THE JOLLY POACHER, BRIGHTON

After our mammoth lunch at 64 Degrees in Brighton and a quick trip back to our Airbnb flat, we wandered back into town for some arcade and dodgems fun on the pier before our friend's play started that evening. We had a lovely time mucking about, and really enjoyed the play. Afterwards we went to the pub next to the theatre for a few drinks with the cast, but Brighton was heaving and all we really wanted was to find a nice pub, with good beer, where we could relax and drink for the evening. Our friend whose play it was suggested we go to The Jolly Poacher, run by a mate of hers, so we jumped in her car and headed 10 minutes up the hill to the pub. I'm particularly fussy with pubs, and even if I'm just drinking in one I like the ambience created by a good gastropub, and that's exactly what The Jolly Poacher is. In fact, whilst perusing the menu over late night Saturday drinks we decided this was where we should come for our Sunday lunch the next day before the drive back to London. We booked a table, drank more beer, stumbled home and awoke on Sunday SO ready for some good food.

I already knew what I wanted before we even got to the pub on Sunday. When we'd been there on Saturday night I had a long chat with the chef, who'd said he had one portion of a few things on the menu left, so I'd reserved one of those things for my lunch! Although with their seasonal menu using locally sourced ingredients, most of their dishes were right up my street.

As we were in Brighton and near the sea I couldn't not start my meal with a couple of juicy, fat oysters - served with a really good red wine shallot vinegar they knocked my slightly fuzzy hungover head straight back into shape!

These were swiftly followed by goose liver parfait (yes, that is a sneaky way of saying foie gras), rhubarb compote, pickled asparagus and toasted brioche - it was so good. The parfait was smooth and iron-rich, and served with some of my favourite seasonal ingredients. I thought the brioche was the perfect bread to serve with this dish as it wasn't too heavy like normal toasted bread would've been.

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64 DEGREES, BRIGHTON

A couple of weekends ago we jumped in the van and headed to Brighton for 24 hours. I really love Brighton, but most of my visits have been at night to see friends who are DJs or musicians perform there, so I've never really got a true feel for the town. So we booked a flat via AirBnb and went to make the most of the lovely weekend. This also meant we had the opportunity to book a couple of places for food that I'd heard about and really wanted to try out, as again, we're normally there late at night, or staying with friends so going with them to eat. One of the places I'd heard about was a new, tapas-style restaurant in The Laines called 64 Degrees. It only opened this year but has had rave reviews already so I was thrilled that they'd managed to book a table for us on Saturday afternoon. That was until we got on to the M25, and didn't move for about half an hour. A small panic rose inside me as I calculated miles left til Brighton, amount of time we were stuck and potentially missing 64 Degrees' opening hours. We were booked for 2.30 - they stop serving food at 3. We got to Brighton at 2.45, found a parking space and ran through the throng of tourists to get to the restaurant in time. We got there with seconds to spare... Luckily! In fact by this time we'd agreed to meet with our friend and her son, and try and squeeze them onto our table as well, which we did.

64 Degrees is tiny. It probably seats a maximum of 24 people at any one time - one table of 4, one table of 6, two of 2 and 6-8 seats at the bar in front of the open kitchen. After a bit of re-jigging we were put on the largest table, as people were leaving and the kitchen closed.

The idea of 64 Degrees is that you order 3-4 dishes per person, and share them... if you want! The menu is split into meat, fish and veggie and there are 4 or 5 dishes per category. The waitresses were very thorough in talking us through the menu, and also checking if we had any allergies so they could advise us what to avoid, which was really helpful, as menus don't necessarily list every single ingredient in a dish. We ordered plentifully and dishes arrived one after another, until we were so full the only thing we could do was polish off an espresso martini and head to the flat for a little rest!

This is what we ate:

Lamb, asparagus, fregola, anchovy. This was one of my favourite dishes - the lamb was cooked to perfection and the flavours of the dish so harmonious. It was Spring on a plate and just so good. The anchovies added the perfect amount of saltiness against the slightly creamy fregola.

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