As summer looms, and with it the urge to stampede towards the edges of Britain in search of paddling opportunities, I proffer another coastal dining idea: Willy’s in Margate – and, yes, that name does have about it something of the naughty seaside postcard. Tucked away in the back of Margate House hotel on Dalby Square, a few minutes’ walk from the seafront, Willy’s is a blur of frilly red-and-pink seaside adorableness. It’s cool, cute and jovial, with pork scratchings and apple chutney on the menu, as well as black pudding scotch eggs, sticky toffee pudding and Sunday lunches of beef rump and baked cauliflower cheese. This menu is short, intentional and hearty, rather than airy-fairy, and it chortles in the face of small plates.
But, for the foodie/sippy crowd, the signifiers are all here: there’s a paper plane and a penicillin on the cocktail menu, throwbacks to New York’s iconic Milk and Honey bar. There are three Olivier Pithon natural wines from Roussillon on the short list, which as a whole leans towards natural and low-intervention bottles from France, Spain and Italy. Most tellingly, the chef is Mark O’Brien, who worked with Robin Gill at the Dairy in London and at Samphire in nearby Whitstable before making this little nook his home, and who earlier this year reached the final three of MasterChef: The Professionals. Willy’s is clearly run by a team that knows about nice things.
The dining room itself is snug and cosseting, like a little womb – or at least like a womb that serves snacks and starters of devils on horseback, coronation mussels with almond chilli oil, and roast courgette salad with hazelnut and basil, and mains that include braised beef rib with leek and barley risotto and lovage sauce, roast chicken breast with mushroom and tarragon sauce, and Willy’s sausage and mash. Plant-leaning folk are looked after by the likes of spiced cauliflower with braised lentils and celeriac remoulade, broccoli with miso dressing and toasted hazelnuts, and hispi salad with caesar sauce and peanuts.
Margate House itself opened in 2023, after a full restoration of a derelict building undertaken by owner Will Jenkins and interior designer Charlee Allan Quinton. I live in fear of the soulless, all-fur-coat-and-no-knickers “trendy hotel”. Five minutes into most boutique stays, I’ve decided I’d much rather be at a Premier Inn, where at least the misery is familiar and the coffee table isn’t topped with a large book about Frida Kahlo. Margate House is not this, though. For one thing, there’s some actual hospitality going on here, and this now loved hulk of a house has plenty of character despite all the money that’s been spent on it. There’s a big, rambling boho drawing room where you can take coffee and a bar where you can enjoy a Willy’s cosmo or a Long Island iced tea. And on this particular spring Saturday, before tourist season has kicked in properly, Willy’s feels as if it has already made a name for itself locally as a special-occasion kind of place – there were multiple birthdays and get-togethers going on, all amply catered for by the wonderful, warm staff.
We popped in just for a snoop, really, and with no plans to eat. But it wasn’t long before we succumbed to thick slices of Guinness soda bread with whipped butter – so fresh, so warm; a gateway drug, if you will – and beef rump tartare with caper dressing and dripping toast: nicely chopped, deftly seasoned, good acidity. Is there any more nostalgic a taste than dripping toast, which is essentially fried bread? Events then took over, and we followed up with a delightful main of chalk stream trout with cavolo nero in a puddle of seaweed butter sauce. The dessert list is brief but pleasing, and includes that sticky toffee pudding, which comes with salted toffee sauce and stem ginger ice-cream, rhubarb crumble and earl grey panna cotta with rosemary shortbread.
Willy’s main issue right now is that the dining room has only 25 seats, and there are nine rooms of paying hotel guests, who will all clearly want to eat here. If you’re a passing chancer, as we were, do not take the risk and book in advance. If I were a resident – a bit like the Major in Fawlty Towers – I’d be tempted to hunker down, phone off, with a thick Liz Taylor biography and while away the days eating Guinness bread and devils on horseback, and straying out only for the pies at the Wellington, which I reviewed glowingly earlier this year, and, obviously, Friday drag nights and rounds of flaming slippery nipples at Margate Beach Club. Mainly, though, I’d stay in bed and plead for room-service rhubarb crumble, because Willy’s really is a whole lot of wonderful.
Willy’s Margate House, 6 Dalby Square, Margate, Kent, 07763 975042. Open Thurs-Fri dinner only, 5-9pm; Sat noon-3pm and 5-9pm; Sun noon-5pm. From about £40 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service
