Viva Lewes Issue #123 December 2016

FOOD REVIEW
Aqua
Just the (Italian) job
My first thought, on walking into Aqua, is:
‘thank god we booked.’ It’s a Thursday evening,
at 7.30pm, and the place is packed. On the table
in front of us there’s a group of five twentysomething
girls having a school reunion; behind
there’s another group of five, making up three
generations of what looks like the same family.
The place is so abuzz with chatter it’s difficult to
work out what genre of music is playing. It feels
like the weekend has already started.
If you haven’t already eaten at Aqua - and I can’t
remember a restaurant opening in town that’s
created such a stir - you’ll almost certainly
have had a curious look through the windows.
They’ve worked hard with the décor, creating
a soft, rounded version of that post-industrial
hanging-bulb look. There’s a vast bar, with an
open kitchen behind. And, on the wall overlooking
the table we’ve chosen, next to the window,
a large photograph of a misty Tuscan valley.
We decide to gorge ourselves à la carte, as
we’ve missed the till-7pm early-evening menu
offer, and help things down with a bottle of
Sangiovese (£17.95) The full description of my
carpaccio starter (£6.50), is ‘Sliced aged fillet
beef with aged parmesan cheese and Cipriani
dressing’. It’s the thickest carpaccio I’ve ever
had, its raw wholesome cow taste set off by the
white sauce, a tangy lemon-mayonnaisey affair,
and the slivers of hard cheese. I’ll be having that
again. Rowena finds her Fritto Misto (£6.75) a
little too fritto for her liking; I nick a deep-fried
battered prawn head off her plate, crunch into
it, and tell her that’s how they do it in Italy.
My main is subtitled ‘8 hour braised pork cheeks
with creamy mashed potato, rich chianti jus and
black pudding fritter (£13.75)’, and it tastes as
good as that sounds. How can you describe such
flavour without resorting to cliché? It really
melts in the mouth. Rowena reports back from
her end of the table that the seabass (£13.95) is
good too: they’ve managed to crisp the skin just
right, which makes it the tastiest bit.
There’s a ‘selection of our desserts to share’
(£10.95), and we don’t usually, but this is starting
to feel like a special occasion, so what the
hell. I particularly enjoy the tiramisu and the
shortbread biscuits, but my attention is distracted
by the fact that they stock Fernet Branca - a
dark digestivo spirit I haven’t tasted since I was
last in Italy - which rounds the meal off pretty
damn well. It’s not quite a Proustian moment,
but it does take me back in time.
In the Italian town where I spent a few years in
my twenties, I used to go to restaurants a lot,
and I realised they were quite different from
ours, in that most of them were set up to cater
for everyone in town - of all ages and tastes
and depth of pocket. Aqua, where you can get
a Margherita pizza for £7.95 if you don’t want
anything fancy, seems to be just that, and I
reckon we’re much the better for it.
Alex Leith
The Old Courthouse, Friars Walk, 01273 470763
Photos by Alex Leith
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