Viva Brighton Issue #58 December 2017

BITS AND BARS
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Painting by Jay Collins
PUB: THE SUSSEX YEOMAN
I pop into The Sussex Yeoman at 4.45 on a
Wednesday afternoon. It’s empty. I order a pint of
Noble craft lager, and notice that every one of the
ten or so tables in the place has a little notice on it
reading ‘reserved’ for various times between 6 and
8pm. One wall is dominated by a blackboard with a
delicious-looking menu on it. I realise that, in effect,
I haven’t come to a pub, I’ve come to a gastro pub,
and that to do the place justice in this write up, I’m
going to have to come back another time and eat.
In the meantime I do a little research. The Sussex
Yeoman has been so-called since 1854, when this
part of Guildford Road was still called Trafalgar
Street; prior to the pub being purpose built, the site
was used as the railway goods yard. In the sixties and
seventies it was run by Sue and Bob Schultz, with
singing round the piano on a Friday and Saturday
night, a dartboard, a shove ha’penny table and a
small jukebox. Later on it became the haunt of
punks and bikers, and known as being a ‘rough’ pub;
one night a man was stabbed to death after a fight
that started inside spilled out into the street. Around
the turn of the millennium it became famous for its
sausage and mash: one regular remembers that it
used to have Yorkshire puddings nailed to the wall.
The type of food on the menu nowadays, I learn,
as I return the next day at lunchtime, has got a lot
more sophisticated. I order another pint of Noble,
and decide to start with the Dover sole tempura,
which comes with Asian salad and soy dip (£7.50),
and graduate to a venison burger with pickled
beetroot, Brighton Blue cheese, seasonal salad and
fries (£13).
The manager John is there and he tells me about
the provenance of their food – he gets it from a
South Downs warden, and Susannah, a ‘singing
shepherdess’ – and how he made the decision to
concentrate on food after the smoking ban. The
pub has no outside space, and he lost many of his
customers to neighbouring places that did.
He did the right thing. The food is so delicious, I
immediately book a table for the next big threegeneration
set-piece meal, to celebrate the birthday
of my stepson. With all the eateries on offer in
Brighton, you can call that an endorsement. AL
7 Guildford Road, Brighton
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