The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
No42 by Guesthouse Raising the bar in Margate
Rooftop cocktails, spelt risotto, vinyl records and a spa make this seaside hotel a big hit with Mark C O’Flaherty
A stay at the recently opened No42 Margate suggests we have turned a corner in the debate about the once-desolate seaside town. The whole vibe in Margate has been about flourishing art cliques, happenings, dive bars, and sinking banana boulevardiers at the Glass Jar, which looks out at the 1920s monolith spelling “LIDO” on each side, topped with what looks like a giant ruby. But the vibe has also been about curry club and pints at the Mechanical Elephant run by Wetherspoons – so No42 has raised the bar in price if nothing else.
If you had told me 10 years ago that there would one day be a spa in Margate (the hotel’s basement set of treatment rooms) offering £95 massages, I would have laughed in your face. OK, so that is still cheaper than London prices, and my back massage followed by a facial (at the end of which you receive a vial of oil and a QR code to recreate the soundtrack to your treatment at home) was very good indeed. But this is all still a fairly surprising offering for Thanet, Kent.
Then there is the hotel restaurant, the Pearly Cow. The beef tartare is a small plate for £17, but it is nice. A ribeye steak costs £34, and a monkfish tail for two an ambitious £68. Everything I had was at the very least absolutely fine, apart from the parmesan spelt risotto and the beef fat chips – both outlandishly delicious.
However, £8 for six chips is veering into “God loves a trier” territory. And that ribeye doesn’t come with any side dishes as standard. The dining room is gorgeous, mind, but staff repeatedly kept a door open with an ugly view to behind the scenes, and the service was chaotic in the way you would expect when you keep hearing the phrase “Sorry, it’s my first day”.
All that grumbling aside, everything else at the hotel was impressive during my visit. Local artists, ceramicists, and so on, have been commissioned for the interiors, and the whole place feels like serious fortunes were spent on it. Refreshingly, despite being part of a mini chain, No42 Margate looks like a one-off.
Some particularly memorable details: the gold lettering on glass panordered els by signwriter Mia Pollak, whose work is omnipresent in town, and a “pantry” with free jars of sweets on the second floor. The rooftop at sunset is also a beauty – opt for the sage-based cocktail with tequila, lemon, apricot and vetiver. Lush. The space can be enclosed off-season, so the view is always available, even in the darkest
TS Eliot days of winter (he wrote The Waste Land in Margate).
Rooms feel like suites, some with little balconies overlooking the sea, and each has a record player and a set of vinyl. I usually never bother, but the records in my room, “curated by local record shop Ghost Papa”, included Lou Reed’s New York, which I love.
Every inch of my room had been worked – from the freehand artwork that looked like ribbons unfurling behind the headboard, to the shape of the mirrors and the strange alien-looking, heavy plaster artwork that served as a chandelier. Gold stars for whoever the Steamery clothes steamers and opted for a shower door that swivels at its mid-point, so it neither inhibits movement in the shower nor takes up unnecessary space in the bathroom itself. Chic and smart.
Over breakfast (which felt, again, a little ambitious at £20 for a pastry followed by something with eggs on toast), it was clear to me just how busy the hotel was. And all the friends I had dinner with were telling me the DFL (Down from London) crowd is no longer seasonal, but year-round.
Who would ever have guessed that one of the sketchiest, saddest seaside towns in the country could have turned into a Hamptons for Hackneyites? But here we are. And I guess I am here increasingly often.
Doubles from £155, not including breakfast. There is one accessible room.