We've found a contender in Margate....

I have to admit that I am typing this with a great deal of care. Quite simply, early on during our two week break, a trip to our neighboring town (Margate) was decided upon as we had heard whispers of an ice cream parlour that had 'potential'. We had walked passed this cafe numerous times over the last year since its opening and have often thought that we should visit. As we were on holiday, why not now!

Melt is a wonderful looking store, in keeping with the feeling of the building it is attached to (the new Sands Hotel). It is a modern looking ice cream cafe but with a few gentle throwbacks to artdeco parlours of the past, specializing in quality, in house made Gelato, using top quality locally sourced ingredients. From the moment we entered the room and took a seat in the window we knew we were in for a treat.

The display counter looks spectacular with 18 flavours of ice creams and sorbets begging to be tried. The prices are at the higher end of the scale (£2.50 single) but the portions could really be described as ladles rather than scoops (THEY'RE HUGE!).

We decided to go for a sundae (design your own). With so many unique and wonderful flavours all looking mouth-wateringly good we had one heck of a challenge to narrow down our options. So, to give us the best chance of creating a good combination the very kind lady behind the counter let us try a few spoon fulls of various flavours prior to making our decision (lovely customer service). In the end we choose a 3 scoop sundae with salted caramel, toffee popcorn and mint choc chip with white chocolate sauce and toasted pecans on top. This came out at £6 for what was a very large sundae (again I reiterate....LADLES OF ICE CREAM!)

When we visited it was a gorgeous sunny day and there were several customers as well as ourselves. When we arrived the one member of staff was busily serving coffee and ice cream to some customers outside, but she greeted us with a smile, apologised and said she'd be with us soon. She then continued with what she was doing while periodically exchanging a few words with us, letting us know she'd not forgotten us! She was genuinely lovely and clearly knew the meaning of good customer service - she even let us take a sneaky picture of their ice cream machine!

The only downside to our Melt experience was that there's not a huge amount of seating in the cafe itself (although what they do have is gorgeous and super comfortable with big window seat style sofas and comfy chairs), and as far as we could see, no toilet. This really isn't too much of an issue, though, as it's just up the road from the Turner Contemporary, which has public toilets.

Basically, we're going to go back again and again and are already looking for an excuse to go back and try some more flavour's, as they've just announced their new specials; Baileys & Chocolate ice cream and Gin & Tonic sorbet! Amazing! We've now been to melt twice as we couldn't stay away and wanted to make sure that the ice cream was as good as we thought it was (any excuse!). GOOD NEWS! it was! We just shared one scoop (£2.50 - giant ladle again though, the whole tub was full :-). We had the rather unusual flavour of Pear ice cream.....verdict......it was stunning.

This is the first time that we've done this, but we really feel that Melt deserves full marks for both the experience and the gorgeous ice cream.

For the experience we give Melt 

For the ice cream

If you're local to Thanet, follow Melt on Facebook to keep up with their specials and special offers!