If Britain is on the brink of ruin, then Saturday-night Brighton hasn’t yet got the memo. The queues at Wagamama and Bill’s snake out of their doors, and there are revellers everywhere, revelling. There is not a seat to be had at the mid-price, group-friendly likes of Côte, Browns and Ask. No, these restaurants don’t have the cool factor that small independents do, but there’s a sense that these big beasts will weather the winter freeze to come. Cool, on the other hand, is a fickle and expensive thing to pull off – one of the coolest restaurants I know just put a small plate of jerusalem artichokes up to £19.50, which feels like a lot.
Increasingly, when booking a table for a group, the focus is firmly on the cheap and cheerful; somewhere with large tables, tolerable house white and food that fills you up. Into this testy landscape comes Tutto, a capacious, partially art-deco Euro-brasserie serving a menu they describe as “Italian food memories – ours and yours”. More accurately, they serve small portions of pappardelle at £14 a bowl or a chunk of sea bass on some sloppy shallots for £22, while a side of roast new potatoes comes in at a fiver. They don’t make pizzas, but they will do you a salumi board featuring finocchiona, coppa, speck and pickled fennel for £12. If this all feels a tad expensive, well, alas, such is the lie of the land these days: that very cool jerusalem artichoke place I mentioned earlier charges 23 smackers for its potato ravioli. Things are wild out there.
