If you walked to the end of the pier, past the gaudy new amusements, past the teacups and waltzers run by men called Dave with their slicked-back hair and mermaid tattoos, you came to a smaller penny arcade that housed Brighton’s seaside Victoriana. What the Butler Saw dioramas that offered a flash of ankle to generations of disappointed teens sat beside brightly painted horses locked forever in a two-dimensional Kentucky Derby against time and modernity. My favourite was the fortune teller. She would slowly raise her mechanical head and glow mysteriously. A shuddery wave of mannequin hand and out popped a card with suitably momentous news. It cost one large brass penny you collected at the door but afforded countless, priceless childhood memories.
What Madame Zita couldn’t foresee as she stared blindly out over the soggy fish n chips and tinned-tomato breakfasts of the hinterland was that Brighton and Hove, conjoined since 1997, would soon become a serious food destination. And Hove, always the less showy-offy of the twins, steals its fair share of the limelight: I share Nick’s enthusiasm for Wild Flor, and there’s Fourth and Church, eclectic Palmito, The Little Fish Market and The Urchin (seafood fanatics with a microbrewery) as well.
I’d been meaning to point my seaside socks n sandals towards etch (styled in all lower-case letters) for some time, a gentle stroll becoming an energetic flip-flop with the news that Sam Weatherill, restaurant manager and sommelier, had just added to his list of awards with an impressive #19 in the Taylor’s Port Top 100 Sommeliers list of UK talent. The restaurant is owned and run by Steven Edwards who, some will remember, won the sixth series of MasterChef: The Professionals in 2013. Since then, AA rosettes (3) and Michelin plaudits have come aplenty, with head chef George Boarer, spinning the pans since it opened in 2017, featured prominently in this year’s National Chef of the Year competition.
Occupying the last corner before Hove’s Church Road retreats into suburbia, etch looks smart in its blue-grey livery. Inside, cool-green banquettes occupy a lightly industrial space scattered with darkly playful artwork. The Ink bar downstairs – formerly a tattoo parlour – is indeed virtually pitch, a penumbral cellar with something of Berlin-period Bowie. Sadly, the Figgy Pop is no longer on the cocktail list so I opted for a fruity-savoury-spicy number of yellow Chartreuse, vermouth and verjus against a background of Armagnac Blanche. Fantastic and, it later transpired, one of Weatherill’s own creations.
Settling down with the menus (and my night-vision spectacles), I spotted trad, pesc and veg, five- and seven-coursers to which you can add cheese and a passing scallop for a modest supplement. There’s also a four-course ‘Edit’ menu. And Weatherill’s wine flight – ‘a very interactive experience, and not for the faint-hearted’ – unmissable, surely? Passing the open kitchen on the way to my table, I noted gleaming stainless steel and corps-de-ballet choreography: military precision, artistic flourishes and the odd relaxed smile, too. It was the same in the dining room where the uniform is a cheery mustard-coloured French workers’ jacket.
A glass of 2010 Nyetimber Classic Cuvée was squeezed in tableside. The restaurant has had an English-only sparkling policy since it opened, with the south-east particularly well represented by the likes of Everflyht, Rathfinny, Sugrue. ‘Danbury Ridge still wines are really good, too’, Weatherill confirmed, ‘and we’ve had their Chardonnay on the wine flight before now.’ More local delights featured in the accompanying snacks: cheese sablés sandwiched with Olde Sussex mousse alongside a tiny bale of mushrooms crowned with grated truffle. I doubted the wisdom of truffle this early in a meal, but have to admit it was pretty darn good with the fizz.
A truffle-raised eyebrow is nothing, however, to the world-weary eye-roll engendered by Marmite butter. But marble yeast extract through brioche dough and bake to a darker shade of mahogany and you have my attention. Particularly if it comes with butter made ferrous by seaweed and crowned with a shaggy toupee of Chinese takeaway-inspired crispy bits. Carby and emollient, it cleverly soothed the palate.
The first wine on the (mercifully smallish-pour) flight was unexpectedly bold, too – a Bukettraube from Cederburg in South Africa’s Western Cape. Jancis called the 2011 ‘explosive’ and the 2012 ‘a curiosity’ – both true of the 2022, as it balanced aromatic, off-dry charms with a mineral base and lash of acidity. Next to the wine appeared an earthenware bowl holding a cream-coloured seashell striped with neon green rising from a pool of magenta. It turned out to be beetroot soup with a rocher of horseradish ice cream and coriander accessories. The play of temperatures, the heating/cooling rush of subterranean roots, was beguiling. Sitting next to it was a ceviche tartlet, all crisp pastry shards and soft, raw plumpness.
A polite tussle with the waiter ensured I kept my residual Bukettraube for the fish course along with the planned Chenin Blanc – The Steen 2021, from Leo Steen’s Jurassic Park Vineyard in Santa Ynez Valley, California. I kept nosing between the two: the aromatic granite/oyster-shell spume of SA v the herbal, savoury fruit of CA. Thrilling. Alder found the 2022 Steen a tad reduced and austere but my 2021 had come into its own: richness dissolving into lithe, quince-driven elegance with a dash of ginger syrup and ripe greengage.
Would the wine outshine the fish, I wondered as the stone bass arrived. Also called meagre (although rarely on menus), stone bass isn’t as interesting as sea bass. And sea bass isn’t as interesting as quite a lot of other fish. The kitchen did a fair job with it, though: pearlescent, charred in the right places and complimented with a tart beurre blanc. Destined for the nice-but-unmemorable file, it was rescued from faint praise by the huddle of exquisitely cooked bitter-sweet lettuce underneath.
The menu promised guinea hen next. The gender of one’s food might sound like too much information: no one wants to anthropomorphise (gynomorphise?) their supper. But female game birds are often (although not universally) considered to be sweeter, more tender. In the case of Guinea fowl, a glorified chicken really, I wonder if a cock bird’s gamier depths wouldn’t be preferable? It was glorious, though, garnished with Grelot onions, hits of Sussex feta and minty salsa verde. The wine poured with it was Quinta dos Carvalhais’s NV Branco Especial, a Dão that mixed varieties (Encruzado, Sémillon, Gouveio et al), vintages and plots to rather extraordinary effect. It was round and full, with honey, nut and dried-fig notes from the aged wines and minty zip from the young. I see that Julia dreamed of roast chicken with her 2017 bottling: lucky me to have a chook (of sorts) on hand for the 2023.
A panko-ed duck-egg yolk, lightly smoky and herbal, arrived as a sort of savoury entremet. It came with a Stellenbosch Cinsault (Craven’s 2023). Dry-farmed, ocean-cooled and neutral-oak aged, it was bursting with cherry energy and a curl of smoke to echo the dish – a welcome intake of breath before the more gamey course ahead.
Lamb, the meat in question, and a 2011 Moulin-à-Vent Vieilles Vignes from Thibault Liger-Belair, was a take-no-prisoners pairing. Intense, dark berries, spiced, meaty depths, light smoke, herbal anise and pert acidity played back and forth between the plate and the glass. Jancis called the 2011 Moulin ‘a rugby player’, and lamb was an ideal teammate. But there was finesse, too, the burly poise of a top athlete. Lamb shank, venison haunch, rugby thigh: the pictures flicked through my mind like that old Victorian diorama.
A waiter arrived with promise of two puds. The first, described baldly as ‘Chocolate’, turned out to be a Bourbon-biscuit lookalike: Mayan Red ganache sandwiched between two buttery biscuits, served here with a beret of earl-grey ice cream. It was lifted by a sprinkle of sea salt and rounded out by the accompanying sweet Samos wine (Anthemis 2018) of PX intensity but touched by fresh Aegean winds. The second pud, ‘Cherry and Elderflower’, sounded a rather rumbustious way to end a meal but proved to be a parfait of beautiful restraint. A clever crumb underneath added yeasty, buttery notes that were reflected in the sweet, botrytised Pinot Gris served alongside (a 2017 Justin Boxler SGN from Alsace). A tuile with a depth of flavour rarely seen in a snazzy wafer completed the picture.
Full and slightly glazed (like a good apricot tart) I sipped at the last of the Boxler as I awaited the bill. It landed with a half-imagined thud, hardly unexpected but still raising the brow higher than an early-menu truffle. I’d dined extremely well, though, and to the very limits of the menu. One could, and arguably should, eat here much more modestly without diminuendo. Either way, worth every (large brass) penny. Friendly farewells in my ears, I wandered down to the prom for some sea air. Looking back up Hove Street, the stars seemed to hang heavy over etch’s chimney pots. Prophetic? We’ll have to ask Madame Zita.
Seven-course tasting menu with wine flight and a cocktail: £198 per head.
Note: by the time you read this, etch will have turned the page to their Autumn menus. Good news, they look pretty special, too.
etch by Steven Edwards 214–216 Church Road, Brighton and Hove BN3 2DJ, England; tel: +44 (0)1273 227 485
Photos are the author's own unless otherwise credited.
Next week, Nick Lander will be back on his usual schedule of Sunday restaurant reviews, while Ben gears up to launch a monthly cheese-and-wine column. Stay tuned.
