Restaurants

Thanks to working with Laura Evans, I find out about new restaurants because she gets invited to openings and to review them (check out Places I Eat). When she mentioned H.en – a nicer Nandos – I gave it a google. Never, I repeat NEVER, google ‘hen Brighton’. All that comes up are photos and articles showcasing the worst of Brighton (take note potential hen parties: you are not welcome here. We [I] hate you). But I persevered and found their menu online and forced the boy to join me for dinner there on Friday evening. We arrived about 8.30pm and we rounded customer numbers up to 10. I was expecting it to be busier, but this always happens when we go out before pay day. The restaurant is decorated as most new restaurants in Brighton are – unfinished walls and tables, a less is more kinda thing.

So we took a table in the corner and one of the staff bought over their menus. The options are a quarter or half a chicken with two sides, or (as we went for) a chicken burger (plus a veggie burger option). We both went for sweet potato fries with our burgers (the other options: corn on the cob, salad or halloumi) because we, like the majority of Brighton, are pretty obsessed with sweet potato fries.

The burgers arrived and we were very excited. Sauces were delivered in three little bottles – the Herbie, the Miles and the Duke. Sadly, the teeny tiny nozzles get a bit blocked, and my childish impatience led to one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever done. As I squeezed the bottle to try to get some sauce out, the lid popped off and sauce hit my plate with such force that it rebounded over the table, my fries, my face, my hair and my clothes. Obviously as this point I yelled quite loudly and Dan laughed at me. A lot. Luckily we had sat at the table nearest the toilet so I ran out and hid in the toilet to wipe my face and hair clean and slunk back in to eat my dinner.

The photo of my plate is after I had cleaned up the table. Face not shown.

Sauce was literally everywhere. But anyway. The food. The burger was huge. It was basically half a fried chicken in a bun. A big pot of fries to go with it. I really enjoyed my meal (post sauce explosion) but I had two issues (other than the sauce bath). Firstly, bits of the chicken burger were quite dry which I can only assume is because parts of it were so thick (but I had lots of sauce in my plate so I managed with that easily enough) and secondly the fries were more like stumps. The fries themselves were probably some of the best sweet potato fries I’ve eaten in Brighton, but the average length of each chip was about 1cm.

But moving on to the good bits. The fried chicken was nice and crispy and not soggy and greasy. The sauces were delicious (what was left of them anyway). The Herbie was light and citrusy, the Miles had a nice tomato warmth to it and the Duke had a nice chili kick that I LOVE in a sauce. All worked brilliantly with the burger, and I imagine a grilled chicken portion would be delicious dunked in all three of these. The bottles were an issue, and as we left we heard another table suggesting they put them in pots instead so you can actually get them onto your plate. H.en say on their website that they are the first “local and happy (high welfare) chicken shop”. I wasn’t able to work out from the taste whether my chicken was free-range but there was certainly a lot of meat. And it made me happy so I’d like to think the chicken was happy as well.

I am definitely planning on going back to H.en. But next time, I’m going to unscrew the lids from the sauce bottles.

To save yourself the horrors of drunk women stumbling around Brighton, you can check out H.en’s website here: www.henrestaurant.com/ and they are on Twitter here.

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I don’t want to start this post with a lie so I’m going to be open and say it: I’ve had a few glasses of wine. I also forgot that I am now a ‘blogger’ so I have one photo of my food, and it’s not the food-porn Instgrammed photo you’re all hoping for. But more of that later.

So today was our work dinner. After trying and failing to get into Curry Leaf Cafe, we settled on Makara on Church Road, Hove. I walk past this place twice a day to get to and from work and every day I think “oh, that looks nice”. And that is about as far as it went.

When it got suggested in the office I did as we all do, instantly googled it and read the menu every ten minutes throughout the day trying to decide what sounded best. After a cheeky glass of wine at Blind Busker, we trekked the 10 feet across the road and entered the restaurant. The first thing that hits you is a wall of heat. Then the smell. Oh my that smell. The smell of meat and spice and everything nice. We got seated at our table at the back and ordered some wine (white) and water for the table. The water arrived in the fashionable Kilner bottles that are super trendy and everywhere yet I still want desperately for my flat. Along with the water came some hummus and hot, greasy flatbread that was beautiful on an empty stomach and a glass of wine (I realise greasy sounds like a negative review but I actually mean this in the best way, it was delicious!)

We decided that the best idea for seven people would be to get two of the cold mezze to share plus hot starters. We (I) specifically requested the vine leaves to be included in the cold mezze (6 of the cold starters) but apart from that we left it to them. We got a selection of artichoke (which sadly got nommed before it got passed down to my end of the table), vine leaves, hummus, cacik (yogurt and cucumber), kisir (bulgur with onion and tomato) and more. The vine leaves were minty and fresh as hoped, and the bread went beautifully with the various forms of hummus/yogurt dip. Looking back now as I write this, I should have asked exactly what we were eating. Alas, it is too late. For hot starters we had falafel balls (crispy on the outside and yummy in the middle and served with more hummus), grilled halloumi (which is basically the food of the gods and so can never be wrong or bad with its squeaky goodness) and prawns with garlic and chili (which had a very good spicy kick to them, which when paired with one of the yogurt dressings was a delight).

Our waitress was really nice and attentive despite it being rammed with Christmas parties and couples and groups of friends, our water was always topped up and she was quick at delivering and clearing all of our plates.

About a minute after our starters were cleared, the mains arrived. Never in my life has a main appeared so quickly. As one plate was removed another was placed in front of me. And another basket of bread arrived. This is me at my happiest. After a lot of discussion I settled on Iskander (grilled minced lamb with yogurt and tomato sauce on pita bread cubes with rice and salad) only to be told that they no longer serve that. Instead of throwing a strop I went for my second choice of Ali Nazik (sautéed lamb with smoky aubergine purée with yogurt and garlic, with rice and salad on the side).

The salad was cold and fresh and was a welcome change after the richer sauces, the rice was nice and dry and worked brilliantly at soaking up my auberginey-yogurty sauce (which was also lovely and smokey and was a good combination of spicy and creamy). My one disappointment was my lamb. Whilst it was flavoured beautifully with various spices, I seemed to get the fattiest bits of lamb. It was helpfully already cut up into small pieces, but the lamb itself was quite tough and chewy. Which was a shame as it tasted great, but gnawing on bits of fat isn’t my thing.

No one else seemed disappointed with their meal. Indeed someone else had the same dish as me and had no complaints so I am hoping that I just sadly got the short straw with the bits I was served. I was surrounded by lamb kofte, tavuk sis (chicken breast with pepper and garlic – one complaint here. Again beautifully flavoured but was a bit dry. A spoonful of my sauce helped) and lamb chop-esque meals.

Complaints aside, I managed to scoff my whole meal so I can’t have hated it that much. And here comes the one photo that I took.

Whilst I wasn’t 100% happy with my main meal, I enjoyed every other second of my meal and would happily go back again to try out the rest of their menu. The only reason I made a fairly quick decision about my main meal was because I had stared at the menu for most of the day. Particularly with the starters, I believe my remark was “I will happily eat every item on this menu. In fact, if you can bring me one of everything that will be great”. This is my first experience of eating Turkish food in a restaurant and it certainly won’t be my last.

I realise this is a fairly shoddy review, but I’m learning. Next time I will hold off filling my mouth just long enough to take a photo. And I will pay attention to what I am eating.

You can read Makara’s menu here and you can follow them on Twitter here.

For more of my daily witterings you can follow me on Twitter and for some slightly better photos of food and gin, I am also on Instagram.

Jenny in Brighton

I'm Jenny and I live in Brighton

H.en – a review

Makara, Hove – review