After years spent working across a number of well-known hospitality businesses - including the Michelin-starred Sorrel, The Vineyard and Amberley Castle - Matthew Price, alongside his wife Jennifer Price, have just opened their first venture together: The Townhouse in Arundel, West Sussex.
The Grade II-listed property combines an 18-cover restaurant with four rooms run by the husband-and-wife team themselves. In the restaurant Matthew oversees the kitchen, drawing on cooking centred on seasonality, foraging and South Coast produce, while Jennifer, whose experience includes boutique hotels, pubs and front of house manager at Sorrel as well as the Spread Eagle in Midhurst, leads the front of house, guiding guests through its tasting menu format.
What made you decide to open your own place?
Matthew Price: We’d always dreamt of having our own place, but there are a lot of scared people in hospitality, and for very good reason. We began looking into the property in October and met with the landlords in early November. It became very quickly apparent that our business model was really desirable for them. That gave us a huge confidence boost because it’s easy to discuss these things in a bubble, but then you sit in front of people with tremendous commercial experience who’ve looked at your business model and gone, ‘yeah, they’ve probably got a good chance of success.’ That was the moment where it felt like we weren’t playing around anymore and that we actually could do it. Once I’ve got the bit between my teeth, I can be quite tenacious. I committed my mind to it and thought, ‘right, we’re going to get this done.’
Why did you choose Arundel?
MP: If we could have put a pin in the map, we would have chosen Arundel. We’ve always said that because we felt there was space in the market for something like what we want to do creatively and conceptually. We’ve also always enjoyed living in the countryside, and our style of food is probably a bit more wild-orientated. I really enjoy foraging and using wild ingredients, and the South Coast is incredible for produce. There are amazing suppliers and producers around here; for example, we’ll be using Newhaven Fish Sales and hopefully working with a kelp farm on the South Coast as well, which really fits in with our ethos. Then you look at how many vineyards we’re surrounded by, and one of our passions is sparkling wine, so we’re spoilt with local producers.
Jennifer Price: For me personally, Arundel is home. It’s where I grew up and where I had my horses, and I know the area so well. The market town, the history, the culture, the castle - it’s just beautiful. It truly feels like home and the best place for us. The property itself also really spoke to us.
It’ll be the absolute essence of what we want to deliver, and that’s hard to quantify.
Matthew Price
What drew you to the property?
MP: It was actually through freelance work that I came across The Townhouse. I was helping out somewhere in Arundel and driving past every day when I saw the signs, so I had a look. I saw it was exactly the size we want and figured financially it might work with some negotiation. So we started looking into it, and it all snowballed from there.
Were you always looking for a property with rooms?
MP: Ever since working at The Spread Eagle, I’ve always said I’d never work in another hotel again - despite the fact that nearly every role I’ve had since, including Amberley Castle, The Vineyard and Douneside House in Aberdeenshire, has involved rooms. So no, we weren’t planning on having rooms. But the reality is commercially, it’s a brilliant safety net - accommodation in Arundel is so busy with most places running at over 85% occupancy annually, so from that point of view it was a bit of a no-brainer. It’s going to be fun as well. Managing rooms is something new for me, which keeps it interesting.
What made you decide to launch the venture as a two-person team?
MP: A lot of people have reacted with scepticism about it, but not many people have looked at the benefits of it. The benefit is that we have so much passion, enthusiasm and belief in what a restaurant experience should be that guests will get it completely undiluted. It’ll be the absolute essence of what we want to deliver, and that’s hard to quantify. There’s also a bit of an underdog story there as well - a husband-and-wife team doing this together - and I think people connect with that.
Why have you decided to offer a tasting menu rather than à la carte?
MP: It best suits my style of food. I like being really creative with flavour pairings without making things unfamiliar to people. I’m fascinated by why flavours work together, and a tasting menu is the best way to express that. Then there’s the logistics side. We’re not going to have waiters, sommeliers, pot washers or housekeeping staff - it’s just going to be the two of us - so it allows us to really hone in and focus on what we do well and do it properly. It’s also something unique in the town. There are fantastic restaurants around already, but nobody is really offering this style of tasting menu experience.
JP: From another point of view, I always describe the restaurant as theatre. A tasting menu is storytelling. It starts from the website, the reservation and the enquiry process, and then once guests walk through the door, they’re taken on a journey through everything we’re trying to do.
How often will you change the menus?
MP: We’ll be changing dishes as ingredients come in and out of season. We probably won’t do complete menu overhauls constantly, but if you want to work closely with seasonality, then dishes need to evolve quite frequently. We don’t just want to use ingredients while they’re technically in season - we want to use them when they’re at their absolute best.
If we could have put a pin in the map, we would have chosen Arundel.
Matthew Price
Will the team remain the two of you indefinitely?
MP: We will grow eventually. Opening with just the two of us is kind of the best-case scenario for now, and if we need to add people, then we will. The rooms are only going to be open the four nights the restaurant is open, with a few exceptions for things like Arundel Festival and Goodwood as well as extending days a bit more in August. The structure of being open for four days and closed for three works commercially, but most importantly it works for us as a family. That’s the fundamental thing and completely non-negotiable.
What has been the biggest challenge so far?
MP: Getting our name out there really and building momentum. We’re doing it without PR for the moment because we don’t have investors or backing - we’re doing this ourselves. We arranged our own press release, and we’re speaking to publications, but we’re also relying on people like Visit Arundel, the local tourist board and industry contacts who’ve been really supportive and helped spread the word. At the moment we’re happy with the product, the environment, the processes, the menu, the ingredients and the wine list. But that’s only the first step. Over time the business will evolve, and that’s probably when we’ll bring in PR and marketing support and continue growing it gradually over the next 10 years.
Has the Grade II listed building created challenges?
MP: Definitely. You’re very limited with what you can do, not just structurally but even with fittings, signage and things like that. You have to be really respectful of the historic status of the property and make sure everything falls in line with planning regulations and the wider community. Fortunately, it was previously a wine bar and already had a fitted kitchen and licence to serve food, so that helped massively. But it’s still a minefield, and you have to be very careful because if you get things wrong, in theory you could be made to put everything back how it was.
What Steve created at Sorrel was a team where everyone was completely on board with the same vision.
Jennifer Price
What have you learnt from Sorrel that you’re bringing into this new venture?
MP: Steve Drake, the owner of Sorrel, invited me for dinner to talk about the head chef position, and from that dinner I could see his creativity and way of thinking in the dishes we were served, so I looked at it as a way of rounding out my culinary education. I’ve always taught myself a lot and absorbed things like a sponge, but his creative approach to food and flavour pairings was different to anything I’d done, so the biggest thing I’m taking away is that slightly different, more creative way of looking at food and creating combinations that surprise people but still feel approachable.
JP: From my side, I was completely blown away by the world of fine dining and tasting menus at Sorrel - the passion every single person had for delivering the experience. I became obsessed with the details. Every touchpoint, every detail, the artwork in the restaurant, the storytelling behind why things were chosen and how it all tied together. What Steve created at Sorrel was a team where everyone was completely on board with the same vision. That’s something I’d love to build for ourselves as we grow and eventually bring people into the team.
Do you see this as a scalable concept?
JP: I think that falls into the idea of evolution. We can dream bigger, and we probably will dream bigger, but what that looks like right now, I don’t know.
MP: Because we’re working as a two-person team focusing on our passion, what we’ll be doing will be very unique, and that exact feeling and experience wouldn’t necessarily transfer to a second place.