Pintxo People

Here in Brighton we have good quality modern Basque and Catalan cuisine, bringing a new dimension to tapas that pays scant heed to national boundaries and rejoices in the involvement of materials from the world over.

Downstairs is a café bar and deli, open from 10am to 11.30pm, beneath a restaurant that opens from 12pm to 3pm and 6pm to midnight. Here we concern ourselves with the restaurant where Executive Chef Miguel Jessen and Head Chef Derrick Ashby bring a wide range of joint experience to bear on this friendly, sharing, conversational food. Their menus change with the seasons and the availability of class ingredients, but essentially the restaurant is a little Barcelona with innovative tapas, small plates and raciones.

Ideally two people should choose around five plates between them, leaving room for a dessert - and graze. Fish dishes include octopus with broken potatoes and chorizo, or salmon and salmon caviar. For meat look for wild pork fillet with pineapple and lentil curry, black pudding surprise with apple and savoy or ox sirloin with onion marmalade and rosemary fries.

This is a cuisine that can make even hardened carnivores look with some interest at vegetarian dishes amongst which think vegetable spring rolls with citrus marmalade or a roast vegetable terrine with anchovies - quite exceptionally good.

Desserts come with a recommendation for a suitable wine to accompany each one, thus a puff pastry apple flan with basil sorbet partners a Trentham Estate Noble Taminga, described as a cross between riesling, farina and traminer.

The result of all this is that very good food is enjoyed in surroundings which are maybe a touch austere, but certainly do not distract. Pintxo People is in tune with the Brighton atmosphere, and as the summers grow hotter and people travel more so this form of eating out will grow in popularity.

For parties of ten or more there are party menus that take the agony out of choosing and leave you free to enjoy the company and the quality of the food.