The latest events in The Good Food Guide’s ‘Meet the Chef’ series have been taking place in Margate this week, bringing together two renowned, seafood-obsessed chefs: Nathan Outlaw of Outlaw's New Road in Port Isaac and Rob Cooper of Angela’s in Margate. The setting for their two fundraising feasts? The Perfect Place to Grow, a café and training kitchen on the site of Tracey Emin’s new TKE Studios. 100% of the money raised is going to the training kitchen initiative, which supports 18–24-year-olds not in education or work into sustainable, fulfilling employment.
‘The Perfect Place to Grow is exactly the sort of place that should be all over the country,’ says Nathan Outlaw. ‘A place supporting young people and giving them skills to help with a better future. I hope that I can pass on some excitement and everyone coming to eat can see what a fantastic place the café is.’
Named after a Tracey Emin artwork, The Perfect Place to Grow is the brainchild of three Margate residents: Lee Coad, owner of Angela’s and Dory’s, Harry Ryder, owner of Bottega Caruso, and Ani James, a trained youth worker. Among the strong sense of community in Margate’s independent hospitality scene, united by the challenges of Covid and running a business in a seaside town, conversations between Lee and Harry and their teams often led down the same route: how to support young people in Thanet?
According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of young people not in work, education or training is higher now than at any other time in the last decade, and Thanet has more than double the average rate of unemployment elsewhere in the UK. ‘We founded The Perfect Place to Grow to help address the very evident barriers young people are facing when trying to find employment opportunities in Thanet,’ Lee tells us. They joined forces and TPPTG began taking shape.
When Tracey Emin caught wind of their idea, she immediately offered her patronage and support, giving them free use of a renovated former morgue building on the site of TKE Studios in the Cliftonville area of town. With help from kitchen company Rational and fundraising events they were able to kit out a professional kitchen and dining space which would become the HQ for The Perfect Place to Grow. Here, Lee, Harry, Ani and a team of volunteers, offer hands-on hospitality training to young people, and a structured, supportive pathway to employment, equipping them with confidence, skills and real-world experiences.
Trainees might be referred by employability services to TPPTG to work on a volunteer basis, or come aboard on their internship programme. Locked out of the labour market for a complex range of reasons, TPPTG’s objective is to break down the barriers that prevent young people finding work, and offer an alternative to traditional models of education, nurturing the trainees for as long as they need (there’s no formal end-date to each trainee’s time at TPPTG).
‘Young people want to work!’ says co-founder Ani James. ‘They're bored, they feel really disconnected and don't know what to do. The Perfect Place to Grow offers a safe space to expand their network, make friends, develop soft skills and industry skills and feel a part of something. We get to know everyone so well and when their confidence is boosted and personalities start shining, you know they're becoming themselves, moving onto better things.’
One trainee describes what a difference it made to them: ‘Basically, other services didn’t do anything. The Perfect Place to Grow was different, we actually did stuff. And not just learning to cook, we got to go out and see places. People actually listened to me and cared about what I had to say.’
Connecting the prodigious culinary talent of the town with the urgent issues of disenfranchisement among vulnerable young people, Lee, Harry and Ani work tirelessly to cultivate a core team of volunteers, as well as bringing local guest chefs, butchers, baristas, and bakers into the fold, to mentor their trainees.
The training kitchen also depends on a steady supply of fresh produce. ‘It is vital that our learners understand where food comes from: the natural processes involved, the work required to grow it, and the importance of seasonal cycles and sustainable supply chains,’ Ani explains. They have partnered with award-winning young farmer Jack Scott to re-open an underused growing plot at Quex Park in Birchington-on-Sea, which now supplies vegetables for the teaching kitchen, supports Jack’s sustainable farming enterprise, and provides a therapeutic space for students, volunteers, and the wider community.
A day in the life of a trainee might involve planting seeds at the kitchen garden, a pasta-making workshop with Simona Di Dio of Bottega Caruso, front-of-house training in the café, assisting one of many high-profile guest chefs such as Will Devlin of The Small Holding, or catering for art gallery openings.
In the words of one intern: ‘I learnt that I’m capable of making new relationships with other people. Sometimes it’s as easy as starting a conversation. It’s not as difficult when we have a common goal – serving excellent food!’
In 2024, TPPTG supported 12 trainees into employment, and in that year those trainees cooked and served over 3,000 meals. Set up as a Community Interest Company, every penny of profit helps finance their work and make it viable for all involved, and traineeships are made possible by a continuous fundraising effort.
For the Good Food Guide members who attended the Nathan Outlaw x Rob Cooper dinners, it’s a unique opportunity to witness how culinary collaboration and a determination to foster change can make a difference to the lives of so many. If you missed out on the event, all is not lost. You can support TPPTG’s work in other ways. Check theperfectplacetogrow.org/whats-on to find out what’s coming up and how you can help.
Later this month sees an exciting development for the team. ‘Trainees benefit from a regular routine, so we are responding by opening the cafe with a modern British café menu, incorporating guest-chef influenced international dishes,’ Ani says. The cafe will be open Tuesday-Friday 9-4 from May 20th.
