Brighton has never been short of places to eat. It has, at various points, been short of restraint, chairs that do not wobble, and restaurants that understand a small plate should not cost the same as a minor plumbing emergency. But this season, the city feels unusually sharp.
There is a Michelin star in Hove. There are tasting counters barely bigger than a respectable kitchen island. There is live-fire cooking, serious seafood, vegetarian mischief, handmade pasta, Japanese pop-ups, and wine lists that suggest someone has spent many late nights lovingly arguing with Burgundy.
The best news is that Brighton’s food scene no longer feels like it is trying to be London with more gulls. It is becoming more confident in its own habits: informal but ambitious, coastal without being twee, independent without always being chaotic. Here is where to book now.
Brighton and Hove finally has its Michelin moment. Maré by Rafael Cagali, on Church Road in Hove, was awarded one Michelin star in the 2026 guide, making local restaurant history after decades without a starred address. The restaurant comes from Rafael Cagali of two-Michelin-starred Da Terra, with head chef Ewan Waller leading the kitchen. Its name means “tide” in Portuguese, and the cooking draws on Cagali’s Brazilian-Italian background while leaning into Sussex and British produce.
The appeal is obvious: proper technique, polished service, and Hove doing that increasingly convincing thing where it pretends not to care that it is becoming the grown-up sibling. Go for the chef’s tasting menu if you want the full argument. Go à la carte if you would rather retain the illusion of casualness.
Best for: the booking you make before everyone else realises how hard it is to get in.
Furna is the sort of restaurant that uses the phrase “seasonal tasting menu” and actually means it. Chef Dave Mothersill’s central Brighton dining room offers à la carte, set lunch and tasting menus, with an open-kitchen confidence that makes the whole thing feel grown-up without becoming stiff. The restaurant says its menus use high-quality seasonal ingredients, while its current food page shows spring 2026 sample menus.
This is Brighton fine dining without the hushed, slightly funereal atmosphere that sometimes makes you wonder whether the amuse-bouche has recently lost a relative. It is elegant, serious and still recognisably of the city.
Best for: a long lunch that becomes dinner’s problem.
Dilsk remains one of Brighton’s most quietly assured restaurants. Set inside Drakes on the seafront, it describes itself as relaxed fine dining with a focus on sustainable food, ethical growers and local producers from East Sussex and the surrounding area.
Its strength is that it feels coastal without reaching for clichés. No fishing nets on the wall. No “catch of the day” theatrics. Just precise cooking, a sense of place and enough polish to make a hotel dining room feel like a destination rather than somewhere you ended up because it was raining.
Best for: refined Sussex cooking with sea air attached.
Etch. has been doing the Hove tasting-menu thing long enough to make it look easy, which is usually a sign it is not easy at all. Steven Edwards, winner of MasterChef: The Professionals in 2013, serves seasonal tasting experiences on Church Road, with the restaurant’s own menu page currently listing four courses at £55 and six courses at £80.
There is a precision here that suits Hove: clean lines, careful plates, very good wine, and just enough ceremony to make the evening feel like an event. It is special occasion dining, but not the sort where you need to whisper about the cutlery.
Best for: birthdays, anniversaries and “we deserve this” dinners.
The Little Fish Market is still one of the city’s great small-room restaurants: 20 covers, fish-led tasting menus and Duncan Ray’s obsessive attention to detail. Its own site describes the cooking as local and sustainable seafood with “exemplary attention to detail”, while Michelin continues to list it in the 2026 guide.
It is not a restaurant for people who want seven sides and a debate about whether the table can share fries. It is focused, exacting and built around seafood. The room is intimate enough that you may briefly worry everyone can hear your wine choice. They probably can. Order anyway.
Best for: seafood purists and people who like restaurants with a clear point of view.
The Salt Room is back after a major refurbishment, reopening in May 2026 with its seafront view, charcoal-grilled seafood and a refreshed room. The restaurant says it has been “reimagined from the ground up”, while trade press reported its relaunch after a four-month hiatus.
Brighton has many restaurants near the sea and surprisingly few that make the sea feel central rather than decorative. The Salt Room’s advantage is obvious: seafood, fire, terrace, West Pier view. It is the place to take visitors who want Brighton to behave like the brochure promised.
Best for: oysters, whole fish, shellfish platters and pretending the A259 is not there.
Embers is what happens when Brighton’s ancient instinct to gather around flames is given cocktails and better lighting. Tucked into Meeting House Lane, it cooks everything over open wood fire and has become one of the city’s most enjoyable shared-table restaurants. Restaurants Brighton’s 2026 top 20 places it among the city’s strongest current restaurants, and Embers’ own site leans into “wood fired cooking and cocktails” with the pleasingly direct motto of “fire and friendship”.
The food is smoky, generous and social. This is not where to come for a hushed tasting menu and a server describing foam with a tragic backstory. Come with friends. Order too much. Accept that at least one thing will arrive dramatically charred, which is exactly the point.
Best for: groups, dates and anyone who thinks dinner should smell faintly of a campfire.
Wild Flor is a neighbourhood restaurant with a cellar habit. The cooking is classic European, built around local ingredients and a regularly changing à la carte, while the wine list gives serious attention to Burgundy, the Rhône, Piedmont and beyond. Its current menu page also lists a spring set menu at £23 for two courses or £25 for three, which in 2026 feels almost suspiciously civilised.
This is where to go when you want proper food, proper wine and no one asking whether you have “dined conceptually” before. It is quietly one of the most useful restaurants in the city: smart enough for a treat, relaxed enough for Tuesday.
Best for: wine lovers and grown-up comfort.
Cin Cin’s Hove restaurant continues to make the case for Italian food that is seasonal, modern and not simply a parade of burrata with feelings. The restaurant describes itself as an award-winning Italian neighbourhood spot serving seasonal small plates, handmade pasta, aperitifs and wines from across Italy, with Sussex produce worked into the menu.
Counter dining gives it energy. The pasta gives it purpose. The room gives it that useful feeling of being intimate without being cramped, unless you arrive carrying three tote bags and the emotional baggage of a long week.
Best for: pasta, aperitivo energy and civilised Hove evenings.
Terre à Terre has been doing ambitious vegetarian and vegan food since 1993, which in Brighton restaurant years makes it not so much established as geological. It remains one of the city’s defining dining rooms, serving world-inspired vegetarian and vegan menus, small plates, afternoon tea and organic, natural and English wines. It was also voted Brighton’s best restaurant in the 2026 BRAVO public awards.
The trick here is longevity without beige complacency. Terre à Terre still understands that vegetarian food should not mean everyone quietly pretending a mushroom is a steak. It is playful, excessive, occasionally bonkers and all the better for it.
Best for: vegetarians, vegans and meat-eaters who need reminding vegetables are not a punishment.
Bonsai Plant Kitchen is a fully vegan South East Asian restaurant on Baker Street, serving small plates cooked on Japanese coal with bespoke cocktails. It describes itself as multi-award-winning, and its official site gives the essentials: Baker Street address, evening openings through the week and weekend lunch service.
Brighton is not short of vegan food, but Bonsai has avoided the worthy-café trap. It is darker, louder, more inventive and considerably more fun than anything involving a laminated oat milk policy. This is plant-based dining with actual swagger.
Best for: vegan small plates with heat, texture and a proper night-out feel.
The Set has finally gone tiny on purpose. Chefs Dan Kenny and Marcin Miasik have secured a permanent Preston Road home for their long-running tasting-menu concept, with Restaurant Online reporting that the new incarnation seats just 12 covers. The restaurant’s own site now calls it “the smallest restaurant in Brighton”, with 10 seats overlooking the kitchen counter and two in the window.
It is the most literal version of the chef’s table in the city: intimate, immediate and probably not the place to stage a breakup unless you want the entire room to experience it as a pairing course. The Set does not advertise a fixed menu, saying it cooks the best food it can each day with no limitations. That could be terrifying in the wrong hands. Here, it is the point.
Best for: counter dining, curiosity and people who book before reading the menu.
SORA arrives at Malmaison Brighton Marina as a Japanese sushi and robata pop-up from 20 May to 31 August 2026, which gives the Marina a seasonal reason to be more than a place where people argue about parking.
Cecconi’s Brighton, inside Brighton Beach House, remains open for lunch and dinner with Northern Italian dishes, handmade pasta and a terrace overlooking the sea. Non-members should check booking access before turning up in linen and optimism.
Brighton’s restaurant scene this season feels less like a collection of good places and more like an ecosystem. Hove has the polish. The Lanes have the theatre. The seafront has its seafood confidence back. The independents are still doing the slightly reckless, highly necessary work of making the city taste like itself.
Book Maré if you want the headline. Book The Set if you want the counter. Book The Salt Room if you want the sea. Book Terre à Terre or Bonsai if you want plant-based food with actual personality. And book early, because Brighton may be relaxed about many things, but a decent table at 8pm on a Saturday is not one of them.
