Clive and I
Sunday Times AA GILL Award for emerging food critics 2022….
Brewing Brothers pasta bar and taproom
My lunch companion has 5 alarms a day. Clive, like most spaniels seeks; breakfast, a morning walk, a longer walk, supper and bedtime. The latter signalled by the 10 o’clock news, when he scrambles off the sofa and sits squarely in front of the television staring at either my wife and I until he is in his kitchen.
It was to a different kitchen we walked along Hastings shingle breakwater to Brewing Brothers Pasta Bar and Tap Room. On the Promenade, adjacent to Hastings Pier and White Rock Theatre, lies a sunken former public baths opened in the late Victorian era, which has been in and out of dereliction ever since. This resourceful space, between coast road and beach, is now lightly converted into food halls. Clive and I plunge down a newly installed shallow steel staircase, with each step giving greater shelter from the wind. Once on the ground again, amongst stillness and cellar warmth, we went through modern gun metal framed doors, into greater warmth and lovely smells. In a large oblong space stood; a bar with booth table to my right hand side, and to my left a u-shaped white marble oyster bar, arranged 8 high stalls with tabacco leather backs and seats on gold tubular frames. I took the nearest one below a green pendant light with gold interior, so no glaring bulb was seen but offered a pool of light that revealed a Bottene pasta machine, beyond nests of fresh tagliatelle pasta. Behind the marble oyster bar was Chef Dan, a Northern Italian from Turin, who makes the fresh pasta each morning. The special today is rabbit Ragu, (£8) I plug for this and watch in my ringside seat as my choice is made. As chefs will tell you, you start with the last and finish with the first. So Chef Dan ladles the Ragu into an oiled pan, and a little liquor from the rolling boil. Then placing the pasta into a long handled cylindrical colander, that is then plunged into the rolling boil. A little more pasta liquor into the ragu, shortly followed by the cooked pasta, stirred and tonged into a blue rimmed enamelled plate. Topped with fresh thyme sprigs, and basil olive oil, and then passed, not walked, to my place. It’s a total journey from machine to place, in no more than 8 feet. The ingredients come from slightly further, the flour from Shipton Mill, Gloucestershire, the eggs from the Brewing Brothers Brewery to the North of Hastings, having sensibly fenced off a warm wall and concrete parking space to make a light industrial chicken refuge.
The dish just melted, the Ragu offering the most resistance, as the pasta gave away, much as a great focaccia leaves only it’s filling, of say; tomato, mozzarella and ham, so too did the pasta disappear in my mouth. My choice was also helped by a glass of red Montepulciano wine (£5.50 for 175ml glass or £21 for the bottle) So good, it led to another glass. As I settled down my eyes wandered to a black board painted extraction unit, listing 14 different beers, including the revered offering from Swedish Brewers Omnipollo, a third of a pint for £7, dancing juice at 8.5%.
I was tempted by a pudding; chilli chocolate mousse with Chantilly cream, white chocolate and cherries at only £4.50, but Clive was getting itchy and I had to stumble over the shingle back to the car.
The whole lunch was eating not gaining, and when you’re on the downward slope of life, calories tend to cling. If I had to sum up the Brewing Brothers Pasta Bar bar and Tap Room at Source Park it was; warm, welcoming, secure, interesting and just so, a sort of ‘Mise en Place’.
