Category: Out door seating

Foliage – St Lawrence, Ramsgate

The Foliage Cafe opened a few years ago and I’d never managed a visit until now as St Lawrence High Street is a bit off my beaten track. However I have to say that it’s definitely what I would call a “Destination Cafe”, that is somewhere I would now go out of my way to visit, it’s an absolute gem. We went on a Tuesday afternoon expecting it to be empty, it wasn’t. There was a steady stream of customers and I can understand why, excellent service, really good coffee and seriously good cakes are just some of the reasons to visit. It also has a lovely atmosphere based as it is inside a very attractive little Garden Centre and if the weather is nice you can also sit outside in the pretty garden area at the back.

The Cafe is licensed and there’s an interesting range of Cocktails on the menu (they even run Cocktail making classes). They’ve started doing Cheese & Charcuterie boards as well and have fairly regular Live Music evenings.

Foliage is actually only a few minutes walk from Ramsgate Station and Ellington Park, so if you’re in the area it’s so worth making the detour.

 

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Frog and Scot – Deal

The Frog and Scot is a popular small plates venue in Deal, so it’s best to book your table a few weeks in advance.  The bookings are timed for 1 hour 30 minute slots, which means you need to order all the small plates you want in one go (they’ll come out of the Kitchen in stages as they are prepared). It’s not really practical to order extra small plates if you find there are some dishes you especially like or if you want more than originally ordered.

Three Small plates per person is recommended.

We started with one of the bar snacks, some tasty ‘Cantabrian anchovies, tomato concasse, pickled garlic’ and ordered seven small plates for three people.

The quality of the dishes varied quite a bit on our visit. The stand out dish for me was the ‘Gnocco, burnt red pepper aioli, parmesan’. The ‘Bayonne ham croquettes, green romesco, basil’ and the ‘New potatoes, coronation mayo, coriander, pickled shallot’ were very tasty too. The ‘local heritage tomato carpaccio’ and ‘Trout tartare, kohlrabi, cherry, ponzu’ were fine, but the ‘Courgette ribbons, mint, pistachio, buttermilk’ and the ‘Burrata, charred peach, basil, toast’ were not so successful.

Time slot bookings are a bit of a pain if you’re looking to have a relaxing meal, ideally I’d have liked to have had time to order dessert and perhaps try one of their cocktails, but as we only had 15 mins minutes left in our time slot and rather than rush our dessert, we decided to just get our bill and have Cocktails elsewhere.

Our meal with a bottle of wine was about £40 per person.

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Le Pinardier – Deal

Le Pinardier in Deal High Street is a great place to chill if you’re into wine and cheese. It’s a Wine Shop/Bar with a fabulous selection of wines (mostly French).  There are several tables in the shop area and a few outside. We took refuge from the baking sun and grabbed a table inside on our visit. We ordered a cheese board (Comté, Brie & Camembert) and a bottle of Vouvray from the extensive wine list.  It wasn’t very busy, so we had excellent service and stayed for an hour or so, happily people watching.

Definitely recommend this place if you’re visiting Deal.

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Njord : Scandi Style – Pegwell

I’ve wanted to try out Njord for a while now, I mean a Scandi style place overlooking Pegwell Bay is so intriguing. So we headed out on a lovely sunny day (it’s only a few minutes away from Ramsgate by car or bus) and about a 40 mins walk if you’re feeling energetic!

Njord is in a great location on the edge off the Pegwell Bay nature reserve, it’s rather lovely inside, with a mix of comfy lounge style seating & coffee tables, dining tables with bench seating and bar stools at the window overlooking the bay. There is also some outside seating and lots of bike racks for cyclists.

The breakfast/brunch menu is mainly muffin, sourdough & croissant based dishes. We rather fancied the less conventional breakfast of Cochon Pulled Pork with Sundried Tomato & Chorizo Tapanata and Poached Kentish Free Range Eggs on a toasted English Muffin with Hollandaise sauce & chilli flakes. However they’d ran out of pork and were doing a pulled Chicken recipe instead, so we ordered that and Americano Coffees. The Coffees were served quickly and were excellent, I even had some left when the breakfast muffins arrived, the pulled chicken muffins tasted as good as they looked too, nicely spiced from the Tapanata and very filling.

Njord is also a Bar with an excellent drinks menu, lots of different brands of rum and gin is always a good sign. They also serve a few cocktails to enhance your breakfast/brunch experience.

The cakes at the Bar looked really good as well, they’re from the Beardy Baker in Canterbury, so I’ll certainly be back to try those.

Attractions in the area include the aforementioned Pegwell Bay nature reserve and the Viking Ship Hugin, which is a great photo opportunity and I guess sort of in keeping with the Scandi style at Njord.

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Vincent’s – Ramsgate

Vincent’s is a gem of a cafe in Ramsgate, one you would struggle to find without local knowledge. It’s located in Spencer Square in the little hut overlooking the Tennis Courts, I didn’t even realize that it had inside seating, but it does and it’s surprisingly spacious. It’s a friendly place serving good Coffee and homemade Cakes. The outside seating is on both sides of the hut, so you can also sit overlooking the rather stunning Vincent van Gogh sculpture.

Spencer Square leads into Addington Street where you will find some interesting independent shops, see the Addington Street section of the Ramsgate Shopping Guide for details.

Vincent’s is also located at the start point for the Vincent van Gogh self guided walking trail.

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Forts – don’t tell everyone

Like most food bloggers we write posts to tell readers about the places we find because we want to share the experience, especially if the restaurant or cafe is a good one. Sometimes though you find these amazing places in the most unlikely of areas that are just so good that you are conflicted – “If too many people get to know about how good it is, we might not be able to get a table”. However praise where praise is due. Forts is pretty special.  We first passed it on a Winters day when it was closed and looking more shabby than chic. The surrounding area was particularly run down and the streets were full of litter, it looked grim.   Cliftonville needs a very sunny day indeed to look anything close to good. So finally a few months later after a visit to the nearby farmers market we thought we would see what all the fuss was about (lots of people we follow on Twitter etc had spoken very highly of this unassuming cafe).

Even with its Formica tables and the best of British sauces and condiments taking center stage, it’s very much a foodie enclave. I would be very surprised if any of its customers had just wandered in expecting a bog standard Full English All Day Breakfast.  The menu changes regularly and does include the ubiquitous Full English along with several brunch type dishes. We ordered the Mackerel with Bubble and Squeak and the Scrambled Eggs with spicy Brindisa Chorizo. Both were fabulous dishes with the quality of the cooking and the ingredients shining through. We also treated ourselves to some Rhubarb Spritzers which were delicious and very refreshing.  Normally we wouldn’t order desserts for brunch but there is something about the place that encourages you to try more, so we had some of their lovely creamy stem ginger ice cream.

I suspect we could have had anything on the menu and loved it. The next table ordered burgers and when they arrived they looked amazing. Here’s hoping we can still get a table the next time we’re in the area!

UPDATE – September 2016 :  Forts has been sold and will be re-opening under new management.

UPDATE – December 2019 : Forts is now Closed 🙁

UPDATE – Under New Management

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