fifteen years at rocksalt

Rocksalt has been part of the Folkestone Food Scene since June 2011. The restaurant was one of the early elements of the regeneration of the town.  Building a fine dining restaurant, cantilevering the harbour, when the area was no longer a functioning ferry port was a risk, but one that has paid off.  There are many people that have worked at Rocksalt and gone on to run their own hospitality businesses in town and beyond.  There are many a happy guest who returns for another meal in this stunning location.  Folkelife spoke to founder Josh De Haan, and his senior team, three of whom worked at Rocksalt in the first year.

Josh: “I actually don’t remember the opening day very well.   I hadn’t slept for a couple of days as it was incredibly stressful.  The building wasn’t finished, I think the builders were still popping in to finish things a few weeks after we were open.  Also, the harbour area was really neglected at that time.  The port had closed in 2001, and ten years later, it was looking very sad.  To open a big, fancy restaurant was a huge risk, but, if you don’t try these things, then how do you know?”

new restaurant new baby

Marcin Szelag, now Executive Chef at Rocksalt, started out on that first day as a Chef de Partie.  Before long was promoted to Sous Chef, second in command under the Head Chef.

“I had been working in London at Claridge’s.  I always wanted to work for Gordon Ramsey and so had moved from Folkestone to London to chase that dream.  However, my wife at the time was pregnant, and we had moved back to live in Folkestone, and I loved my job, but wanted to be closer to home.  So I spoke to my head chef there, Steve Allen, about some stability in my working pattern.  He went away, thought about it, and in a couple of hours came back to me.  He had been speaking to a good friend of his – Mark Sargeant – who was leading a new kitchen at Rocksalt in Folkestone.  And that’s how I started here.

“My wife moved back first, and our daughter was born, and Rocksalt opened a month and a day later.  I started as a Chef de Partie and then was soon promoted to Sous Chef.  We started off with a lot of staff from London who had moved down to work at Rocksalt.  There wasn’t much else going on in Folkestone at the time, especially when you had been working in London.  It was a lot different to how it is now; people have come to Folkestone now and think it’s amazing to be here.”

folkestone fifteen years ago

Josh: “Fifteen years ago there were not very many restaurants here in Folkestone.  We had a selection of good Italians that served good, regional food, but not much else.  Now you look at Folkestone and it has changed so much.  You can eat food from nearly every continent on Earth!

“Also, people moved on from us to open new businesses.  Pete Lawless was barman here and moved onto the Harbour Arm to open Bathtub and Gun, a little cocktail bar.  Jim Lawrence from Dr Legumes was here; we had all the Lawrences at one point.  Greig Hughes who opened Bao Baron was here, Ollie who managed Lucky Chip was also with us.  If you look at all the local good restaurants, we have trained a lot of their staff.  The Pig in Bridge has a lot of our staff; Harry Johnson who’s just opened up at Keppels at The Grand trained under Marcin for his first foray into the kitchen before going to Hide and Fox.  Boys Hall, in Ashford, also has a lot of our staff too.”

new blood

Jack Nimmons, now the General Manager of the Rocksalt Group, started with the team in the October of 2011.

Jack: “I’d been working at Quarterhouse on Tontine Street and knew Josh and his team because their offices were nearby.  They used to pop in and have a drink and a bite to eat as it was never very busy at that time.  I was very lucky to be invited to come for an interview to join as part of management team.  My role was an assistant manager and to drive our event side of the business, doing outside catering at festivals and events which we did for a number of years. It was a good way of getting exposure for Rocksalt outside of Folkestone and our initial catchment area.  Then, as the business progressed, my role developed.  Josh and I looked to open the first pub in the group, the Duke William at Ickham, and I got to project manage that.  My role has grown from the day to day running of Rocksalt into a more multi-site operation.  But that’s how I began here.”

building the team

Josh: “I think Jack’s journey reflects quite a lot of the people within the organisation.  They will start in one place and then end up in another.  That’s probably one of the reasons why we have kept so many staff for so long, over the years.  If we were just one restaurant, there wouldn’t be so many opportunities, but we’ve created a lot more. Rocksalt in the summer is our busiest venue, we do hundreds and hundreds of covers and it’s not for everyone.  If you want a job in hospitality, we have different options.  Georgetta at Little Rock is a great example of someone moving from one setting to another.  She started off as a Kitchen Porter and couldn’t speak much English at all.  She’s progressed through the culinary ranks and now is Head Chef at Little Rock and no one is taking that away from her!  Both Niel and Ryan at Radnor Arms have worked for us at Rocksalt and The Pilot.  The Head Chef at The Duke, Joe, was Marcin’s junior at Rocksalt, and before that Adam was there.  It’s a long list that keeps going!”

Marcin: “Rocksalt is an incubator for training people at the highest level, certainly in the summer when it’s our highest volume of business.  And when people are working here, even at Head Chef level, they have the skill set to be able to go out to the other venues where you know they are still busy sites.  It stands them in good stead to take on greater responsibility in other venues.”

Josh: “We didn’t set out to be an incubator space, it just happened, and I think that’s a product of our success. We have also tried to instil in the teams that there is an opportunity to progress.  It’s not just a part-time job. We offer training, and the money is good too as you get your share of the tips as well as a good salary.”

marketing

Helen Nimmons, wife to Jack, has been a part of the scene since the start, if only in support of her husband.

Helen: “I felt that I’ve been here for much longer than I have.  We would always talk about Rocksalt and work from when Jack started here in 2011.  I was in estate agency before, doing sales and marketing and PR on the side. We had our two children and I decided I wanted to try something else, and have been with the company for four years now. Initially, I came in a couple of days a week to help with the phones.  We had a central booking system, and when the restaurants got busy the phones came through to us.

“At that time, each individual business was running their own social media channels.  We wanted to centralise this so that it took the pressure of the teams when they were focusing on serving customers. My role was created, and now I work full-time across the marketing, social media and event organising, particularly here at Rocksalt.  Influencers have been playing an increasingly important role in how people discover us.”

Josh: “I can remember, when we started, that influencers were not that significant in our media reach.  It was even thought of as a dirty word!  But now, instead of webpage impressions and visits, we’re looking at ‘reach’ of posts.  And that is much easier to measure than the impact of a magazine article.”

Helen: “We did a collaboration with an influencer last weekend and it’s already got 8,000 views, which takes us off into a different direction than we could a few years ago.  Marketing has changed massively since we started.”

Josh: “And if you think back to 2011, Rocksalt was here and the Harbour Arm was still closed, that hadn’t been renovated yet.  There were a few shops on The Old High Street but that was still in early stages too.  So people were discovering us, and then seeing what else Folkestone had to offer.  Now, it’s working the other way around.  I saw some people getting off the train at Folkestone Central and they were clearly new visitors, coming to see the things they had heard about in Folkestone.  They will discover us because of all the regeneration and wonderful things that are going on in the town.  It’s all of mutual benefit to everyone, new visitors find us and then Folkestone, or find Folkestone and then us.”

the restaurant manager

Leon Foissy joined the Senior Team in 2023 as the General Manager of Rocksalt.

Leon: “I discovered Folkestone on a family day out to the seaside.  In a similar sort of situation to Marcin, we had our first child, expecting our second and didn’t want to bring them up in London.  We had moved to Kent but it took me about seven years, commuting to London to work, to find the right place for me, and that was Rocksalt.  What I saw on that seaside day was an interesting restaurant that was of similar stature to ones I had worked with in London and back home in France. I needed to find the right offering for me, somewhere that had the right product, the right demographic and the right people to work with. 

“I’m passionate about what I do, and if I don’t believe in the product and the people then I can’t do my job properly.  Here it feels like a marriage made in heaven.  We all have the same outlook, and are striving for the same standards and experience for our visitors.  People come to Rocksalt to celebrate events in their lives and we have to bring the magic to those, on a daily basis.  We had a proposal the other evening, luckily she said yes, but we all knew about the plan, the music, the delivery of the ring, and everything has to be just so.”

Josh: “To begin with, it felt very lonely running Rocksalt, we needed people from Canterbury, from Rye, to buy in to coming to Folkestone on a cold and wet November evening for a stunning meal in the restaurant.  It was a tall order.  But now, Folkestone is very much on the map, and people are coming from much further away.  It’s great for the town, it’s great for the people, it’s great for employment and great for employing people.  The flip side is that there are other opportunities for our staff in the town too.  We need to remain competitive.  I can remember seeing Leon’s CV, and it’s very impressive, and it’s not one you see a lot of around here, so to be able to employ him, and keep him is pretty critical to the success of this place, for all of us.”

the next fifteen years

Josh: “If we took a photo every year to show how much older we all look, that would be fun.  I think the industry has gone through some incredibly tough years; Brexit, Covid, the energy crisis, cost of living, and now what’s happening in Iran, we have really gone through tough times.  But, having said that, we had a very successful year in 2025, and we are building on that.  The Garden is open on the top of the Viaduct, which gives a less expensive offering but still with Rocksalt standards.  Our breakfasts are going well, which again, is offering that magic of Rocksalt but not as formal as dinner in the evening. 

“In the first five years we were evolving to deliver a consistent service from the wonderful summer days, to the cold and wintry evenings in a coastal town.  Now, we are working on our live music Friday evenings, and we’ve held a series of hugely successful sports-based lunches with some high profile athletes such as Sir Geoff Hurst, Jason Robinson and Sir Jason Kenny to name a few.  For a restaurant to survive for fifteen years you do have to evolve, and try new things.  Sometimes ideas work, sometimes they don’t but it’s so important to breath new life into what we do, and make sure the customer can feel that too.  

“We are so proud to own the awards we have achieved as well, that’s testament to every member of staff who has contributed to what we do.  Our pub, The Radnor Arms, is one of the top five pubs in the country, Little Rock has won a place in The Good Food Guide for two years in a row, and has just celebrated its fifth birthday, so we’re really pleased with what we have achieved.”