Sargasso, Stone Pier, Margate CT9 1AP

Sargasso: Operation: Get Fat and Sassy — The Margate Mini Moon, Phase One

Whilst I’m not a man of faith, the degree of guilt I’m able to summon as a tourist is Catholic. Born at a very young age, I spent a lot of time in the depressed seaside towns of Pembrokeshire and, even when I was in the market for a new cap gun, felt like a bit of a Lord throwing down a crisp new fiver in the charity shops. Whether it’s the decay of fishing industries or seasonal tourism because of it, UK seaside towns often feel infused with a melancholy about which philosophising feels akin to comforting a person to whom you’ve steadily made ill over the years.

Suitably, then, The Editor and I are in Margate to gorge, following months of strict(ish) dieting for the sake of our wedding garb. Now that’s over, Operation: Get Fat and Sassy, is in full swing. Highly recommended, Margate appears to be a more recent victim of London Flight where the locals grin and bear it with the sort of black humour a local militia mocks an occupying force.

Sargasso, presumably named after the ocean and not necessarily the seaweed, is the sister of East London restaurant Brawn and is located on the elbow of the arm that is Stone Pier, the bright signage and barrel outside contrive a sort of dockyard saloon. Inside is a familiar sight of many wine bars; blackboard menus, clutches of blackened frigatelli winding their way to tables, orange wine and the only source of ASMR that does it for me: the damp clack of tumbling mussels.

To its credit, Sargasso has successfully managed to implant the sultry fizz of Brawn, something amplified in such a comparatively small, funnelled space. An American lady sits at the bar just reading a book, only putting it down to slag off Californian wine and sip the effusive recommendation made by the barman. Elsewhere, busy hands circle and descend like gulls between dewy bottles onto plates. Suddenly the ‘Cheers’ music seeps in among the white noise of a good time; a place where nobody knows your name but the booking system because who cares? You’re on a whistlestop tour of Margate.

The menu has moments of Wealthy Auntcore© energy: A plate of neatly oblong Panisse the dimensions of steak cut chips, with harissa that’s bitter with blitzed seed, refreshing like the bite of a gin and tonic. There’s also a Borlotti, tomato and Calabrian tuna salad, as well as an absolute unit of a dessert, which we’ll get onto.

The bread is a great bit of baking because it reminds me of William Rees’ (one of the best chefs in the country) many past loaves; a damp, elastic crumb with a bittersweet bobbled Kevlar crust, served with a coin of butter that tells you to enjoy it rather than ration.

I would've thought that being close to the water helps the Natoora mafia in this neck of the woods to streamline their speedboat smuggler runs, but no. The tomatoes are more or less just aesthetic, except for a couple that appear to have been semi-roasted. The Borlotti beans are slightly undercooked with a plump chalkiness to them rather than the pops of velvet they should be. The tuna is satisfyingly chunky, but that’s it.

The fillet of smoked eel was a silly choice because it's the same vac-packed fillet you get everywhere, with a notably toothless horseradish cream alongside a mandolined fennel and apple salad. It’s classic flavours but within that, nothing exceptional.

Now, let me clasp you by your shirt collar, or hoodie if that’s how you choose to live your life, and pull you close to the humidity of my words: order the black pudding. It’s not just blood and fat, but a fibrous thatch of the flesh, too which I haven’t had since Whole Beast dipped their toe in brunch, restoring my faith in the otherwise rightfully maligned mealtime ever since. Slices of peach cooked into capitulation slump among the supple snap of green beans, flecked with parsley and a fine dice of translucent shallots.

Unless it’s clinging to the beans on a macro-level, I can’t see the watercress that’s meant to be here. Instead, I’m left pining for some coated in a thick mustard dressing, like the Factor 50-slicked chicory and crispy pig skin salad from The Clifton (coincidentally, William Rees’s latest place of work, if you ever feel like doxxing him, respectfully). It would make this one of the best dishes I’ve had all year.

The crispy pig skin salad at The Clifton, Bristol, for your records

A plate of slip sole is mottled with sumac, finished with yet more parsley and pooled in olive oil. It’s more or less the platonic ideal; skillfully cooked and served simply because of it. My knife rattling as it skims between the bones and flesh before sighing apart and flopping in one piece to the other side, removing the bones is satisfying, like freeing a rope ladder from fresh clay.

Sargasso’s chubby quenelle of dark chocolate with a spine of sea salt is lubed-up more than a WWE Royal Rumble and is a direct import from Brawn. It’s so rich that it almost winds you, save for the olive oil which, although delicious, functions like KY jelly. Luckily, they’re also doing a milk soft serve with peach compote at the bottom and finished with chopped pecans and pistachios; it’s an intellectual’s Knickerbocker Glory and you’d better believe I’m alternating spoonfuls of this with the Chocolate Orb of Death.

The visit here feels like a level on Stanley’s Parable; I could’ve sworn I’d just left London only to be thrown back in by a revolving door. Sargasso has some brilliant dishes and I’m gutted to not have made it in time for their squid sarnie which looked like someone had used tempura to capture The Kraken. However, Sargasso also feels like a bolt-hole within a bolt-hole, for Londoners go who don’t want to admit homesickness or defeat in a portfolio acquisition.

With much of Hipsterism characterised as role-playing a meek lifestyle, secure in the knowledge of inheritance, it makes me wonder how Sargasso was received locally. But, if it’s generating income by pulling in twats like me, I’ve clearly taken the bait — hook, line and sinker.