Broadstairs tells stories of many times: a chapel built in 1350, smuggling tunnels from the 1700s, Charles Dickens’ holiday home in the 1850s and 60s. Morelli’s is both an ice cream parlour and a museum, its candyfloss pink interior untouched since 1957.
On the front there is the Tartar Frigate, a flint-built pub some 300-or-so years old, which looks out over the harbour and its bobbing boats. It used to be a sailors’ place. Now, instead of stubbled men with watery eyes, the place fills with the town, both its locals and its tourists.
The old building seems to sway when the bands come in and the crowd dances, every Friday and Sunday, and on Wednesdays folk players come down to jam. The pints are the usual — Guinness, Doombar, Gadd’s, the local beer — but the food is notably good, mostly seafood and fresh fish. There is a pool table, often territorially claimed by teenagers. The Frigate is that noble thing, a pub truly for anyone, for everyone.
