Restaurants

For a special occasion, treat yourself to dinner at one of the top restaurants in Sussex. East & West Sussex is a food-obsessed county, and eating out is something of a habit for locals. Everywhere you’ll find laid-back bistros, lively canteens, elegant dining rooms, breezy beach cafés and casual rustic eateries.   

A guide to eating out in Sussex has to mention Brighton and Hove where locals like to boast that you could eat out every night for a year without visiting the same place twice. True or not, the city is certainly the place for global grazing, with food from almost every country in the world from America to Zanzibar. Hot tickets include long-established oyster bars and brasseries; lively, good value Italians; award-winning vegetarians and sophisticated, modern diners, where young chefs are mixing English fare with pan-asian and Mediterranean cuisines with delicious results.

A must, if you can find the room after a blow-out dinner, is a classic Sussex cream tea in a tea-room or café, complete with salmon and cucumber sandwiches and homemade scones and cakes, and even, perhaps, a glass of Champagne.

With so many great places to eat, it’s hard to single out a few, but if you like banoffi pie try the Hungry Monk at Jevington, where banoffi pie was invented in 1972.