High Dive, Margate: 'Critics everywhere should sit up and take note'
Some of the best Mexican food I've had in the UK
Margate operates in dog years - everything there seems to be happening about seven times as fast as in the rest of the UK. The 48 hours I was there is the equivalent of two weeks in Margate time - certainly long enough to get a feel for the place and an understanding of how quickly it is changing.
Just over ten years ago, Margate was like Morecambe; the Northern seaside town from which my dad’s side of the family hail. It was a grey and crumbling homage to the 1950s heyday of a British seaside town. Then the Turner Contemporary art gallery opened, and so the artists moved in and made it their own.
Ten years from now Margate will resemble Brighton; a vibrant vision of what seaside towns can become, esepcially a stone’s throw from London. As it stands at the moment, Margate is a tapestry that has been worn almost threadbare in places and yet is adorned with rich jewels in others.
The wave of gentrification over there is cresting at maximum speed. In the years to come residents will be lamenting the opening of coffee shops and wearing ‘make Margate shit again’ hats - but for now it is a beacon of opportunity and possibility. As a result of cheap rent, a bustling tourist season and being deemed ‘a la mode’, there are many fantastic places to eat in Margate. One of them is High Dive.
There are not, however, many fantastic places to eat on Margate high street. Lunchtime shoppers trooping between Boots, Card Factory and Palace Amusements have a choice of McDonalds, Greggs and Dallas Chicken.
But come evening, one of the most aesthetically pleasing restaurants in the UK flings open its shabby-chic door to serve Los Angeles-inspired Mexican food so innovative you’d be hard-pressed to find anything that compares this side of the Atlantic.
Food this good is the easiest to write about and yet I find myself almost not wanting to spoil it for you. I hope that, through whatever screen you’re reading this on, you’ll feel the powerful sense of urgency I am channelling through these keys to visit High Dive at your earliest convenience. It’s a four hour jaunt from Bristol. It’s worth every minute.
It started well with freshly fried tortilla halves and a plump pico de gallo (£8), a beautiful dichotomy of sweet tomatoes, tart citrus and expert seasoning. Salsa is a great litmus test of a Mexican restaurant. If you can’t make good salsa, no number of cadillac margaritas (£13) will soften my judgement.
The decision to order the entire menu will probably go down as one of the best I’ve ever made. There wasn’t a single dull note.
I discovered taquitos - cigar-like rolled crisp tacos - in Oaxaca earlier this year, but this was the first I’d had in the UK. Snacks don’t get much better than crisp tortilla filled with potato and cheese.
From there the highlights came thick and fast. A tower of crisp and generous chicken wings (£9.3) doused in michelada sauce. Hunks of courgette battered (£7.5) and fried to shattering perfection, ideal for swooping large swathes of tofu ranch. A prawn ceviche (£12) with cucumber and mini tortilla discs was awash with giant sweet prawns just tempered by a citrus sauce so refreshing you could - and we did - drink it.
But it ain’t over till it’s over, and it ain’t over until we’ve decided which dish was the best; a tough gig when the standard is this high. The crown goes to the crab tostada (£12) which was an exquisite composition of brown crab mousse, white crab salad and crisp shallots. The decision may have been in part influenced by our visit to the rather excellent but tiny crab museum a few hours prior - another Margate must-visit.
The other tostada was topped with a rare bavette (£12) which could have done with being sliced a little more delicately. Both the lamb taco (£11) and the mung bean taco (£10) rather heavily resembled burger patties, but both were a joy to eat and a testimony to High Dive’s commitment to innovating with Mexican flavours through a Los Angeles-tinted lens.
If High Dive were a book, it would easily be deserving of the New York Times bestseller list. The final chapter was a gut-busting banana split (£6.8) - bruléed caramel fruit hidden beneath chocolate encased ice cream, whipped cream and popping candy. Utter childhood joy on a plate.
The food isn’t the only thing to take in. High Dive is one of the most beautiful restaurants I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in. The fictional restaurant that I sometimes open in my imagination would look just like this. Even the toilet is stunning. It’s in the details - the 80’s brass bamboo cutlery thrifted from a car boot sale, the lamps, the vibrancy and contrast of the colours. The team behind this restaurant have got great taste across the board.
Critics everywhere should sit up and take note. High Dive is serving some of the best Mexican food I’ve had in the UK. If we had a High Dive in Bristol, I’d be booked back in three times over already.
Time in Margate moves fast, so don’t waste any getting to High Dive.
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
High Dive, 121 High Street, Margate, CT9 1JT
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