The Travel Critic

If there’s one thing worse than a big restaurant, it’s a big restaurant that thinks it’s small. You know the ones – open kitchen clatter, faux-distressed brick, a fig tree potted in a bin, and a menu longer than War and Peace rewritten by Jamie Oliver on coke. That’s not a dining room; it’s a cry for help.

Angela’s in Margate is the antithesis. It’s little. Properly little. Not “intimate” or “bijou” – it’s just… small. Like someone’s front room, if someone’s front room had a daily chalkboard menu, impeccable fish, and staff who talk to you like they want to marry you, not upsell you.

The menu – God bless it – is written in chalk. Because that’s all you need when you know what you’re doing. There’s no burger section. There’s no QR code. There’s no meat. There’s just fish. Wonderful, fresh, honest, beautifully prepared fish, with vegetables that taste like they’ve never seen the inside of a supermarket.

And crucially, there’s no clutter. No lavender-scented wankery, no statue of a Tuscan shepherd boy peeking from behind a yucca. Just clean walls, clean tables, and a dining room full of people who want to be there. Not because it’s been algorithmically recommended by some faceless app, but because it’s good. And word gets around.

Our waitress (who I’d follow into battle) recommended half the menu, casually, sincerely, like she’d eaten it all for lunch and was still thinking about it. We listened. We changed our orders. She was right. It was glorious. A gurnard dish so delicate it could have written poetry.

Angela’s knows what it is. A fish restaurant. A neighbourhood restaurant. A lovely, living, local place run by people who care. It exists because it should, not because someone needed a return on investment.

If I lived in Margate, I’d eat here every week. Possibly every day. I’d bring people I love here. I’d bring people I hate here, just to show them what they’re missing. Angela’s is the real deal. And in a world of noise, it sings.