Review: The Set, Brighton

The Set is a tasting menu place in Brighton that has somehow escaped my notice for a few years, even though it sets out its stall as “meat, umami and fat driven cooking” which is, frankly, my kind of thing. It was time to rectify this.

They take over a place called Cafe Rust in the evening a few nights every week. It’s a cool looking cafe, with just the kind of stripped-back quirky industrial boho antique chic that Brighton adores. The menu is fourteen courses, all small and balanced so you end up well fed but not stuffed.

And we enjoyed some really good dishes, with plenty of flavour as promised.

Some of the best early bites included a piece of sea bream tempura’d in a crispy and bubbly batter with a drizzle of okonomyaki-style sauce over. Lovely crunch around the full-flavoured nugget of fish. The beef bearnaise was a thin slice of raw ex-dairy cow laid over a little beignet full of warm bearnaise. This was just scrumptious.

Then they do a fun thing with bread, in this case a toasted brioche, where the butter tastes exactly like a McDonalds cheeseburger from your childhood. I think it’s accomplished with beef fat, finely diced gherkin and a bit of processed cheese, but it’s still fun and clever.

The next series of courses covers fish, shellfish, beef and chicken. The cod in lobster bisque was the standout dish: a cloud-like clod of translucent cod set in a lake of dark and massively flavourful bisque. The scallop tikka masala had a lovely gravy but the scallop was a bit overcooked. Oxtail dauphinoise combined both elements into one block of starchy, creamy, oxtail-y goodness and a side dish of tomatoes in bright herb oil was a clever pairing to lift the whole.

I need to shout-out the puds as well. Yuzu and chilli sorbet with rhubarb (a bit lost) was one of the great palate cleansers. The main pud was a hot pot of miso-flavoured bitter chocolate, made bravely bitter enough that it was a truly great flavour-packed indulgence rather than an over-sweet plod. Nice clean mango pavlova to finish.

This was a really strong tasting menu for £85 each, I’ve plodded through a lot less interesting and capable for the same price or more. We took the wine pairing but this wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as the menu – I’d pick a bottle if I came back. And I would come back, because The Set is properly inventive and just my kind of cooking.