The Salt Room, restaurant review: Provenance and ambition ... this is Brighton's best restaurant
106 King's Road, Brighton (01273 929488)
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If ever there was a destination in urgent need of a destination restaurant, it's the seafront at Brighton. That spiffy Regency sweep, poised between regal and rackety, should be one of our great tourist attractions. But it never quite lives up to its history, or even its present.
The once-grand hotels which line the esplanade still suck in the tourists, but nobody's coming for the food. All the gastronomic action is happening in the shadow of the hotels, in the hectic, crowded lanes behind them. There, among the many pedlars of weapons-grade gimcrackery, you'll find The Coal Shed, one of the newer stars of the Brighton restaurant scene, a gem of a local specialising in the best Josper-grilled steaks in town.
In an inspired move, the Hilton Metropole – a block-straddling behemoth next to The Grand – has joined forces with The Coal Shed's owner, Razak Helalat, handing him the hotel's slumbering seafront bar to reinvent as a sibling to The Coal Shed. Splendidly positioned opposite the ghostly skeleton of the West Pier, and close to the new i360 observation tower, The Salt Room arrives with the provenance and ambition to make it the best restaurant in town.
Embracing the location, Helalat has made seafood the USP. Platters of shellfish, fire-roasted crab claws, cuttlefish fritters, turbot and lobster cooked over charcoal – this is the stuff of day-trip fantasy. And for Coal Shed loyalists, a smoky corner of the menu offers those fabled steaks. There's just enough trad fishy fare to please Sunday-lunching families, along with more directional pickling, smoking, sea vegetables and Asian borrowings, such as the kimchi slaw that comes with the shrimp and crab burger.
The designers have done a noble job in de-blinging the large corner site, stripping out any trace of lounge-bar smoothery in favour of a spare, windswept scheme of bare brick arches and planked walls hung with framed blueprints of the West Pier . There's also a wide seafront terrace due to open later this summer, which will be a fab lunch-spot if you don't mind your sea views interrupted by four lanes of idling traffic.
Seated on the ocean-going side of the room, we barely noticed the views, thanks to a promenade of dazzling dishes served with an instinct for ceremony which elevated a humdrum weekday lunch to a special occasion.
Whipped salt cod and roe is served in a Kilner jar, to be heaped on to lavash crisps and superb seaweed and ale bread. Shell-on langoustines have been grilled over charcoal, then chilled, leaving the flesh firm and smoky. Fish soup is taken to the next level; poured over a painterly arrangement of mackerel and octopus, a single battered mussel and dabs of squid ink purée. The flavour is huge, developing from dense and muddy to clear and intense.
A main of golden-crusted roast halibut comes with a puck of oxtail and a profusion of wild mushrooms; parsley root and an umami-rich mushroom broth add saturnine complexity. Striped from the Josper grill and robustly spiced with turmeric and cumin, monkfish works brilliantly with shavings of sharply pickled cauliflower – a day trip for the taste buds.
Service is clued-up but dressed-down, from a team in jeans and denim aprons, like a gang of hipster costermongers. Owner Raz Helalat is discreetly walking the floor, and general manager Dariush Tamadon-Nejad, a familiar face from his years running Mark Hix's London restaurants, is table-hopping with former colleagues. Bar manager Alex Palumbo, ex of Hakkasan and Zuma, is another ex-Londoner; his cocktail list, which includes eight different versions of gin and tonic, indicates that the capital's loss is Brighton's gain.
Head chef Dave Mothersill, transferred across from The Coal Shed, is a home-grown talent who seems to be relishing this wider canvas. His showstopper dessert, Taste of the Pier, is a sharing platter of seaside-themed treats, including candy floss, cones of salted-caramel ice-cream, and ring doughnuts as sleazily sinful as any eaten from a paper bag at the funfair. It's served on a board made of wood salvaged from the old West Pier, a flourish which would no doubt enrage the We Want Plates campaigners, but which feels rather moving in context, or at least it does after two carafes of Picpoul and a cocktail .
I've eaten very well in Brighton over the years, but lunch at The Salt Room has gone straight in at number one. It's a serious restaurant with a happy, relaxed atmosphere – the perfect fit for the location. It's not cheap, with some main courses costing roughly the same as a day return from London Victoria. But I guarantee that anyone tempted to make the trip will be wearing a big smile on the way home.
Food ****
Ambience ****
Service ****
106 King's Road, Brighton (01273 929488). Around £40 a head for three courses, before wine and service
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