Brighton serves up two more enjoyable eateries

Beets with goat's cheese

If The Salt Room and Petit Pois were the runaway winners of the culinary side of last week’s working trip to Brighton, two more eateries also had things to recommend them.

Tuesday saw our team dinner, which often flounders on the food front – not least because such affairs are largely about the socialising.

This time, one of our number had booked for the Copper Clam on the seafront, another of the town’s new eateries.

Temporarily faced by hoardings as the refurbishment and redevelopment of the seafront continues, we were shown to a very nice upstairs room that had been set for our group.

Cod in a buttery, sweet sauce 

However, having spent all day in a darkened conference centre, being outside was absolutely key – not least in hot weather.

The staff dealt with this change from our booking with alacrity and good humour, and we sat down outside with our first drinks.

While imbibing a very pleasant rosé, we enjoyed whatever we’d pre-ordered on a very good deal.

In my case, it was a prawn cocktail to start, with serious prawns rather than the pink tiddlers sort you’d usually expect in this retro dish.

And no avocado in sight.

As only a slight aside, I used to like avocado – and I know how to de-stone one without giving myself an injury – but in recent years I’ve found them too sweet. Perhaps the decline in my liking has a direct relationship to how hip they have become?

Wine glass; chilled wine

Anyway, back to The Copper Clam.

Everyone had opted for sea bass to follow – and it is indicative of the quality of the kitchen, that over a dozen people could be served such a dish at the same time and without quality being compromised.

This was decent fish, well cooked – moist and tasty – and the right sort of portion for an evening where the socialising was the main thing (and hence the reason for no photos).

The staff are very friendly – and our waiter was particularly deft at spotting an empty win bottle that might need replacing.

Find out more at thecopperclam.com and on Twitter at ‪@TheCopperClam.

Sea bass and salad

Twenty four hours later, in need of a quieter experience, we decided to try the bistro at Hotel du Vin on Ship Street.

Revamped last autumn and pulling in appreciative noises, we got a table outside in the courtyard – a pleasantly peaceful environment that felt as though it were miles from the hubbub of the promenade that was, in fact, just a few metres away.

After enjoying a glass of Nyetimber – an interesting English fizz – it was time to see what the food was like.

First up for me was salt-baked beetroot with whipped goat’s cheese, sumac, Greek yogurt and Melba toast.

Cheesecake

Looking beautiful, it had plenty going for it. The beet was warm and tender, while the other ingredients lent various degrees of sharpness to the dish.

The Other Half had ordered soft-boiled duck egg with asparagus soldiers, which came on a wooden block that had clearly been designed for just such a dish, with once large dimple to hold the egg and a smaller one for the salt.

It was apparently very tasty – and for once, the slightly fussy way of serving it worked.

Most of the time, simple plates are more than adequate – even if that goes against the current fad for presentation demanding all sorts of ‘quirky’ alternatives to plates, which add absolutely nothing to the food.

Amaretto over ice

Next up for me was butter-poached cod with lyonnaise potatoes, smoked salmon and a hispi cabbage sauce – enough sauce, indeed, that it was served in a bowl.

A very sweet, rich dish, the cod was moist and flaked beautifully.

The Other Half opted for more sea bass – this time, with a panzanella salad and nasturtium pesto.

I finished with a lime cheesecake with meringue and dice of elderflower jelly, while The Other Half settled for ice cream.

The service was very pleasant, although we had quite a wait for dessert. But the setting made that bearable – and even allowed for a touch of dinnertime macro still life photography.

This is good food, well presented and served in a very pleasant setting.

Altogether, another welcome addition to a growing list of decent eateries in this south coast town.

To find out more, visit Hotel du Vin and Bistro.

Petit Pois – a new Brighton culinary star is rising

Frogs' legs

If The Salt Room gave us a superb dinner last Sunday, our first meal in Brighton during this particular tour of duty had come 24 hours earlier at Al Fresco.

The menu at this Brighton legend has been modernised and lightened, which is all to the good, and while not without flaws – including, but not limited to, my bugbear of OTT portion sizes – they gained our custom essentially because of rudeness elsewhere.

Having only just arrived and got organised, we’d thought to go and have fish and chips on the prom. Now The Regency may be another local legend, but that’s primarily because it’s not as bad as most excuses for fish and chips that are served on England’s south coast.

Stuffed vegetables

It simply cannot compare with what we ate in Scarborough in 2001 or even the German ode to “a great British tradition” that we consumed with relish in Travemünde in 2014, yet it clearly suffers from a vast dose of arrogance.

On Saturday, it was rammed, so we asked the maître d’ if he had space.

Clearly channelling the rudest French waiter stereotype that he could muster, he enquired whether we had a reservation (who books for a chippy?) then scoffed and pointed us to a large queue outside a side door where “the naughty boys” had to wait.

Suffice it to say, he didn’t see a penny of our money during the week.

Ice cream and sorbet

But thankfully, we managed to wrench ourselves east of West Street, taking us beyond our usual patch and his rudeness.

On Monday night, on the back of a colleague’s recommendation, we booked for Petit Pois on Ship Street, a new French tapas eatery that had only been open for eight days.

We picked a selection of dishes between the two of us.

To a bowl of olives and a plate of bread and very nice butter, with tapenade and aîoli, we added salt cod fritters with a spicy sauce; frogs’ leg goujons with a garlic and parsley butter; chips and a béarnaise sauce; duck breast with celeriac dauphinoise, and little stuffed vegetables with a tomato sauce.

Olives

The frog was superb – delicate and so moist. If you haven’t eaten frog, the taste is as little like a sort of gamey chicken.

The salt cod fritters were also excellent – light and moist.

The courgettes, peppers and small onions, stuffed with a delicate mushroom and herb mixture, were superb.

The duck breast was lovely – properly pink with delightfully crisp skin – while the celeriac dauphinoise was quite simply divine.

The Other Half finished with a café gourmand; I opted for a combination of vanilla ice cream with blood orange sorbet.

Halibut

Oh, this was very good indeed.

The cooking is excellent; the ingredients fresh and of high quality.

There is a nice wine list – no telephone directory, but some very good and interesting choices.

Service is friendly and knowledgeable; décor is simple, modern and clean, yet warm and very pleasant.

So much was this all the case that, on Thursday evening, wandering along the seafront in the duck, in search of food after a reception, we suddenly thought: ‘why eat something for the sake of it down here when we could nip up the steps and go back to Petit Pois if it’s open?’

We did – it was open and we enjoyed it every bit as much the second time around.

Snails

We partook once more of those very good salt cod fritters, also opting for excellent snails that were far more than an excuse to consume copious amounts of butter, garlic and parsley.

Then there was a halibut dish that came with potato duchesse, broccoli stems and a seaweed hollandaise.

A tarte fine of tomatoes, courgette, aubergine and rocket gave us a very pleasant side of vegetable and we welcomed more of the bread.

I finished with a trio of crèmes brulées – that’s right: three delightful mini brulées – and mini, mini madeleines, while The Other Half had a tarte tatin.

Brulées

Petit Pois is very new, but goodness, it’s also very good and is, unsurprisingly, already picking up a very good buzz.

On the basis of this visit, it deserves to become another Brighton legend.

And finding a new – and not just to me – eatery of such quality in Brighton gives me renewed hope in the state of British food.

Petit Pois is also open for lunch, from noon until 3pm, with the lunchtime set menu costing £9.50 for two courses and £13.50 for three.

To find out more – and to salivate over the menus – visit petitpoisbrighton.co.uk. It’s also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PetitPoisBrighton/.

The Salt Room ticks all the boxes again

Raw scallop starter

Extraordinary weather on the south coast ensured that dusk on Sunday evening was a beautiful sight to behold, with sky hues that were redolent of the Mediterranean, evolving through a palette that ranged from apricot to lilac.

And in such a situation, what could be better than a really good meal, enjoyed al fresco?

This was my fourth visit to The Salt Room in Brighton in the space of just over 12 months and The Other Half’s second.

I have, before each of those meals, had just the tiniest amount of trepidation. British dining is, in my experience, so often a matter of pot luck.

Over the years, we’ve paid not inconsiderable sums for food that has, if not inedible, been little more than fuel. Given serial disappointments, one is familiar with an inkling of fear that perfection simply cannot continue.

Teriyaki salmon

But this is The Salt Room and now, having eaten 12 courses there, I can report that it remains utterly flawless and a simply wonderful place to eat.

This time, I started with raw scallop, finely chopped and combined with elderflower and radish, and topped with lumpfish roe.

It was beautifully served on a shell, which sat on top of crushed ice to keep the fish at the perfect temperature.

I’ll say it again of this eatery: a single bite is enough to tell you two things – that the fish here is seriously fresh and that the kitchen really knows how to handle seafood.

Trout

In the case of the scallop, delicate tastes and a delicate texture made for an exemplary dish.

The Other Half very much enjoyed his teriyaki salmon, with wasabi, cucumber and lime.

He noted, as we dined, that suggestion from some that an expensive meal should induce guilt.

But as touched on above, you can spend less and, for instance, have a vast plate of pasta placed in front of you and not be able to come close to finishing it because it’s an insanely over the-top portion.

On weekdays, I lunch sometimes at a café near work where, frankly, any pasta dish is close to being half a packet of the pasta in question.

It’s not particularly expensive, but I can never eat it all – even though I always ask for a smaller portion.

Cod

The OH posited the point that, on such occasions, you even find yourself eating more than you really feel comfortable with – simply from guilt and not wanting to have to face staff asking what the matter is.

So which is worse – an expensive meal of quality that you eat every last crumb of, with relish? Or something that is far cheaper but you eat largely because you need to eat and you leave loads because there’s far too much to start with and it’s not particularly special anyway?

Cherry Arctic roll

Portion size is a wide-spread problem in the UK. Thankfully, it’s not the case at The Salt Room, where I can comfortably eat a three-course meal.

The plates from our starters could have been licked clean by the time they were removed.

Next up, The Other Half enjoyed – very much – cod and chorizo with BBQ onions, samphire and lemon.

For me, it was sea trout, with crayfish dumplings, asparagus, BBQ tomato and basil.

Again – an utter delight, with perfectly-cooked fish and lovely flavours. Textures were light, while presentation was also up to the very high standards.

And two more plates were completely cleaned before being removed.

Last up, The Other Half had mango and vanilla parfait with lime curd, lime snow, passion fruit and macerated mango.

Parfait

I opted for a cherry and chocolate Arctic roll that was a confection of cherry ice cream, chocolate espuma and compressed cherries.

Do I have to tell you how much was left after we put down our spoons?

I didn’t think so.

The Salt Room is consistently producing excellent, seasonal food. The creations of head chef Dave Mothersill are inventive but never feel forced. Frankly, it was difficult to choose what to eat because there was so much to whet the appetite.

The service also remains superb: efficient, friendly, knowledgeable and enthusiastic.

My only question is when I’m back in town next!

To find out more and book, visit www.saltroom-restaurant.co.uk.

A heavenly dinner at The Salt Room

Mackerel, beetroot etc

In recent weeks, I’ve had a number of conversations with people who question what a ‘fine dining’ experience gives you other than a bigger hole in your wallet.

If you asked me that same question 15 years ago, I’d have been thinking along the same lines. But experience can be a great educator.

On Saturday night, working once more in Brighton, I headed for the Salt Room.

Having opened in February 2015, I’d first tried it, along with the Other Half, last June. When I was in the city again in October, I returned for a solo meal and after that, I never had any doubt that I’d be back as soon as possible.

If I’ve worked out one thing about what divides top-level dining from eating out lower down the scale, it’s that the really good experience is flawless throughout – however many courses you have.

Elsewhere, you might find that one or even two courses will be fine, but something else just won’t be up to the same level.

One of the things that I like about the menu at the Salt Room is that it’s proudly seasonal.

At the weekend, I began with a dish of mackerel, miso and beetroot in a variety of way, including pickled and as a ketchup.

Slip sole, turnip, nori butter, shrimps, celery, capers

The fish was cooked to perfection: griddled on the skin side until it was black, but with the flesh just done; flaking and moist.

One of the things that this sort of cooking makes you notice is just how fresh the fish was in the first place: you can taste the freshness – and the contrast with the crisped skin was sublime.

The use of Japanese flavour in miso was subtle and never threatened to overwhelm the delicate fish, while the beetroot provided an earthiness to the whole thing.

This was a joy to eat.

For a main course, I stuck with fish and opted for slip sole with diced turnip, nori butter, tiny shrimps, capers and celery.

Honestly, it really is no exaggeration to stress just how good this was. Again, the fish was clearly impeccably fresh and had been equally impeccably cooked.

It was a dish of extraordinary natural sweetness, tempered by the capers: very satisfying.

I didn’t bother with any side dishes (I’ve mentioned before that such a concept seems peculiarly British) – the portions were a perfect size for me.

One little guide to how good the food is at any restaurant is the issue of seasoning. There are salt and pepper pots on the tables at the Salt Room, but in three visits, I have never felt any remote temptation to pick either up.

Result

My waiter – Alfonso from Sicily; a knowledgeable charmer – thought that it was wrong to even offer customers the salt and pepper: some douse their food before even bothering to taste (something that Raymond Blanc described being appalled by in his book, A Taste of My Life).

It does beg the question of why you bother going to a good restaurant if you don’t start from a point of implicitly trusting the kitchen.

Another basis on which to recommend the Salt Room is that it has a far wider range of wines available by the glass than is often the case.

Here, Alfonso chatted with me about matching wine to my choices and gave me the chance to taste two wines before selecting. That’s really good service.

In the event, I enjoyed a Riesling Trimbach – but it was fascinating to have tried another possiblilty.

Being given time to sip my wine and contemplate the dessert menu in an unrushed gap between courses is, for me, vital.

So, what could I select to conclude such a meal?

It was an enticing dessert menu, but what stood out for me was rhubarb and custard: “custard tart, roasted rhubarb, rhubarb & Sauternes ice cream”.

Rhubarb and custard

It’s the start of the season for forced rhubarb, after all, and rhubarb is one of my favourite fruits, so selection was made easier.

A ‘custard’ of vanilla infused panna cotta, rich yet light at the same time, is served with rhubarb in a variety of ways – including a wonderful, wafer-thin crisp and ice cream – and a hint of crumble.

It was heavenly. There is nothing more that needs to be said.

If I have a liqueur after a meal, it’s usually a Disaronno, but Alfonso persuaded me to try something different – Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur – and it was a very pleasant way to conclude a simply superb meal.

You do get what you pay for in food terms – certainly in the UK at present. In France, you can still find little bistros and brasseries that give you a memorable experience for little outlay.

But as I’ve seen, time and time again in recent years, dining out both for pleasure and particularly when away from home for work, that sort of middle tier of eatery in the UK is often far from cheap for food that is far from sensational.

I have no doubt that I’ll return to the Salt Room again.

Folkestone serves up a mixed bag of food

Taramasalata – none of that over-pink stuff

The food and the travel: those are the key problem areas when traveling in the UK and both were brought into sharp focus for us last year when we visited Rye.

On the food front, it wasn’t necessarily just finding somewhere that was serving food when you needed it that was a problem (although it was, on occasion), but finding food that was worth eating.

Too often on that trip, even basic food such as fish and chips or an omelette was poor.

On the travel front, if you don’t have a car, then you’ll find it difficult getting around. Public transport is far from brilliant – while it is certainly expensive. Last year, for a short trip from Winchelsea Beach back to Rye after a lengthy walk, we paid £5 for two adult to climb aboard a Stagecoach bus.

This year, getting back from Hythe to Folkestone – around five miles, given where we got on and off – the bus fare was £6.40 (also Stagecoach). To clarify: both of these were daytime trips and outside any rush hour.

And dear Stagecoach – the mock leather seats do not compensate.

According to the Financial Times, the company’s pre-tax profits fell by 37% in the year to April this year (partly due to capital expenditure). The poor lambs only made a meager £104.4m.

Rip-off Britain, anyone?

But back to the food.

Driven out of London by the second festival to be staged just 100m away from us this summer, we decided to go away on a bank holiday for the first time.

Time was short. The flyer informing us that the park would be busy for six nights, plus set-up, rehearsal and then the strike, landed on the doormat just over a fortnight ago.

The Other Half suggested a longer sojourn in Folkestone than our first visit in June, when a two-day rap/dance/garage/whatever-the-hell festival had, by the end of the Saturday, left us in danger of throttling each other and in vital need of escape the following day.

Discovering that it’s only an hour (on the fast, more expensive) train from St Pancras to Folkestone, we’d headed to the coast.

This time around, we managed to book a couple of nights in an old-fashioned hotel on the promenade. A week later, we suddenly thought that, given that it was a bank holiday, it might be worth considering eating opportunities in advance.

Bass done scarily 'raw'

After a spot of Googling, we were just able to grab a 9.15pm booking at Rocksalt, the town’s only eatery to bother the good people at Michelin.

Having checked in to our hotel, we headed down to the harbour in search of a late lunch – still over six hours before dinner. Rocksalt is actually slap bang on the harbour – an unobtrusive, modern building that backs onto a collection of traditional fish ‘n’ chippies, seafood cabins and fishmongers.

There we bought fodder and sat down on a bench to eat, free entertainment provided by an example of local colour to our left, regaling listeners with something or other, while swigging from a bottle of red wine, and a seagull who was trying to telepathically divorce us from some of our chips (they’re polite seagulls in Folkestone), while watched and mimicked by a young gull.

Two points here. First, it’s tempting, but don’t feed gulls (yes, I know I’ve done so in the past): it’s making them behave aggressively and causing talk of gull culls.

Second, the takeaway was perfectly good for what it was. My complaints about food are not a snob thing that excludes such eating: it’s simply that, whatever type of meal I’m having, I still expect it to be good for what it is.

Indeed, the pub lunch that we had the following day at the Britannia Inn in Dungeness, after a morning spent walking over difficult terrain, in a howling wind, was also an example of being absolutely right for what and where it was (in my case, scampi, chips and mushy peas, with a glass of good Kentish ale on the side).

But I digress.

On Saturday evening, after dark had descended, we too descended back to the harbour. We were particularly fortunate to be offered a table on the terrace, directly above the lapping sea.

I say “particularly fortunate”, because inside was rather noisy. So was outside, to be fair, but since it wasn’t enclosed, it was less annoying. There is something about British diners: going out for drinks first before going on to eat.

Rocksalt is not a curry-after-the-pub eatery. The anti-social – and loud at those levels is anti-social – diners were neither posh nor ‘chavs’. And it was not younger diners that were the loudest either. A middle-aged group sitting four tables away from us could be heard throughout, with one of the women having to be escorted to and from the loo, and then later, out to a taxi, as she couldn’t stand up properly.

As we neared the end of our own meal, a group inside could be heard boisterously quaffing pints and ordering lobster, having arrived late. The staff looked less than impressed.

It’s not a joke when I say that I have no memory of anything comparable on the Continent (unless one is near Brits or visitors from the US).

But anyway, to the food.

As an amuse-bouche, we were brought fresh bread with a platter of toppings: the house taramasalata, butter, a butter mixed with pork fat, seaweed crisps and, of course, salt.

Every bit of that was lovely – and my goodness, that taramasalata was a dream of real delicacy, while the porky butter, when sprinkled with a little of the salt, was ... well, I’ll let your imaginations do the work.

I had a starter of bass, marinaded in gin, and served with a scallop, fried in a batter made with tonic water. It came with shreds of red chili, black olives, beautifully crisp pickled cucumber slices and a scatter of baby coriander leaves.

Little aside – this being Britain, our waitress had to check that I did know that it wasn’t cooked.

The fish was delightful: tender and delicate, while the scallop complimented it nicely and the garnishes worked fine – even the coriander, which as baby leaves, wasn’t overpowering and soapily unpleasant, as I usually find it.

The Other Half enjoyed his duck egg with black pudding, girolles and samphire – even though he thought the egg a fraction overdone.

For a main, he opted for the lemon sole with a hollandaise and I went for the Dover sole – in my case, this came with a brown butter with capers, and was simply superb.

The Other Half's duck egg, girolles and samphire

Delicate flesh, incredibly fresh and excellently cooked, with the capers cutting through the natural sweetness of the fish – this was why simplicity is wonderful.

For accompaniments (another British oddity) we chose Kentish cauliflower dressed with cobnuts and lemon, and a selection of seasonal green beans and peas.

Both were good – the cauli was a veritable treat and will be tried at home.

For dessert, The Other Half enjoyed a gin jelly, with Kentish strawberries and a lime and tonic sorbet, while I availed myself of a row of the restaurant’s own sorbets: raspberry, strawberry and black cherry, which simply sung with an abundance of real fruitiness.

On the wine front, we kept it simple with a Domaine Saint Felix 2015 from the Languedoc: a light white with citrus notes.

House-made fudge – instantly evoking northern bonfire nights of childhood – came with coffee.

A top-class meal, with very good, pleasant service, Mark Sargeant’s Rocksalt may not be cheap, but for this sort of dining experience, it was far from being over the top.

Fast forward 24 hours.

Almost from the moment we decided to make this trip, we had planned to visit Dungeness on our full day in the area, traveling to and from nearby Hythe on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. As such, we envisaged feeling fairly knackered by the time we got back to the hotel that evening.

With that in mind and after internet searches revealed a paucity of decent places to eat on a Sunday night – chains in the town are noisy – we had settled for the idea of dining in the hotel.

Like others of its ilk, our temporary abode thinks it still has to do Edwardian grandeur. Which helps to explain the attempted silver service and a menu that is stuck firmly in the 1970s.

Pity the poor vegetarian – they, and anyone else requiring ‘gentle’ food – faced the prospect of an omelette. And on the basis of the scrambled egg at breakfast ...

When away from work, I’ve dined in such places rather more often than The Other Half, and so was perhaps less surprised by the whole business – and it wasn’t the worst I’ve experienced anyway.

I feel for the staff: they’re not trained to the standard the hotel is attempting and they’re totally flustered when, for instance, you actually make a selection from the wine list that they’ve give you.

Heaven forfend if you actually ask for a bottle of wine – not just a glass of the house whatever.

It was an £18 Gewürztraminer. After waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... I called the waiter over to ask what was up, only to be informed that his colleague was in the cellar, hunting. Moments later came news that it wasn’t to be found.

Next try – a £10 bottle of an English white that was on the wine list’s ‘sale’ page.

Some time later – by which point I’d finished my centimetre-thick slab of Ardennes paté, served with melba toast, a doorstep of cucumber, a quarter of tasteless tomato and two fistfuls of frizzy lettuce doused in a thick Balsamic glaze – we heard that that was gone too.

“It’s been a busy weekend”, our waiter offered by way of a difficult-to-believe explanation.

We quickly ordered a large glass each of the house white. It turned out to be inoffensive and utterly unmemorable. Unmemorable, that is, except for costing £6 a glass.

For a main, we both opted for cod fillet in a lemon and herb crumb, with a dill cream sauce. Roast spuds and assorted roast veg were served on the side, by our waiter.

It wasn’t bad, but have you ever tried cutting into a roast potato with a traditional fish knife?

Dover sole with brown caper butter – and accompaniments

I concluded with ice cream and strawberries on the grounds of safety.

Yet around us, other guests were lapping it up and lavishing praise on the food.

And then there was the family of three from Yorkshire, who sat down behind us and said they didn’t need to see the menu – they’d have the roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, but “fetch us one with gravy on the plate and two with gravy on the side”.

I wish that I could amply describe the Yorkshire-born Other Half’s expression!

One of the other guests who was enjoying it all sent his breakfast bacon back on both mornings we were there – demanding it be cooked more. On the Monday, it was sent back twice before he found it to his taste. By that stage, they’d presumably substituted meat for old boot leather.

What a contrast.

Yet these contrasts provide yet further evidence of why traveling in the UK is fraught with issues. Thankfully, Rocksalt proved that it doesn’t always need to be the case. I really do hope to eat there again, but in the meantime, could someone unlock the mystery of why so many Brits struggle to eat a meal in a way that doesn’t impinge on their fellow diners?