With a huge multi-pane window painted in pistachio green, and a dining room filled with marble topped tables and vintage wooden chairs, Sugardough in Brighton is one of the city’s prettiest places to grab a bite to eat. It’s the perfect place to earmark for refuelling after a blustery beach walk or a sunny wander down The Lanes, with an all-day menu and bursting bakery counter for you to pick from.
The cakes, pastries and bread are the main reason you’d stop off here, with the team having worked for years on perfecting their craft. Each piece is handmade daily, with an ever-changing line-up playing to the seasons with short-lived specials. Come Christmas it might be a ginger spiced cake covered in brandy buttercream, while the spring brings rhubarb and hazelnut frangipani tarts and Easter cupcakes. It’s not all sweet stuff though, individual vegetarian mushroom and chestnut pithiviers make a perfect little snack to eat-in or takeaway, as do English asparagus Sussex egg and Parmesan pasties or sausage rolls.
If you’re looking for more than a snack, the restaurant serves a brunch and lunch menu through to 5pm every day. Here you’ll find breakfast-worthy dishes such as sourdough crumpets topped with poached eggs and hollandaise or a potato rosti accompanied by gin cured salmon, poached eggs, tomato, and tarragon. For lunch you have the pick of plates such as crispy slow cooked pork belly; Chalkstream trout with lemon risotto, crispy leeks, and bisque; or burrata with pear, walnuts, grapes, radicchio, and sourdough bread.
The beauty of grabbing a bite to eat in a bakery is that there’s a whole range of treats to take home. Before you leave, browse the cakes counter and make your selection of biscuits, cakes or pasties to take away with you to enjoy later with a cup of something hot.