Terre a Terre, Brighton

Wednesday's g2 featured Brighton on its front cover - the main feature inside being about what a great city it is, calling it 'our own San Francisco'. By bizarre coincidence, I started reading this as I was on the train on the way there. Having not have been for years, it was exciting to note Terre a Terre, the restaurant I would be eating lunch at, as one of their highly recommended places. Apparently it is regularly voted the top vegetarian restaurant in the UK.

I was intrigued to try it, since so often my experience of specifically 'vegetarian' restaurants seem to be deliberately wholesome, which often correlates with just quite boring. I realise this is extremely discriminatory. While a lot of excellent restaurants do offer great vegetarian options, if I was a non meat-eater I would probably be peeved at the limited choice of genuinely exciting meals. Vegetables do by no means always have to accompany meat, but there don't seem to be enough restaurants that would encourage non-vegetarians to eat an entirely meat-free meal and be very happy about it. Terre à Terre is such a place. Everything from the names of the dishes, to the presentation and of course the taste, is playful.

It took us a while to decide, with each menu entry having on average three lines of description. After being tempted by the (Pooh bear inspired?) 'Idli Pom', we both went for the 'Pulborough's Asparagus Army' to start (pictured above). The espresso cup bearing frothiness was fun to dip crispy asparagus spears into, revealing a few mouthfuls of pea green thyme flavoured soup. The salad on the side of samphire and mint inspired me to make something similar - I have always found samphire a little too salty, but cut with sour lemon and the freshness of mint, it was delicious.

For the main, I liked the sound of the 'Sussex Soufflé and Ploughman's Picklewitch', as a chance to try some strong local cheddar, but instead ordered 'Smoked Sakuri Soba', as I'm quite into cold noodles of late. The noodles were mixed with raw vegetable spaghetti and all sorts of shoots and leaves, with chunks of smokey tofu and more than one delicious sauce - a smudge of thick satay, and drizzles of sesame cream which was nice with beads of pomegranate. N's 'Sodden Socca' was perhaps less unusual, although not so in the presentation. She was shocked to see they had squirted French's mustard all over the plate, which turned out to be a sweet surprise in the form of an orange and saffron dressing. I liked the exotic plant form they had made from stalks on the caper berry. Towers of food in descending size surrounded by shrubbery looked like architectural features.

The dessert section of the menu certainly won the prize for the most original names: one was simply called 'Bum'. We could only manage ond between us, and chose the 'Gorgeous Gugel' - a warm chocolate pudding that oozed from the middle, served with a fantastic white granita and a mound of blackcurrants. Strands of mint topped the pud, and although it seems like too many different flavours, they all complemented eachother well.

It was fun to see vegetarian ingredients experimented with in the way of high-end regular restaurants, to the extent that you wouldn't be missing the meat from the menu, and without an inkling of wholesomeness (the picture above is evidence for that). My next stop is to find a mid-range vegetarian restaurant that makes me as excited as somewhere like The Dogs in Edinburgh, where I think food feels special even though it's not breaking the bank. For now, however, thank you to N for such a treat.

Terre à Terre

71 East Street, Brighton

www.terreaterre.co.uk