The Set
Brighton, East Sussex
By day, 50 Preston Road is Café Rust, serving locally roasted coffee and an appealing menu of things on toast, homemade cakes and pastries. By night, the cake stands are packed away, a red neon sign is hung up and the intimate, atmospheric space, with its exposed plaster walls, parquet flooring and motley collection of bare-topped tables, is transformed into casual fine diner. It may be on a rather unlovely stretch of road, but once the dark grey-painted, hand-carved door has closed behind you and the soundtrack is pumping, the outside world is quickly forgotten. With just seven tables and a team of four – two in the kitchen, including head chef Dan Kenny, and two front of house – there’s a hint of the supper club, albeit one that is operating at a high level of ambition and efficiency. Everyone is requested to arrive by 6.45pm for pre-dinner drinks and each course is served to the entire restaurant at roughly the same time. At about three hours and 15 courses, this is an extended experience, but from the first bite of pig’s trotter and jalapeño croquette to the final sweet serving of Alphonso mango pavlova, the food comes in fast-running waves of flavour and every dish hits the mark. At first glance, central ingredients seem to appear at random on the menu. Early on, a trio of Japanese-inspired seafood dishes (including a stunning slice of high-quality otoro tuna) are immediately followed by ‘beef béarnaise’ – a thin strip of chive-encrusted sirloin sitting on a cube of crumbed and deep-fried béarnaise sauce, plus a deeply flavoured (and satisfying) oxtail dauphinoise with oxtail gravy, asparagus and aged Parmesan. It’s as though the main course has appeared prematurely. But Dan Kenny’s mission statement of ‘big flavoured, umami and fat-led food’ means he can play around with the conventional order of things, ramping up the intensity across the board: for example, a tender piece of chicken, deep-fried in a crisp batter and served in a vividly spiced tom yum broth, brings a satisfying conclusion to the savoury part of the meal. The wine list is short for a restaurant with such ambitious cooking, and prices rise steeply – this makes the pairing of wines not available on the main list an attractive proposition.
