Every year, as the weather turns colder and the nights get longer, Brighton restaurants get cheaper. October in Brighton means Octoberbest and, nope, that's not a spelling error. Octoberbest is when Brighton's self-described best restaurants sell set menus for an 'affordable' price. (Your mileage may vary on what counts as affodable, but a lot of places tend to price their set menus as £25 to £35.)
The only fully vegan place taking part in Octoberbest this year was Bonsai, which sold out before I could sign up for a reservation (if you want to know more about Bonsai and its food, you can read about my previous visit here). So, no Bonsai for me. But luckily a few omni restaurants had vegan menus, and I felt it was my duty to go check out a handful of them.
KITGUM
First up, Kitgum - a restaurant that serves food with Persian, Indian and East African influences. It's a small, cosy restaurant that leaves you elbow to elbow with everyone else dining, but the food's so good it doesn't really matter.
A bowl of mathiya were set out on the table, ready for diners' arrival - a crispy moreish snack with the sort of chilli heat that sneaks up on you.
Corn ribs followed along not long after. Spoiler: all of the Octoberbest menus had corn ribs on. Is this a new thing? Is there a corn rib TikTok trend I missed out on? Have vegans been lobbying their MPs for more corn ribs at non vegan restaurants? They were good, so no complaint here.
Then momos! I like a good momo. Or, I thought I did. The momos I've had before have been steamed dumplings, not the crispy comfort bombs that Kitgum serves. The chilli ginger chutney with it was also a delight. Now I think about it, the sauces and chutneys were all great at Kitgum - instead of being the sidekicks, they were the breakout stars.
The last savoury plate was a Zanzibar mix, channa broth with potato bhajia, coconut chutney, chilli, and crisps. The bhajia were the classic crisp on the outside, soft in the middle, understated foil for all those great sauces and chutneys again - all of them had me wondering how much I could scrape the plate for the last drops of sauce before it became unseemly. The crisps had gone a little soft in the sauce, but I was also swooning at its presence, so who can blame them?
Dessert was mango sorbet with a biscoff-type crumb. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't have said no to something a bit more exciting - I reckon most vegans have probably had their lifetime's fill of solid but unexciting sorbet at non-vegan restaurants.
The portion sizes at Kitgum felt small, but I'm not sure if that's more a reflection of Kitgum or me? Still, there might not have been enough quantity for me, but there was more than enough quality. I'll be going back soon, and I'll be sure to order an obscene amount of food when I do.
ANAKUMA
Next up, Anakuma, an Asian fusion restaurant with a low-key, Japandi looking interior.
Me and Mr Flickingthevs got to try a couple of warm ups before the main plate - a bowl of edamame, still fridge cold, and a dainty blue-corn tostada with bulgogi wild mushrooms and burnt leek aioli.
The main event was a plate of all sorts of fun things: small mounds of tukemono pickles, alongside corn ribs, basted with tajin and paprika (if you're playing count the corn rib appearances, this is number two).
Anakuma's Octoberbest menu had listed a "charcoal-grilled fried rice ball" which had been subbed out by an inari - rice wrapped in a pocket of sweet tofu. The inari felt a little underseasoned - maybe my tastebuds were secretly mourning the lack its promised charcoal cousin? The published menu's stuffed aubergine katsu with black garlic mole and shiso chimichurri had also disappeared, replaced by what looked like aubergine dengaku - soft and sweet, and one of the plate's highlights.
The other highlight - the crispy enoki bao - was the real surprise though. I don't love bao buns normally - it feels there's always too much bun and not enough filling, leaving you chewing through the dinner equivalent of a pillow, or the filling can't fight against the all consuming blandness of the bun. Baos too often feel like chores. My low expectations were turned on their head: this was a bao to be proud of - a light, crispy, mushroom delight that made the bun the warm up act not the main event, exactly as it should be.
The dessert though was the real joy. I rarely meet a brownie that makes my heart beat faster, but Anakuma's awase miso dark chocolate brownie did just that. It was dark, grown up brownie, studded with bitter chocolate chunks and sweetened with coconut caramel. Delicious. The brownie portion again made me sad in its smallness - who wants a postage-stamp-sized dessert when it's this good? - but again, I wonder if that's a me problem or an Anakuma one.
HALISCO
The last of our Octoberbest visits was to Halisco, a Mexican joint recently voted Brighton's best restaurant according to Time Out.
We were seated in the basement, dimly lit and intimate compared to the bright and buzzy ground floor - if you're out for dinner with someone you should be, definitely head downstairs.
We started with tortilla chips with refried beans and vegan feta, followed by padron peppers, garlic mayo. These were simple dishes, but highly moreish. I could go a thousand lifetimes without eating most vegan feta, but I couldn't keep my chips out of the refried beans.
I really enjoyed the pozole verde - a green tomatillo soup with goodies like green chillis and baked tortilla strips lurking in the spicy depths. The corn ribs that came next (third time - you've now completed your corn rib bingo card) were my favourite of the trio I tried - swamped in spiky brick red paprika oil. A real mess to eat it, but I was happy to sacrifice the pristineness of my white shirt to the enjoyment of corn ribs.
At a Mexican restaurant, I feel like your tortilla-based dishes have to be on point. The Octoberbest menu had two - they bookended the meal as both my favourite and least favourite dish of the meal. The oyster mushroom taco with chilli crisp tipped the scales a bit too far on the salt and the chilli crisps got a bit lost. The sweet potato tostada with cactus, pickles and mustard mayo was top notch, wtih soft sweet potato, crunchy tostada and zingy mustard in the sort of mix that falls apart as you eat it, but you don't mind too much, because it's fun, tasty food.
Given how good and generously-portioned the rest of the meal had been, I had high hopes for the dessert, described as banana, dark chocolate, horchata ice cream sandwich, on the menu. The Octoberbest had a veggie and a vegan version, which appeared to be pretty similar - vegan feta instead of animal feta, paprika oil instead of butter and so on - but the vegan ice cream sandwich was a lot less sandwichy than the veggie version. Instead of ice cream sandwiched between two biscuits, there was just ice cream. I felt a little robbed. Why no biscuits for the vegans kings and queens? That said, couldn't fault the ice cream itself and, I'm happy to report, the portions were decent, so I went home full and happy.
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