On one of Brighton’s busy shopping streets you will happily stumble upon Plateau, offering a lively, cosy and authentic French bistro experience that pulls in food-loving locals. Stained glass windows frame the entrance opening up to an intimate space featuring pendant lights, exposed brick and wooden floors.

Blackboards line the walls, teasing you with various plats du jours, but it’s the beautiful sharing platters (hence the name) that this place is all about. Against a comforting backdrop of twinkly candlelight and French staff speaking their native tongue, Plateau offers high quality, locally sourced food, delicious cocktails and natural wine.

Natural wine? I didn’t know either but it’s organic or biodynamic wine produced with the minimum of intervention. We chose a Spanish El Carro produced from the Moscatel grape from Alicante (told you they know their wine) and it was rich yet delicate and intensely fragrant.

We started off with two plates from their ‘Light Bites’; thinly sliced Sussex chorizo and cornichons and smoked beetroot, ricotta, freekeh and pomegranate – a delicious riot of nutty, sweet and sharp flavours.

For our main course, we had the fish sharing platter full of wow on wow flavours such as roasted sea trout on a bed of remoulade, hake on kimchi, Tandoori mackerel on green lentils and spicy grilled scarlet prawns and a vibrant beetroot yoghurt.  All were deeply rich in texture and taste.

We finished on a dessert platter that was a visual delight and although we had little room, the chefs had contrasted sweet and sharp perfectly so we couldn’t help but reach for just one more spoonful after spoonful until we had unintentionally finished it. But I’m so glad we did.

Images by Elinor Hill