Dines Out: Terre á Terre

Sticking with the idea of visiting the finalists in the Brighton and Hove Food and drink Festival Awards, restaurant category, it was time to go to Terre á Terre and what a time as their Christmas menu is always a treat. This year is no exception and at £33 a head it has to be seen as exceptional value for food of this quality and skill.

I chose a favourite vegetarian friend to join me Mrs G de V. I always enjoy dining with her because she is the least preachy veggie I have ever met and she can get as excited as I can when tasting great food. This was going to be an excitable feast.

We started with a couple of cocktails, their take on a champagne cocktail is a bitter sweet confection that fizzes and packs a kick, highly recommended. We also had the savoury seeds and wasabi nuts too, well one has to surely?

Comfortable with the fact that we would happily share everything that we chose we selected the two most appealing dishes of the three offered at each stage. It was not easy as all three sounded superb but experience has told me that the food at T á T is very generous – and very filling.

A bitter sweet confection that fizzes and packs a kick

So our journey, very “Strictly”, continued thus: first an amazing dish wittily called KFC with the c standing in this case for cauliflower. This was Korean fried cauliflower with sweet and sour sesame, onigiri rice, soused shiso dikon pickled mirin ginger jelly and green leaf salt dried chips finished with chestnut purée. There’s no shortening a T á T description so I give you them verbatim. My god it was good, really packed with excitement and surprises, a little heat a little crisp a little cool…

The Mince Pie and Chantilly Face was a hot Twineham Grange cheese and mustard seed pastry mince pie filled with mushroom marinade mincemeats served with hot porcini custard, quince pepper jelly, sherry and spice pickled walnut and chantilly salt bean curds. I loved the upside-down-pudding-first-whimsy of the dish and for once enjoyed a pickled walnut which was a revelation. The pie was great and the porcini custard quite brilliant.

On then to our main courses although I was already fearful that I would never make it to dessert.

Chimchimney Soufflé and Sooty Tops came as a Brighton Blue double baked soufflé wrapped in pickle powder butter parchment, loaded with charmer cheese cream, garlic oil and thyme baked Jerusalem artichokes. Served with salt toffee apple tattie pave pie, sage and onion, scrumpy beet brew neeps, pink kraut and toasted buckwheat hazel oat cob crunch. Yes I know, what a mouthful and yes WHAT a mouthful, truly spectacularly delicious, even the Jerusalem artichokes of which I am fearful. Mrs G de V made short work of them.

After a little debate our final choice was the Chai Fawkes, a brilliant Chestnut Rosti bomb with salt plum and camembert molten middle, rolled in gunpowder beet tea embers, served with heritage and rainbow chard flames, ragout of hoppy sticky cinder salsify and root logs, juniper soused bulbs and boktops. Finished with silken mushroom mallow, black garlic aioli and amber crimson salts. Phew, a real whizz bang of a dish that arrived looking just like a flaming bonfire. We shared everything of course and this time I really loved the salsify and the molten cheese centre to the rosti.

Figgy pudding sticky with rumtopf fruits aged with spice spirits and barrel brews was too good to miss, despite the two of us being replete. It was served with a brilliant tangerine and Frangelico ice, smugglers clove custard and poached cranberries and great as it was I still could not do it justice and a little was sadly, no tragically, left behind.

Terre á Terre, what can one say, brilliant every time, culinary genius, perfect service, relaxed… get there and make the most of this seasonal treat.

Terre à Terre, 71 East Street BN1 1HQ 01273 729051 terreaterre.co.uk