Eat like you give a damn
The best thing about Brighton & Hove has never been the brands you can find in every other city.
It's the independent cafés pouring coffee with care. The pubs where everybody feels like a regular. The bakeries selling out before lunchtime. The restaurants taking risks because someone had an idea worth putting on a plate.
That's the city we want to champion.
This guide is our quarterly edit of the places we genuinely think deserve your time and your money. No paid placements. No popularity contest. Just great independent food and drink, chosen by people who spend far too much time talking about where to eat next.
Inside you'll find new openings we're excited about, old favourites that have earned their place, and a few spots that deserve far more attention than they get. Whether you're after your next morning coffee, a long lunch, a proper pint or somewhere to celebrate, we've got you covered.
Independent hospitality gives Brighton & Hove its personality. It creates jobs, backs local producers, gives people a reason to explore different neighbourhoods and keeps the city from becoming a clone of everywhere else.
Every time you choose independent, you're voting for the kind of city you want to live in.
Download the guide. Get out there. Find somewhere new.
Bangers has been quietly serving Brighton from Baker Street for more than 30 years, with the family business now in its second generation. Step inside and you're greeted by a window packed with handmade pies, sausage rolls and sweet treats that somehow still feel priced for another decade. If you know, you know, The Beano is the one to order. Beef mince and baked beans wrapped in golden pastry has become a local legend for good reason. Check their opening days before making the trip, then thank yourself when you do.
Tucked down a side street beside the station, it's impossible to miss once you've seen that cobalt blue frontage. Inside, exposed brick, stainless steel and candlelit tables create the sort of room you'll happily lose an evening in, while sunny days spill out onto the tiny patio that gave the place its name.
The wine list leans towards independent producers, with a particular love for natural wines and local vineyards, including Titch Hill, who supply the house pours. The kitchen refuses to stand still. Instead of sticking to one menu, Patio hands the reins to a rotating line-up of chefs and food brands from Brighton and London, meaning every visit has the potential to be completely different from the last.
Brighton doesn't stand still, and neither does Patio. That's exactly why it feels like one of the city's most exciting openings in years.
Some cafés serve coffee. Mediterraneo serves conversation.
Sonia and Giorgio have been part of Brighton & Hove's hospitality scene for more than a decade, bringing a little slice of Sicily to Portland Road. They're the sort of hosts who remember your name, ask how you're doing and somehow convince you to stay longer than you planned. Pop in for a quick espresso at the bar and don't be surprised if you're still there ten minutes later, happily listening to one of Giorgio's stories.
The counter is filled with homemade Italian and English bakes, fresh savouries and a towering tiramisu that's become something of a local landmark. The walls are covered in Sonia's own Sicilian-inspired artwork, giving the café a personality that's impossible to separate from the people behind it. On selected evenings the lights stay on a little longer, with cocktails, Italian charcuterie and all the warmth that makes Mediterraneo such a special place.
Brighton has plenty of great cafés. Very few make you feel like you've just been welcomed into someone's home.
There aren't many people who can run a coffee shop, bake the bread, make the tiramisu and still find time to chat with everyone who walks through the door. Luciano, somehow, can.
Just over a year in, Casco has become a little Lewes Road favourite, squeezed into a tiny site with a handful of seats inside and a sunny terrace out front. Lou is a proper coffee nerd, in the best possible way, but there's much more going on behind the counter. Fresh schiacciata gets turned into mortadella sandwiches, tiramisu appears in fresh batches, and somehow the coffee keeps flowing while he's doing all of the above.
Some places become institutions because everyone knows about them. Canham's has managed something arguably more impressive: becoming a Hove institution while locals still desperately try to keep it to themselves.
Nearly 40 years on Church Road and Canham's is still doing things the old-fashioned way. A butcher and a baker under one roof, with the counters piled high with handmade sandwiches, Scotch eggs, pastries, bakes and more. The produce is properly good, the prices are refreshingly reasonable, and it's one of those places where you can walk in hungry and walk out with a very good lunch for not much money.
Instagram might get you through the door. One look at the counter will have you questioning whether you've ordered enough.
After years spent creating beautiful occasion cakes, Becky Redford opened her own bakery just over a year ago, and the result is exactly the kind of place that causes genuine decision paralysis. The counters are constantly loaded with pastries, cookies, cakes and savoury bakes, all looking far too good to choose between.
But Bee May isn't just a pretty feed. The coffee is good, the welcome is warm, and the baking more than backs up the hype. We're prepared to put our reputation on the line and call them the best cookies in Brighton.
There are few places in Brighton we'd rather find ourselves than Plateau. Date night, lunch with friends, birthday drinks, it somehow works without ever feeling like it's trying to.
These guys were pouring natural wine before half of Brighton knew what natural wine was, and their list still feels like it has been put together by people who actually give a shit about what's in the glass. The cocktails are no consolation prize either, and the small plates are exactly what you want alongside them.
For us, a plate of whipped cod's roe, some Plateau bread and a glass of wine is pretty close to a perfect afternoon. No notes.
We like places that know exactly what they are. Cut Your Wolf Loose is a tiny bar on Trafalgar Street with a very specific obsession: whisky, and lots of it.
There are around 450 open bottles to work your way through, from familiar names to bottles you probably won't have heard of. Even the cocktail list refuses to stray from the brief, with every drink built around whisky and designed to make the spirit feel a little less intimidating.
Because whisky can sometimes come wrapped in a bit too much ceremony. Red-trousered gentlemen, dusty bottles, someone explaining the correct way to hold a glass. CYWL has stripped all that away and left the good stuff. A tiny bar, a ridiculous whisky collection and, inexplicably, a sega megadrive and TV downstairs.
If someone asks us where to get the best sandwich in Brighton, Earls is very high on the list.
This Vietnamese sandwich shop has two spots across Brighton & Hove, keeping things deliberately tight with a small but seriously good menu of bánh mì. Fresh, punchy and properly satisfying, they're the sort of sandwiches that make you wonder why you ever settled for a meal deal.
Then there's Friday, when local legends Baby Bao take over the kitchen for a weekly bao residency. Two brilliant independent food businesses, one small space, and a very good reason to make Friday lunch plans.
Preston Street has carved out a reputation as one of Brighton's best foodie stretches, and Shaanxi is one of the reasons why.
Specialising in the food of Xi'an, this is where you'll find big, hand-pulled biang biang noodles, properly chewy and generously dressed. Our order is the slow-cooked beef short rib, piled over those noodles and served with enough sauce to make the whole thing worth the inevitable splashes.
If you're only going to order one thing, make it that. Then tell us we're wrong.
Truthfully, The Pickle doesn't need our help. The queues already stretch far out the door. But when someone is doing something truly special, it needs to be shouted about.
Who thought a pickle speciality sandwich shop would work? Well, lo and behold, here we are, pickle lemonade in one hand and the other pointing firmly towards the counter, piled high with pickle-filled sandwiches, pastries and bakes.
It's weird, it's wonderful, and it has committed fully to the pickle. We're here for it.
Easy to miss, but once you've found it, you'll understand why it's on our list.
This properly tiny boozer sits just off Brighton seafront, with barely enough room for the handful of people who already know about it. Somehow, they've still managed to squeeze around 40 beers behind the bar, so there's plenty to keep you occupied once you've found a corner.
The lack of space is part of the charm. It stays intimate, atmospheric and properly pub-like, especially once a month when folk musicians turn up and fill the room with a few tunes.
No TVs, no giant garden, no 200-seat dining room. Just a tiny Brighton boozer doing pub things very well.
If we were the types of people to gatekeep, Hand in Hand would be buried in the vaults. And for good reason. This is a top three pub for us across all of Brighton & Hove.
Another properly tiny Kemptown boozer, but this one brews its own beer on site, so it doesn't get much fresher than this. There's Toad if you know your pub games, plus regular jazz, folk and sea shanty nights. The whole place feels like it belongs to another world, in the best possible way.
It's eccentric, slightly chaotic and completely uninterested in taking itself too seriously. Like hanging out in your favourite old relative's living room, if your relative brewed their own beer and occasionally booked a sea shanty band.
It's hard to imagine anyone missing Tony's by this point, even though they've only been open just over a year.
They hit the ground running with some of the best pizza in Brighton and haven't really looked back. There's now a slice shop in the Open Market too, but for the full Tony's experience, get yourself a candlelit table at Trafalgar Street. Ideally, go when the rain is absolutely pissing against the windows and the condensation means you can barely see outside.
It's romantic, but in a properly sexy way. Much sexier than pizza should be allowed to be, and yet somehow, Tony's has pulled it off.
Another Church Road banger, and one that's very easy to walk straight past. The locals know better.
On the face of it, Unithai is an Asian grocery store. Look a little deeper, though, and you'll find a handful of tables tucked away at the back, serving some of the best Thai food in Brighton. Come evening, when those tables fill up, they'll even start squeezing extra ones into the aisles.
It's cheap, it's fast and the food is about as close to the real thing as you're likely to find around here. No fancy frontage, no elaborate dining room, just a grocery shop hiding a very good Thai restaurant out the back
Built for the scene, not for profit
The Indie Food Guide isn't another directory full of paid listings.
Nobody can buy their way onto this map. Every recommendation is chosen by us because we genuinely think it's worth your time. That's how it should be.
The guide is created and curated by Bread+Butter, a creative marketing agency that works with independent hospitality businesses across Brighton & Hove and beyond. We know this industry inside out because it's the one we work in every day.
Keeping the guide free matters just as much as keeping it independent. We don't charge venues to be featured, and we don't charge people to download or pick up a copy. Discovery shouldn't come with a price tag.
If more people discover brilliant independent businesses because of this guide, then we've done our job.
Designed by Tim Alexander
Tim Alexander is a commercial vector illustrator based in Brighton UK, and represented worldwide by Making Pictures. His approach to image making is focused on creative problem solving by breaking down concepts to reassemble them into clean, sharp illustrations with a focus on geometric shapes and fun, playful energy. Select clients include the NY Times, Guardian & the Financial Times.
Tim Alexander is a commercial vector illustrator based in Brighton UK, and represented worldwide by Making Pictures. His approach to image making is focused on creative problem solving by breaking down concepts to reassemble them into clean, sharp illustrations with a focus on geometric shapes and fun, playful energy. Select clients include the NY Times, Guardian & the Financial Times.
Designed by Tim Alexander
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