairy beef chops, local lobster and sourdough flatbreads.
4. Relax at beachside shacks
Visitors don’t need to splash out on high-end dining to have a memorable experience in Jersey. A delicious fresh crab sandwich can be purchased from the Hungry Man cafe at Rozel Bay and enjoyed on the pier while watching boats bobbing in the harbour. Alternatively, visitors can devour a plate of pad Thai from the Thai Dicq Shack while sitting with sand between their toes at Greve d’Azette.
For a post-surf pint and plate of fish and chips, the famous Watersplash in St Ouen is a great spot — it hosted Jersey’s first open surf championships in the 1960s — as is Sands further up the bay, which is connected to the surf shop school, Little Joe’s.
El Tico Beach Cantina is a great weekend brunch location with a view of kitesurfers, or for those after a morning swim, the Driftwood Café at Archirondel doesn’t disappoint. The Jersey Crab Shack in St Brelade serves fabulous beachside seafood platters, or for a pulled-pork burrito on the beach, Kismet Cabana in Ouaisne is the place to go.
The Jersey Crab Shack is one of the most popular spots to eat on the island, serving a wide choice of seafood, meat and vegetarian dishes.
Photograph by Visit Jersey
5. Light a barbecue
To enjoy some DIY gastronomy, visitors can head to Faulkner Fisheries to buy some langoustine, scallops or prawns before heading to one of Jersey’s picturesque public barbecue areas to grill a seafood supper. Faulkner also hosts its own barbecues in the summer if people don’t fancy doing it themselves. Alternatively, the family-run Fresh Fish Company is a great place to pick up huge hand-dived scallops and local MSC-accredited lobster. For vegetables, ‘hedge veg’ can be purchased — sold by farmers in boxes along country lanes (visitors should have a few Jersey pound notes ready to drop into their honesty boxes).
Disposable barbecues are allowed on all local beaches in the expectation they’ll be managed and disposed of responsibly. La Saline at the northern end of St Ouen’s Bay is a good spot for watching the sunset and sheltering barbecue coals by the seawall. There are also built barbecues and picnic tables along the road from Gorey to St Catherine’s and among the sand dunes on the opposite side of the road to the beach in St Ouen. For those who’d rather someone else do it for them, Fireside Events provides a barbeque catering service on St Brelade’s beach, or try The Good Stone company, which cooks feasts over wood.
This paid content article was created for Visit Jersey. It does not necessarily reflect the views of National Geographic, National Geographic Traveller (UK), or their editorial staff.
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