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Amari, Brighton, Gull About Town, Halisco, Palmito

Gull About Town – Nov 2024

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As winter approaches, it’s a time to batten down the hatches, put a head under a wing and settle in for the dark nights ahead. It’s not a good look for most restaurants, but wait, what’s this? Your gull has spotted has spotted a new dining experience coming out of hibernation. 

Amari is the reborn Amarillo, the partnership headed up Mo and Ali from Halisco and Michelin-starred former Murmur chef, Ian Swansain who has been feeding his delicious morsels for private hires and pop ups while simmering ideas for his new Spanish diner in Baker Street. Sourcing local fish and British pigs from farms where they’re positively encouraged to run around and have a good time, the vibe is definitely Latin. With excellent pickings for the finer palate, the Serrano and Iberico hams will come from the best Spanish producers while his Halisco fans will still find his legendary tacos on the table. The culture though is more modern British; the suckling pig will have had a longer life than its local Spanish equivalent, and Ian will be proudly breaking down the beast to make sure there’s zero waste. 

Hovering over Hove, your gull finds herself in a renovated Victorian terrace with best friends, Lauren Mullany and Ben Smith, also staying at home with their monthly lunch club, The Sunday Joint. Word had already reached the ears of your gull about this lovely little supper club in May this year; the young gulls in the family, disillusioned with work and lack of work life balance, had heard of this Millenial chef who wanted to prioritise the things she truly enjoys, such as cooking, recipe development and helping people to bond over shared culinary experiences. And so your gull happily flew over to peck at the windows. Spotting a cheffing certificate from Ireland’s Ballymaloe Cookery School on Lauren’s kitchen wall, your intrepid bird spent a fine Sunday afternoon pecking at the exquisite leftovers, particularly enjoying Lauren’s home brews for a little winter well-being boost. 

Over in Portland Road, your gull’s sticky beak happened upon a renovation at The Spice Circuit where Kanthi Thamma, the former Chilli Pickle chef and co-founder of Palmito, has just opened the smallest restaurant in town. At the back of a cocktail bar, he invites just four people to a South Indian feast at a table in his kitchen, a home from home. Cracking open the idea that South Indian food is all about dosas, each menu represents his best finds from the five different states in south of India, each with completely different cuisines. The Jaffna black pork, a rich and fragrant slow-cooked curry with black pepper, coconut vinegar and pandan combined with dark roasted curry powder from Sri Lanka is a gull favourite, and also available from Uber Eats.

Hopping on a thermal to West Sussex, your gull finds herself at home at Four. Tucked away in his own home in residential Worthing, former Smoking Goat chef and single dad, Aaron Dalton is putting food on his own table while his kids sleep upstairs. Your gull followed the aromas of local mackerel and Sussex beef to peck at the windows of his purpose-built kitchen with gull-friendly outside smoke-house and barbecue, and to taste some of the locally sourced slow braised, home-smoked dishes she’s scavenged.

As your bird glides home, the sun sets on a glassy sea. The curtains are closed early across town but for a food fan, it’s going to be a cosy few months ahead.

Gull About Town

Gull About Town – May/June 2024

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It’s been a long winter in much sunnier climes for your Gull as the British rain proved just too much even for this feathered old bird. But as she returns to Brighton and takes flight across her favourite old paths from West Hill to the rich pickings of the beach, what a joy to find such a vibrant food buzz along the way.  

Once upon a time, Preston Street was almost too overwhelming for your Gull’s discerning beak with aromas of oyster sauce and sriracha fighting for favour. Only Bincho Yakitori, with its award-winning grills transporting us to the back streets of Tokyo, was worth the wait for the end of the night’s bin pick. So what a delight to return from the warmer coasts to a smorgasbord of flavour.

Your bird was thrilled to spot a young cocktail crowd, probably fresh from two weeks in Cancun, pop in for a Margherita and gasp instead at the queso beef cheek birria tacos with dipping broth and oyster mushroom tacos.  And the pleasure was not just on the plates. 

Halisco has ramped up its style since your bird first pecked on the windows, and is about to celebrate its seventh birthday with a much groovier vibe than when it was just a chicka. And with Michelin-starred Ian Swainson  now head chef in Halisco’s tiny kitchen, it’s going to be a glorious summer.

Just across the road, owners Mo and Ali Razavi’s Asian alter ego, Anakuma, launched last year as a tribute to their late mother Lindsay. It’s already a hit with this bird’s family favourite, Seagull winger Solly March who was one of the first to feast on its delicious small plates just weeks after opening.  The fried baby octopus with squid ink and pink pickled onion your Gull managed to scavenge sent her soaring. 

In a road dominated by Asian offerings, your Gull pottered down to Big Bowl for a Vietnamese ramen, which came highly rated from her feathered foodies. But the squawk on the street is all about the new fire and ice at No, No Please. This food-loving Gull has spent years fluttering around those good folk at Brighton Best which has been rating Brighton and Hove’s top 20 restaurants for the last decade. Now Euan MacDonald, one of its four founders, has launched his own Asian small plates and cocktail bar with sister Mel and Namo Eats’ Bookie, again in Preston Street. 

Your bird didn’t have to take flight once as she tottered down, belly already full, to peek in through the steamy windows on a Saturday night in late spring. Popping round the back for a peck of leftovers, half a larb roll, a filo cigar filled with spiced chicken, and an iconic sesame toast finger with salted boiled egg was all your Gull needed to know that this is very fine food indeed. And despite being a scavenger, she even spotted that there’s nothing on the menu over £10 a dish.

Finally, it was time to fly, and to rest her head at Drifter, the vinyl, sea and food bar from the original team at Due South. Regular readers of this column will know that the Gull is all about local, seasonal food, and Drifter has developed a mainly vegetarian, small plate menu with natural wines and cocktails that Brighton’s beach has been screeching for. Like your bird, this is about dropping in, having a plate and moving on. But not before chilling out and listening to some very cool sounds as the sun sets.

It’s good to be back.

Gull About Town, Uncategorized

Gull About Town: August

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The Gull has been flying too close to the glare of Brighton’s best hot spots this summer, and spotted some shiny new openings. The cackle about the latest Ivy Asia on Ship Street was so loud that your Gull had to swoop down for a better look. She was dazzled by the green onyx floors and lush Chinese fabrics, that wow approach to décor and colours that pop along with the champagne and have become the signature of The Ivy group.  

But regular readers will know that this bird has an eagle eye for any glitter that is not gold, and is very particular about knowing the source of the meat she eats. No self repecting Gull is going to eat anything other than a happy pig or carefree cow. 

She’s asked for the sourcing plicy at this culinary stable – The Ivy, Cote and Bills, as well as the Soho House group which has recently opened its Beach House in Madeira Drive – and despite pecking away for answers, she’s still waiting. And until she knows, she’s keeping her beak shut. 

Perhaps the cackle was actually for Pizza Pilgrims, the latest foodie landing, also in Ship Street. Brothers, Thom and James Elliot’s passion for proper dough had them dropping their careers in advertising and TV back in the 20teens to bring a little Naples to London, planet friendly style.  The Gull was brought up on tales of high flyers, and remembers fondly her nest-time story about Great Uncle Giovanni and the two young men who flew to Naples and drove back to London in a tuk tuk on a pizza pilgrimage to do the right thing for the planet. Their charcuterie comes from Cobble Lane Cured Farm in London where our animal friends have had the best of lives, they minimise waste throughout the food system and grow their basil hydroponically with Harvest London, saving 350,000 food miles a year. They even use wild farmed flour to fix the nitrogen into the soil and produce super tasty, gut and planet friendly flour for their pizza dough.  Their sustainable story has become a favourite among gulls in London, Oxford and now Brighton, where the cool young birds are already gathering to borrow a little eco-Italian style before a night on the tiles.

Kenny Tutt’s another chef who’s doing the right thing by the planet, and you can ensure a properly sourced feed anywhere he pops up. The MasterChef 2018 winner hops about more than your regular gull on a hot tin roof and has just enjoyed an Ox Block residency at the Lord Nelson pub in Trafalgar Street.  If you missed his signature Sussex 40-day aged sirloin steak, you can pop along to Shelter Hall on the beach, and he’ll be at the first Pub in the Park at Preston Park from 16-18 September

There’s a lot of cawing among the gullerati about the new restaurant putting the final touches at Tutto, the latest restaurant from the team behind Burnt Orange, The Salt Room and The Coal Shed. We gulls believe you can never have too many Italian leftovers in Brighton’s bins, and Tutto’s promise of linguine alle vongole and duck ragu has the Gull Massive lining up on top of this airy banking hall which opens on the edge of the North Laine this month.  

Just down the road on Baker Street, a curious aroma of coal-cooked Japanese had your Gull cocking her head for a better sniff. Hitting a thermal, she zoomed along to Bonsai Plant Kitchen for a peck at the small plates and bao burgers, and even had a little groove to the Japanese techno thrilling the cool students in this new quarter of Univille.

But at the end of a balmy evening, why bother with anything other than fish?  As the Gull headed home to West Hill, she couldn’t resist another thermal lift to Church Road in Hove. This is where the more discerning gulls are already forming an orderly queue at the new Catch and Grill where fresh seafood platters and daily catch specials are proper Gull-centric fare.  Sufficiently sated, it was time for a swift half at local favourite, The Farm Tavern. Caw, what a difference! The team behind BRAVO 2022 Best Local winner, The Geese has teamed up with Brighton’s best wine cellar, Butler’s on the drinks menu to bring an excellent night to the Brighton/Hove border.  More news to come!

As your Gull perched on her nest, she looked down over Brighton and Hove and nodded in approval at the rich pickings the city has to offer. Head under wing, she drifted off to the sound of tourism pinging the tills of this plucky little place.

Gull About Town, Uncategorized

Gull About Town: April

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As Brighton throws opens its café doors and puts its tables on the streets, we scavengers couldn’t be happier for spring to hit the city streets. Swooping and pecking at the pickings on the pavement, there’s more than enough to go around after a hard winter following an impossible Lockdown.

And there’s a hint of the Middle East in the air as the Gull takes to the skies this month, with the smell of lamb kebab and Yemeni chicken wafting up from Western Road. It’s enough to send shoppers right back into Taj to buy some pomegranates; as Great Uncle Samir told us when we were just tiny chicks, ‘Once you’ve tasted the fragrant flavour of sumac, you’ll never go back to ketchup again’.

But as the sound of a hundred different languages almost drowns us gulls out on these balmy nights, in the shout out for Brighton’s favourite ethnic restaurants for this month’s Feedback page, Facebook delivered exactly… Nada. How could this be? Do people not know about the mouth-watering delights brought to this land by our friends from much tastier food cultures? Allow the Gull to fly you through some of her favourites. 

Beaks up, come with me to sniff out the Egyptian lamb at Al Moosh, breathing in the aroma of saffron at the eponymous Persian on the way through West Street. Dip briefly in for the perfect Lebanese moutabal at Kambis, before pecking at the shish tawouk, perfectly grilled chicken skewers marinated in garlic, lemon and olive oil at Al Rouche just around the corner in Preston Street. The younger gulls report that there’s quite a flock enjoying the vegetarian meze around the bins at neighbouring Rotana, aka Little Marrakech, at the end of a sultry night. 

Hopping on a coastal thermal, we’re off to Hove and into the tiny grocery story of UniThai where if you venture deep beyond the shrimp paste, you’ll find an even tinier restaurant out back. Family run, word has it from birds of a different feather that this is straight out of Khaosan Road.   

A cooler vibe is at our own West Hill wonder, Red Snapper where Pam and Philippe have taken their family run Thai and made it a place Bangkok can only dream of. 

And let’s end the night with a few shots at le Baobab in Trafalgar Street with Abdoulaye and Julie, the husband and wife team who brought their delicious mafe, yassa poisson and roti yam to Brighton from Senegal via the kitchens of Europe over four years ago. They believe in Taranga, the Senegalese term for hospitality which most of the world shares through its food culture. Well, maybe not quite the more selfish white feathered types of the Northern hemisphere. And, to the delight of the North Laine gulls, they’ve just opened up a beautiful little outside seating area, presumably with an extra place at the table for your favourite gull. As we say in Birdworld, Bottoms Up.