Josh Hughes leaves Hide and Fox for Updown Farmhouse
Kent-born Josh Hughes swaps a two-Michelin-star kitchen in Saltwood for a farmhouse near Deal, after four years split between Hide and Fox and The Bridge Arms.
Josh Hughes, head chef at the two-Michelin-starred Hide and Fox in Saltwood, Kent, is becoming executive chef at Updown Farmhouse near Deal, Restaurant Online reported on 15 October 2026.
Updown Farmhouse is a 17th-century restaurant with rooms a couple of miles from the beaches of Deal. Its open kitchen cooks seasonal, mostly local produce over wood, with an Italian lean to the menu. Guests sleep in the main house, two cottages in the grounds, or The Stables, a renovated block added for 2025. The restaurant already holds a place in the Michelin Guide.
Hughes is from Kent and has worked for the same hospitality group since 2018, when he joined The Fordwich Arms near Canterbury. He started as a kitchen porter and worked up through the stations, a path he has credited for most of what he knows about running a kitchen.
A farmhouse restaurant sets its own bar, not a lesser one.
He became head chef at The Bridge Arms in Canterbury in November 2021. The pub restaurant won a Michelin star during his four years there, before he left for Hide and Fox in Saltwood in 2023.
Under chef patron Allister Barsby, Hide and Fox took a second Michelin star in the 2025 Guide. Hughes represented London and the South East on Great British Menu 2026 and was a semi-finalist for National Chef of the Year in 2025.
From kitchen porter to two stars
The move trades a tasting-menu kitchen with two stars to defend for a smaller, rooms-and-restaurant business built around a wood fire and a shorter, produce-led menu. It is a change in register rather than a step down: farmhouse restaurants with Michelin recognition set their own, different bar.
Updown Farmhouse's kitchen was most recently associated with Oli Brown, who founded the Brixton restaurant Duck Duck Goose. Hughes inherits a dining room already used to scrutiny, with rooms to fill as well as covers to turn — a different discipline from the one-star-and-up London dining scene he is leaving behind.
A test away from the tasting menu
Restaurant Online's report did not give a start date for Hughes at Updown Farmhouse, nor say who replaces him at Hide and Fox. Barsby's kitchen now has a second star to protect through its next inspection cycle, with or without the chef who helped win it.
For Hughes, the test is different: whether a cooking style built for a fine-dining pass travels to a wood-fired, farmhouse-scale room, and whether diners booking a weekend away expect the same discipline as a three-course evening in Saltwood. Kent's hotel-restaurant crossover has had a strong year, with the region well represented in the UK's 2026 Michelin Keys list.
