PEARLY COW, MARGATE Cooking over flames, but is it flaming good or flaming heck?

OOOOH theres a new place opening and it looks a bit flash!

PEARLY COW now there's two words not often put together! PEARLY COW? What could that mean? Oh I love to try and pick apart someone's mind! I'm not very good at it mind you, some people are beyond reasonable understanding.

Where is it? I hear you say, and that was my first question too. 16 Marine Drive, Google maps shows it outside Waverly House, so it's not that or Buoy and Oyster... Hmmm I read it has a terrace with stunning seaviews, if I'm not mistaken it's going to be in the Sands Hotel development. 

Clearly I know very little about this but there is much of my first impressions which there is to like.

The Sands Hotel in Margate was the trailblazer for others to follow. 

Margate was still a ruinous dump back in 2011, that sounds harsh but Margate has come a long way very quickly since then. 

The building was bought with the aid of a £500,000 government expansion scheme grant. The original plan was to create luxury apartments but we're swayed to create a hotel upon learning of the buildings history.

The Sands Hotel was a triumph with 20 guest rooms and a restaurant. It proved that there was a market for the well heeled customer even in a run down British seaside town.

It was with huge shock then that the owners sold it in June last year right before the prosperous summer season, with weddings cancelled and deposits returned. Must have been a really big  number to tempt them to sell, or possibly all was not as perfect as it seemed?

It was bought by a new company called no.16 MARGATE LTD and for over a year the building has been closed and covered shrouded in relative mystery.

Well it wasn't much of a mystery if you looked online, it's story and progress has been covered extensively.. should have opened in June 2023 though, they are late!

The company that now owns the building have a few hotels, one in Bath called no.15, one in York called no.1 and one in Brighton called no.124 so numbers are their thing, just not time keeping. 

Straight into their website then to discover that the number here is.... 16... No it isn't....it's no.42...has access from 2 roads so take your pick, but 42 is the bigger number right?

Number 42

This is the short bio from their website 

FOOD & DRINK

There is a lot happening in the food and drink department at No.42. A lot.

From the beach up, there's Field Trip – a daytime dedication to wholesomeness. Above that, there's Pearly Cow – a restaurant that specialises in wild freshness for lunch and dinner. On the same floor, there's a very cosy lounge bar that's hard to leave. And on the roof there's a bar serving cocktails, sunsets, snacks, and tunes.

So there it is. PEARLY COW is the restaurant within No.42. But there is loads more besides and that leaves me a dilemma, where do I start and where do I stop, but I started with the PEARLY COW so let's stick in the lane.

It's not open yet so all I have to go by is the hype and expectation. The website is wonderfully assured, silky smooth words and paragraphs, it's like wiping your arse with silk.

Straight to the business end then:

THE MENU 

(not all of it, just the headlines)

It says FIRE. That makes me horny. 

A celebration of everything we cook over our open flames grill....indeed.

The words wild freshness are intoxicating.. I wonder if wild means forraged or wild because they are wacky and far out man? 

Whatever it means this is peacocking at it's finest. Everything is on show.

However, It wears a mask. What lies behind it isn't for the faint hearted. The menu reads beautifully, the words leap from the plate like it's shitting a rainbow, but. 

I'm not sure Margate is ready for this rainbow. This isn't where you discover the pot of gold, you already need to have a pot of gold.

Start with The small plates. It's kind of a starter without having to commit to having a main meal if you don't want to.

But why not have a variety of dishes to share or a light bite? They all sound delicious.

The first appears very tempting indeed.

The words fillet steak leap into your subconscious like someone asking if you want a KFC when you are on a strict diet. You know you can't resist. £17? Hold on, oyster and caviar as well? That's too good to be true, unless... It's microscopic, like Ant Man Into The Quantum Realm small? It is tartare I shall hasten to add, so finely chopped raw steak. Intriguing nevertheless.

The average price of a small plate is about £13, so the price of a reasonable Sunday Lunch shall we say? Yeah that's about right. 

So you might be forgiven in thinking these would be great value, but don't make that mistake. These are not about quantity or substance, I would be surprised if these are little more than an amuse-bouch.

Skill. It does promise skill and technique.

The use of open flame cooking promises a delightful USP or a different dimension. 

Most likely in the quantum realm again! 

It's got to deliver bags of fire licked flavour to separate itself from everyone else, or it's experience in name only.

Sharing platters promises an indulgent treat for two, attention drawn to the Fruits de Mer and what self respecting top notch restaurant overlooking the sea wouldn't tap into that opportunity to delight customers with local produce from the sea that surrounds you. 

Let's first of all give them some slack as clearly they are using provenance wording from one of their other restaurants, we don't eat Cornish crabs around here!

£54, For a treat between two that price isn't too obscene? Depends. What do you get for that? 

Oysters for two, so a couple each? 

Dressed crab will be one between two.

Fire roasted prawns so must be those large Pacific prawns.. they look good on the plate, fill alot of space... 

Cockles and Mussels and sauce and obligatory charred lemon.

I'm also pretty good with numbers, especially when it comes to costing a plate of food..

Imagine sitting on the balcony here looking towards the harbour there is an unmissable and superb seafood stall. 

Well it's hardly a stall, you can enjoy oysters and champagne there if you wished, upon their tables and chairs as close to the sea as you can physically get without getting wet. 

I reckon you could pick everything on this Fruits de Mer plate up from there too and get plenty of change out of £20.. and that's a retailed price, the wholesaler costs the restaurant pays would be half that.. 

No real skill here either, it's an assembly of chilled pre-prepared food aside from the mussels and garlic butter dip, Oh and the charred lemon of course.

Cote de Boeuf. £85.

For those unsure this is a bone in rib cut and a splendid bit of cow it is too, and looks every bit like Fred Flintstones supper. 

I was in London's Covent Garden not so long ago and enjoyed a lovely meal at a French restaurant. We had the chateaubriand which again if you are not sure is the thick end of the fillet steak joint cut for two to share, pan seared and roasted to your pleasing. 

Fillet steak is the most expensive cut of meat on the cow and £60 was their price. I'm a little bemused by such a huge difference in price for a cheaper cut of steak.

The menu is ala Carte meaning it is constructed cleverly to give you the essence of the dish but witholding the items you might want like fries with your steak and offering them for an extra cost. Whilst it's nice to have options there are a couple of dishes which have major elements missing and I wonder how palettable they are to an unsuspecting customer.

Caesar salad is a dish on its own, but nothing really substantial about it. This one appears to only come with 3 elements - Romaine lettuce, Panchetta and Caesar dressing. ..one can only assume that it comes with croutons and a few other surprises. Anchovy is a classic feature but it's not worthy of a mention here, so don't hold your breath. If you want to add a bit of grilled chicken or prawn then that's a further £10.50 which is more than their cheapest small plate. £22.50 for a salad. 

Back to the Fruits de Mer, their souless assembly of seafood delights you can get across the road al fresco for a third of the price. Why not add a whole grilled lobster to that? £55 and that is a slightly discounted rate.

Whole grilled Lobster is sold by weight here with a pre cooked and within its shell weight between 1.1 and 1.4kg. The weight is multiplied at £6 for 100g. That is potentially £84 for one grilled Lobster. That's almost £50 more than what SLAB the fantastic restaurant just a few doors along who specialised in Lobster up until earlier this year .. their price was £35. For transparency SLAB is now THE MED. (same owners, targeting a more sustainable market)

I mentioned earlier that numbers are their thing and it would appear that when it comes to price point they like the biggest number they can get, who can blame them? 

Confidence in your product is key to success.

They have a well considered menu and I have no doubt that once completed no.42 will delight eager first responders through its doors. 

However knowing Margate as I do, there are only so many people willing or able to frequent a place which commands such a premium, and when you are rubbing shoulders with two other premium sited, equally pitched and skilled restaurants but charging more, then you better be flaming incredible.