Review

Angela's: Operation: Get Fat and Sassy — The Margate Mini Moon, Phase Two

I am not organised. When it comes to memory, my brain allots space to four things: 90s RnB music videos, Simpsons quotes, things I eat and vivid recollections of conversations with people in other people’s kitchens in the small hours, which creates a unique strain of ennui when meeting those people again who often have no memory of the encounter. Because of those last two, the name ‘Dory’s’ has been purring around my otherwise vacuous skull since planning the Margate Mini Moon.

Dory’s jingles with the kineticism of a good time. Tables jutting out into the pavement lined with punters chucking back oysters, high-definition small plates and English sparkling wine, it’s a middle-class checkpoint; one that promptly denies us entry because it’s, admittedly very obviously, fully booked. Closed for the following two days, by which time we’ll be slinging our hook, its sister restaurant Angela’s makes up the shortfall. But I also can’t help but feel as if Angela’s is always pitched as the alternative; the runner-up, always the bridesmaid and never the Dory’s.

Being perceived as a sub-optimal choice is something with which I feel a deeply-sewn affinity. Having been almost 17 stone with red (not ginger, there’s a difference) hair, chronic asthma, braces and an outward desire to learn at around 11 years old, I was the platonic ideal for schoolyard politics on a Darwinistic level. Being second choice was common in P.E. if there were two of us left to pick, only being the first choice when sports day came around and they needed an anchor for the Tug of War.

I’m fine. Honestly.

With a handful of tables inside and a table for two on the street, Angela’s is a relatively dinky thing compared to her sister. Tabletops made from recycled plastics to make Douglas McMaster well-up, Angela’s is telling you that what she lacks in stature physically, it makes up for ethically. Sure, the popular kids flock and flutter around Dory’s, but Angela’s will remember your name the morning after.

Proudly serving absolutely no meat on the menu, Angela’s is, as you might hope being so close to the source, fish-focused. Mussels with cider and garlic, mackerel with beetroot and kohlrabi, Margate mushrooms on toast and John Dory with crab baked beans, Angela's asserts an endearing blend of local, regional and creative pride, engaging both left and right lobes.

The scallops with courgette and basil has this Provençal lilt, helping to wring every drip of sun and coastal salinity from this reach of England. Simply mandolined yellow courgette is barely dressed, attempting to cover the modesty of the scallops beneath, each with a depth of butter-aided crust that they deserve but absolutely do not always get. The rest of the courgette not sacrificed to the mandolin is puréed with cream, but its lack of seasoning a real hoedown arm swinging ‘aw, shucks’ moment.

The smoked prawns with aioli are a reflex order. Each a plump chrysalis with a kind of Walkers Smoky Bacon Crisps syntheticness, they go down a treat. Am I supposed to peel them? I don’t know. I definitely didn’t. I was gutted, however, to find almost no garlic in the aioli which was more of a glowing mayonnaise.

A regular, the lady next to us in her winter years is having the kind of lunch I aspire to at that stage of life. On her tod with nothing but a plate of Dover sole, pooled in a sauce of roasted tomatoes and scattered with torn basil; the collagen, jammy acids and olive oil emulsifying into a defacto bisque. Following a bowl of halved grilled potatoes dripping profusely with butter plonking onto her table, Our Lady firmly requests a spoon in the same measured tone a surgeon does a compress or scalpel.

Deftly filleting, she is demure. She is mindful. With a practised economy of motion, a quarter-turn and a scooping ‘pop’ remove the cheek just as skillfully. Just as Diner Envy begins to seep in, our unit of monkfish arrives.

Billed as coming with‘chorizo’,I had panicked visions of plant-based substitutes; coagulations of paprika that ironically justify killing. But actually, Angela’s have taken the cheek, cured it with paprika and crumbled over the tail cooked on the bone; it’s an admirable way of maximising such a prized piece.

Scattered with capers, a rough chop of parsley and clams that, like the bruiser they adorn, have just cooked the moment they hit the table, everything is either doused with or sculling in paprika-tinted butter. Cooked on their raging little barbecue, it’s wreathed in smoke, captured in the gnarled edges. Activating the Neanderthal in me, gnawing it clean is as impulsive as it is natural.

A crumble recalibrated for summer, Angela’s consists of pristine mulberries under a shale of righteously buttery almond crumble over cool crème anglaise, stained with the blood of fallen, possibly due to being less sightly, mulberries. It’s got Big Bakewell Energy, configured into something soothingly homespun, with a little coin-purse toss of Wealthy Auntcore© in there, too. (As if you thought I wouldn’t get that in here somewhere. They’ve even got Aesop in the loos, so if that won’t vindicate me, I don’t know what will).

Angela’s also has other tables in a courtyard-style space across the road, shared by surrounding bars and restaurants. Shaded by an almost interlocking series of parasols, it’s reminiscent of those squares in Europe where you find yourself grumbling about the lack of such things in the UK, despite it being completely understandable, meteorologically.

The kitchen looks more like a DJ booth presiding over a modest turnout of punters, occasionally asking others to repeat themselves due to being engrossed in their plates, some shrugging as if to say “Yeah not now mate, I’ve got a mouth full of crab beans.” It’s not been an onslaught of bangers, but some dishes have had my bottom jaw euphorically swinging for my eyelids which, on balance, is a good time.

From the white exterior and sensible font, there’s a barefaced simplicity to Angela’s which isn’t just something that gets me wheezing excitedly but feels conducive to great fish and seafood cookery. So as ever, sod the popular kids — it’s the quiet ones you need to look out for.

Also, I wasn’t lying by the way:

Built like a Scotch egg, circa 1999