Viva Lewes Issue #133 October 2017

FOOD REVIEW
Côte Brasserie
Breton soup... in a former bank
The last time I went
through the door of
82, High Street it was
to beg for an extension
to my overdraft,
so it’s quite a pleasure
walking into what is
now Côte Brasserie
one Wednesday night
in mid-September.
It’s 8.30pm, and I’m
pleasantly surprised
that the place is nearly
full, or at least the front section is… the back
end goes on for ages. We’ve reserved, and are
directed to a sizeable round table, which gives us
excellent people-watching possibilities. The place
is designed as you’d imagine: on the safe side of
stylish, the predominant colour being Cotswoldfront-door
French grey.
There’s a deal on, as it’s the tenth anniversary of
the French-inspired chain’s start-up, with three
courses plus a glass of bubbly for £27.50: neither
my wife Rowena nor I can look past the steak
tartare as a starter. She spots the pork belly main
before I do, and I feel obliged to opt for something
different, so I go for the Breton soup. Our
extremely pleasant waitress is from San Sebastian,
and she is gushingly excited when I attempt to say
thank you in Basque as she brings us our wine, a
bottle of Chorey Les Beaune (£42, worth noting
that the house red costs £17.50).
The steak tartare (‘finely chopped raw beef with
shallots, capers, cornichons, egg yolk and cognac’)
is ample and delicious, and is served with two
slices of white toast. There’s something decadentseeming
about eating what is, in effect, raw steak,
something I’ve only ever done before on holiday
in France. It’s a dish I definitely wouldn’t make at
home, which adds
points – I wouldn’t
trust myself,
somehow, to get it
right.
Something I do
make at home – so
often I’ve worked
out how to make
it really tasty – is
fish soup, so I’m
interested to see
how they do it.
Very differently, is the answer: it’s very tomatoey,
quite piquant and bursting with different sorts
of fish: chunks of sea bream, plump mussels in
their shells, clams, prawns and squid. Delicious,
in a word, but not delicious enough to prevent a
wave of food envy when I hear the noises of appreciation
Rowena is making every time she has a
mouthful of pork belly. I try it: they’ve got the juxtaposition
of succulently tender meat and crunchy
crackling just right.
It’s worth describing the trip to the toilet, so
labyrinthine we dub it ‘Harry’ after the tunnel
in The Great Escape; once we’ve both negotiated
that (and it’s easy to get lost down there) we negotiate
a deal whereby we get a ‘digestif’ instead
of a pudding: I go for a Rémy Martin Cognac,
Rowena has an Armagnac.
The bill comes to £107. It’s our fault for being
so extravagant with the wine (which is delicious,
by the way) but it does lead me to thinking about
Lloyds Bank and overdrafts again. As we leave we
ponder whether Lewes is big enough to sustain
its recent influx of large chain restaurants: will
smaller businesses start folding, or will more
outsiders start coming into town? Let’s hope it’s
the latter. Alex Leith
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