The mariner – Pub On The stade

The Mariner has long served locals on The Stade in Folkestone.  Now, under new ownership, Steve and Amie Kirby have brought the knowledge of running international hospitality businesses to Folkestone’s sea front, and in less than a year have got a mention in the Good Food Guide Restaurant Month for 2026.  Folkelife met Steve to find out why he picked Folkestone for his new venture.

“I’ve been in hospitality since I was 18 years old, and have been fortunate enough to work all over the world.  The first job I had was in France.  I picked up some incredibly colloquial French which has proved entertaining when talking to customers here.  At what point do you know the French for ‘swizzle stick’?  Only if you start your French lessons in a bar!

“I returned to the UK to study, and had a side job in a bar in Manchester, with a company called Living Ventures.  They were running the Living Room on Deansgate which was a hotspot for all the great and good of Manchester to drop in.  It was very Tom Cruise Cocktail and Dreams vibes.   Within a very short period of time I realised that studying wasn’t the route I wanted to follow.  Hospitality was my calling.”

working across the world

“I moved around the country with Living Ventures, from Manchester to Newcastle to Oxford to London before relocating to Dubai to run a hospitality business for Emirates.  It was a British pub/dining operation called Left Bank. After running two operations for them, and working in Abu Dabi and well as Oman, I moved back and worked for Gaucho, the steak group at operations level, and learnt a lot about high volume premium dining.  My boss here was Zeev Godik, the owner, and a real inspirational character.  Actually, it’s a running theme throughout my career to have worked for some incredibly charismatic and inspirational people.

“After Gaucho I came back to a job within my comfort zone, working with a company called ETM in London with Ed & Tom Martin.  I worked my way up to Chief Operating Officer with them over the 6 years and in charge of 17 venues, from swanky rooftop bars to gastropubs.  It was a crazy portfolio, with a microbrewery and so on.  But, my son was of an age where we needed to think about primary schools and where we were in London meant he would have been one of 120 in a year group.  My wife and I didn’t want that.  We had both been to smaller, rural primary schools with a totally different experience to that.” 

a circle around folkestone

“We drew a circle around an area of Kent where my wife’s mum lives.  We needed to be near Amie’s family, and we wanted a new project to work on too.  Folkestone kept on popping up in our searches, and there were a few properties we were interested in. We had a vision of a modern pub we wanted to create, there needed to be the space to build this vision we both had.  The Mariner has that. 

“There’s a wonderful room upstairs that has French doors opening out onto The Stade and the outer harbour.  When the weather is good, it feels Mediterranean; you have the sea breeze, the noise of the harbour, the sea and people enjoying the area.”

opening up a space for the community

“We opened in February 2025 and our vision is to have a pub that we both grew up in: somewhere that’s a community hub.  You can have a drink at the bar, you can come here for Sunday Roast or birthday celebration, but importantly, you know the other people here.  It becomes a family space, and those friends become family as our children grow up together. There’s music, there are games to play, there’s a quiz night… Then there are the wider community events that happen such as the Boxing Day Dip.  

“I’ve had a lot of support from the previous owners here, and other businesses around.  The Boxing Day Dip is a phenomenon.  We’re the sign up place for the dip, so I knew that we’d be making coffee and hot chocolate all morning.  What I didn’t want to do was to make that job ‘convenient’ so we could give everyone a quick coffee because I pride myself on making a decent coffee here, with real beans, not instant. 

“It took some encouragement from a friend who used to run the chippy down the road.  He said ‘You do exactly what you want to do, this is an opportunity for the wider community to realise that you serve a decent coffee, so do that.’  And that’s what we did.  I had never made so many hot drinks in my career, it was a memorable experience! We served the community that morning and I am really pleased we did it our way.”

Dogs, Kids and Sandy Feet Always welcome

“Can you believe that there was a sign on one of the businesses around here that didn’t want mucky feet coming in?  There are so many people who are walkers, or enjoying Sunny Sands and passing by.  I always want to be the place where everyone feels welcome.  My staff know the regulars, and know their drinks.  But if it’s your first time in, you’ll be treated with just the same friendliness and respect.  We have been known to have more dogs than people sometimes, and I love it!

“On Tuesdays, once a month, we have Sing Folk come down and use the space to perform with each other.  There’s a games group that come and set up at the back and play board games together.  We had a carol sing-a-long at Christmas which was a beautiful evening, and gave me that tingle that this is what we’ve created.  It was wonderful.”

calibre of people choosing folkestone

“If you look at the calibre of people who are choosing Folkestone to run their businesses – there’s Ryan at Pomus, Nathan at Blackmarket, and all the brilliant people along Tontine Street.  We need the Harbour Arm because that definitely brings the footfall, and all businesses need that footfall.  Folkestone is actively drawing people in, and that’s important.  You know there’s a reason why they say it’s the best place to live, because the mix of the space, and the opportunity here is what makes it work. 

“There’s a creativity among so many businesses here that are helping the town to thrive.  That’s not to say that running a hospitality business is easy, we all know the struggles publicans are having.  The industry has long been a recruiter of young people, and this is where a lot of people get their first taste of work.  It’s where they get experience in understanding professional responsibility, and engaging socially with the public.

“There is a calibre of young people here too which I’ve been impressed with. There’s talent here, and not enough work to employ them.  Without a thriving high street, without the Harbour Arm, without hospitality, there aren’t the opportunities.  If you’re building houses, and using local tradesmen, and local estate agents, and local hospitality, it has a knock-on effect in boosting the local economy.  We don’t want to drive folk away to get work elsewhere, we need to support them here.”

the food and drink

“The food is as important as the drink we serve.  And locally sourced is the bare minimum for what we serve.  We use Folkestone Trawlers, Brogdales, Aldington’s and Moons Green for the charcuterie who are based in Tenterden.  They’re sausage aficionados and I love talking to them about their products.  We’ve also just started working with Rachel and Ellie at Sandgate Deli to help find fantastic local cheese.  

“I want good British Pub Grub, and so I have focused on all elements of the menu and learned a few things.  We have a really good fish pie – you couldn’t not have being so close to the sea.  And fish and chips made it there too, but we didn’t start with that, so it gave us time to focus on other elements of the menu and get those right. 

“Our wines have a Kentish element to them, but I also want to be affordable.  If you want to come in for a glass of wine and bowl of chips, you should be able to do that for under a tenner. And the price point of Kentish wine at the moment isn’t there for that.  But you have the choice on the menu should you want it.  We’re also delighted to have partnered with Kent Local Wine School to bring expertly hosted wine tastings and wine dinners to our guests.

“We have six hand pulls at the bar, we’re brewery-tied, but make sure we have a good selection and have local ales when available.  We have the Cask Marque accreditation which was really pleasing, and the local CAMRA group included us in their Christmas pub crawl – high praise indeed.”

the good food guide restaurant month

“We’re really fortunate at the moment to have a good relationship with the Good Food Guide, and I hope that continues.  It’s a really positive start to developing a wider audience who will discover what we do. 

“We’ve had some really nice mussels recently, and we talk to the trawler guys about when the best scallops are around.  I do a bavette and peppercorn which is simple and tasty, it was a popular dish on our restaurant month menu with 2 courses and a glass of fizz for £20.  We hope this offered great value to our guests during the winter. Then Gypsy Tart is coming back on the menu soon – it’s a dangerous one, if it’s around then I’ll eat it, and it’s hard to keep the weight off when you run a pub! 

“All our food is cooked here on site.  So, if you have to wait a little bit, enjoy the atmosphere, because the food will be worth it.”