» Food & Drink
Andrew Kay finds the very French Mange Tout is winning the battle of Trafalgar Street
Ms McT and I had spent a fabulous few hours at Glyndebourne when we met Mr R. Jenufa had reduced us both to tears and I for one was ready for a drink. We met at Mange Tout, a newish French restaurant in which, a few days earlier, I had eaten a delicious lunch of venison stew. Spurred by that I decided that we had to try dinner, and soon.
The look is smart modern basic – it reminded me very much of all the cafés that I frequented when in Paris as a student, very Rive Gauche.
Vincent – who I know from Blanch House – brought us a kir royale to start, one made with his father’s blueberry liqueur and the other with his raspberry. Very good they were too.
The menu is short but there are daily specials on a huge blackboard and I knew pretty fast that I was going to dine from that.
In a truly dictatorial manner I ordered the plate of charcuterie and half a dozen snails for us to share. The others seemed happy with that decision and, when the food arrived, we were delighted: great hams, pickles, olives and crisp bread and a stunning rillette. I love rillete, despite it probably being artery-clogging stuff. This was French dining without any pretence, just great care and, dare I say it, love.
Mr R chose from the menu a chicken pastry, which Vincent declared might be too small. But he was not to be swayed, and he was right – the vol au vent was certainly big enough for dinner with some salad on the side. He was very happy indeed and declared it creamily delicious.
“The generous hunk of rump was glistening, the bowl of frites steaming, and I have to say my eyes were somewhat green with envy”
Ms McT likes her meat and was fast to declare her interest in the steak frite. It’s a risky thing ordering a steak, I find – perhaps one of the simplest dishes, it is also one of the hardest to get right. But this one was so right, so absolutely perfectly cooked, shaped and proportioned. The generous hunk of rump was glistening, the bowl of frites steaming, and I have to say my eyes were somewhat green with envy. In the end she was unable to eat the entire steak but, fortunately, Mr R stepped in to lend a hand.
My choice came from the blackboard, a special that day of red mullet fillets served with fennel, beetroot and purple carrots. Hooray for purple carrots; in fact, hooray for anyone who serves carrots that actually taste of something. These were delicious and, no, they are not a fad. According to my sources carrots were originally purple and have had the colour bred out of them; a sort of culinary ethnic cleansing, I guess.
The fillets of fish were perfect too – sweet white flesh, crisp skin, not a bone to be found. Below lay the soft fennel and, around the carrots, some pretty pommes parisienne. I was more than impressed, especially seeing the tiny scale of the kitchen that it had come from.
Ms McT threw in the towel at this point but, true to form, Mr R and I went on to dessert. I would have had the cheese platter – I had it for lunch and it was exemplary – but plum clafoutis was on offer, and I love that.
In reality it was more of a plum tart than the clafoutis I know from my student days but no less delicious, as was the ice-cream on the side. Mr R had crème brûlée (where do those accents go? oh, thank you ed) just to maintain the cream level of his entire dinner, and was delighted when it came in a wide shallow dish, thus increasing the ratio of burnt sugar to custard.
I, of course, needed a hit of espresso to finish, not just for the coffee but for the dainty meringues that they make here with the egg whites left over from a week’s worth of hollandaise sauce. This is a clear sign that they cook in a very traditional way.
It is the detail that makes Mange Tout such a delight. The lighting is dim but flattering, the décor quirky but right, and it is spotlessly clean – even the toilet rolls are in regimental order, rendering them akin to a great work by Andy Warhol. It’s a fun place, with an informal buzz that gives it a vibrancy some serious food places fail to achieve. Mange Tout is good – so good in fact that I ate the lot and will be back.
Mange Tout, 81 Trafalgar Street, Brighton, BN1 4EB, 01273 607270
