Viva Brighton Issue #58 December 2017
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BITS AND BARS<br />
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Painting by Jay Collins<br />
PUB: THE SUSSEX YEOMAN<br />
I pop into The Sussex Yeoman at 4.45 on a<br />
Wednesday afternoon. It’s empty. I order a pint of<br />
Noble craft lager, and notice that every one of the<br />
ten or so tables in the place has a little notice on it<br />
reading ‘reserved’ for various times between 6 and<br />
8pm. One wall is dominated by a blackboard with a<br />
delicious-looking menu on it. I realise that, in effect,<br />
I haven’t come to a pub, I’ve come to a gastro pub,<br />
and that to do the place justice in this write up, I’m<br />
going to have to come back another time and eat.<br />
In the meantime I do a little research. The Sussex<br />
Yeoman has been so-called since 1854, when this<br />
part of Guildford Road was still called Trafalgar<br />
Street; prior to the pub being purpose built, the site<br />
was used as the railway goods yard. In the sixties and<br />
seventies it was run by Sue and Bob Schultz, with<br />
singing round the piano on a Friday and Saturday<br />
night, a dartboard, a shove ha’penny table and a<br />
small jukebox. Later on it became the haunt of<br />
punks and bikers, and known as being a ‘rough’ pub;<br />
one night a man was stabbed to death after a fight<br />
that started inside spilled out into the street. Around<br />
the turn of the millennium it became famous for its<br />
sausage and mash: one regular remembers that it<br />
used to have Yorkshire puddings nailed to the wall.<br />
The type of food on the menu nowadays, I learn,<br />
as I return the next day at lunchtime, has got a lot<br />
more sophisticated. I order another pint of Noble,<br />
and decide to start with the Dover sole tempura,<br />
which comes with Asian salad and soy dip (£7.50),<br />
and graduate to a venison burger with pickled<br />
beetroot, <strong>Brighton</strong> Blue cheese, seasonal salad and<br />
fries (£13).<br />
The manager John is there and he tells me about<br />
the provenance of their food – he gets it from a<br />
South Downs warden, and Susannah, a ‘singing<br />
shepherdess’ – and how he made the decision to<br />
concentrate on food after the smoking ban. The<br />
pub has no outside space, and he lost many of his<br />
customers to neighbouring places that did.<br />
He did the right thing. The food is so delicious, I<br />
immediately book a table for the next big threegeneration<br />
set-piece meal, to celebrate the birthday<br />
of my stepson. With all the eateries on offer in<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>, you can call that an endorsement. AL<br />
7 Guildford Road, <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
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