Telephone: 01273 821218
Address: 139 King's Road Arches, Brighton, Sussex
Rating: 15/20

I have mixed memories of the seafront at Brighton. The joys of the aquarium and the tacky ghost train on the pier held a peculiar delight for me. I loved, too, the romantic melancholy of those wet, blowing days when resting actors and actresses, swaddled in rainproofs, dragged their miserable dachshunds and Dandie Dinmonts along the glistening promenade. And then there was the time I stepped out of a booth selling candyfloss, already chewing the pink spun sugar, when a prodigious gust of wind lifted the entire gaudy creation off the stick and plastered it all over my face. It is not easy to maintain your dignity or your temper when you are encrusted in pink sugar.

So I returned to Brighton the other day with a keen sense of nostalgia, but, to be truthful, not much by way of gastronomic expectation. I don't know why, but Brighton has never flourished in the way you would expect. Oh yes, there's that long-time favourite, the Black Chapati, and One Paston Place held its rating as the fine dining establishment, and Terre à Terre is one of the better vegetarian restaurants about, but really, you would have thought that combination of loucheness and luxury, gaiety and glamour that has always been part of the town's allure would have conjured up a higher general standard.

I won't say that Due South is enough on its own to move Brighton up the regional eating league, but, by heavens, it's a useful start. It occupies a delightful site right down at beach level, in one of the arches cut below the promenade road. Look inwards and it's like a well-lit tube station. Look out and there's the pebble beach with the sea beyond, with Palace Pier standing ornate and faintly ridiculous to your left and the tragic, fire-mangled skeleton of what use to be the West Pier to your right.

On a day of sunshine and monsoons, as it was when Hobbs, Jack and I sat down for lunch, the whole place had a relaxed, cheery energy, although, for a time, scandalously, we were the only people there. I can't think why. It can't have been the prices that put them off: £6.50 for steamed, buttered Midhurst asparagus with hollandaise sauce; £7.50 for eggs Benedict with Sussex ham; £8.50 for South Down lamb kebabs with couscous salad, raita and pitta bread, by way of illustration. Hobbs and Jack are both eaters of the first order, and so between the three of us we ordered the asparagus; the eggs; mussels cooked in local cider; a burger made from Dexter beef with mushrooms, roasted onions, Norbury blue cheese dressing and salad; a pedigree Sussex steak sandwich with mushrooms, roasted onions and horseradish cream; and a grilled local black bream with lemon and thyme, sautéed potatoes and salad. Oh yes, and a chocolate brownie with ice cream, elderflower panna cotta with rhubarb, and apple pie and cream. And a bottle of St Veran, which didn't do too badly in its battle against some pretty diverse flavours.

Midhurst asparagus, Dexter beef, Norbury blue cheese, local fish - obviously Due South makes a point of ensuring that its raw materials are seasonal, local and organic. However, it is one thing to take care of the produce, quite another to treat it with the care and respect that it deserves. Luckily, the team at Due South keep their wits about them when it comes to the cooking. There are few things better in world food than very fresh new season's asparagus, precisely cooked and served with a classically made hollandaise sauce. It's true that hollandaise sauce would make a telephone directory easy eating, so tip-top asparagus is a pushover. The mussels were as good as any I've eaten in recent memory. The bream was a perky, bright-fleshed, sparklingly fresh piece of fish grilled with Blumenthalian precision. I could go on.

I will go on: hollandaise-deep and spinach-high eggs Benedict; a steak sandwich that Jack had trouble compressing so she could get it into her mouth; a burger that reminded me just how good this much-traduced form of food can be; heart-quenching brownie; panna cotta a perfect foil to rhubarb. And now I really will stop.

As the sun came out, and we opened the windows to let in the sea breezes, we couldn't help feeling that there were few more pleasant places to pass the time, watching the waves trundle up the shore and the seagulls swing by overhead.

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