insideKENT Magazine Issue 68 - November 2017 | Page 96

FOOD+DRINK
Excellence without gimmicks at
PASCERE , BRIGHTON
BRIGHTON IS AWASH WITH RESTAURANTS; SOME OF WHICH ARE VERY GOOD, SOME OF
WHICH ARE PRETTY AVERAGE, BUT ALL OF WHICH ARE COMPETING FOR THE LOCALS’
EVERMORE VORACIOUS APPETITE FOR EXCEPTIONAL FOOD. AS LAID BACK AS THE CITY
SEEMS, BRIGHTON IS A DEMANDING MISTRESS WHEN IT COMES TO DINING AND CERTAINLY
DOESN’T ENTERTAIN PRETENDERS. PASCERE – A CLEVER AND STANDOUT ADDITION TO
THE CITY’S FOODIE SCENE – COULDN’T PRETEND IF IT TRIED. BY POLLY HUMPHRIS
Walking into Pascere (from the Latin meaning
‘to graze’), what strikes first is the absence of
any affected elements of ‘cool’, the focus on
which is a trap that so many new Brighton
restaurants – desperate to be noticed among
the throng of really top-notch eateries that
now pepper the city – fall into. Choosing not
to depend on the apparent safety blanket of a
Lanes location, the restaurant sits at a midway
point between the late-night revelry of West
St and the whimsical bustle of said Lanes
leaving it open to attention from both heavily,
but often separately, tread paths; clever.
Equally confident and not at all forced is the
décor. A mix of dark teal and mustard yellow,
it’s effortlessly, but undeniably very stylish,
and wonderfully unstuffy too, a theme that
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continues upstairs where you’ll find a small
open kitchen, so curious diners can watch
head chef, Johnny Stanford (formerly of the
The Pass at the South Lodge Hotel), as he
wields all manner of tools and whips up dishes
as delicious as they are pretty.
Whetted at first by a remoulade of butternut
that squeezed maximum flavour out of the
sweet squash, we tried to hold our appetites
at bay when presented with fresh, still-warm
bread. A real Willy Wonka gobstopper moment,
each little loaf tasted as much of beer and
onion and then stout and treacle as it did bread,
so we failed miserably and scoffed the lot
greedily with whipped, salty butter. Beef cheek
tortellini with mushroom puree in a beef
consommé followed – an autumnal, really
earthy dish, rich with slow-cooked meat and
bathed in a glistening, delicate soup.
Often overlooked, peas are my favourite
vegetable, so I was delighted to find an
homage to them in the starters menu, cooked
not once but three ways in fact: fresh-from-
the-garden raw; cooked so that each juicy
seed popped out of its skin satisfactorily; and,
lastly, blitzed into a light-as-air custard in
which the trio of legumes floated, topped with
buttery lavender brioche croutons. An edible
English country garden on a plate.
Mains were a tricky decision, partly because
we wanted them all, but mostly because I
wanted to avoid my kneejerk reaction, which
would always be to choose the fish. Eventually,