Brighton, on a Tuesday
The city everyone visits on a Saturday is better on a Tuesday. Our opening dispatch from the south coast: where the tables are, who is cooking, and why the sea still decides the mood.
The brief
Brighton has an image problem, and the image is a stag do. Ignore it. The city that locals actually live in is smaller, stranger and considerably better fed than the one that comes off the London train at noon on a Saturday.
Our rule for this issue: nothing here needs a weekend. Every room in it works on a Tuesday, in the rain, for two people who decided at six.
The sea sets the mood
The seafront is not scenery here, it is a weather report. When the wind comes off the water at Hove Lawns you go inland and eat something braised. When it is flat and gold you take a tin of something cold to the beach below the Peace Statue and stay until the light goes. Everything else in this magazine is downstream of that decision.
Who is cooking
The interesting cooking has moved out of the centre. Seven Dials has quietly become the best half-mile of restaurants in Sussex. Hanover feeds itself entirely, with bakeries that sell out by eleven. Hove does the long lunch better than anywhere on the coast. The Lanes still own the late floors.
How to use this issue
Six neighbourhood guides, one list of the openings that actually matter, one seafront drinking map, and forty-eight hours you can hand to a visitor without embarrassment. Start where you are standing.
And if you are new here: say you are about. Somebody on this app is already at the pub you are thinking of.