Even a cooking fiend like myself gets overwhelmed and to the stage where he can’t really think about making something really nice.

So, last week we had Sunday lunch in a very nice place in Swanage. If you find yourself in that neck of the woods, try the simple fresh food at the Moonlight Bistro. They were kind enough to serve us a couple of Moby Dick-sized sea bass off the evening menu.

Dessert was some fantastic sorbet from the local producer, Purbeck Ice Creams (Dairies? – someone tell me which is right). Somehow or other, you just have to try their Elderflower flavour – just fantastic!

And, as if someone had been listening in on my brainwaves, when we went to our favourite local place, the Levant, last night, we were told they were just about to stock the very same stuff.

Life is good!

Details:
Moonlight Bistro
67 High Street
Swanage
Dorset
BH19 2lY

Telephone 01929 475615

lime¹ noun 1 loosely calcium oxide. 2 loosely slaked lime. 3 loosely limestone. 4 bird-lime. 5 dialect any slimy or gluey substance. verb (liming, limed) 1 to cover with lime. 2 to apply ground limestone as a fertilizer to (soil). 3 to trap (usually birds, but sometimes animals) using bird-lime. liminess noun.
ETYMOLOGY: Anglo-Saxon lim.

liming noun 1 in the preparation of leather, etc: the soaking of skins in limewater to remove the hair. 2 a the application of whitewash to walls; b the application of lime to the ground as a fertilizer.

Chambers Online Reference – www.chambersharrap.co.uk/…

it’s a rather unfortunate name for an above-average Tex-Mex in New Street, Worthing.

Given the cards advertising The Room for Living, I suspect Liming is some strange attempt at branding a number of restaurants.

Sam’s starter of prawn and avocado salad was presented almost as a piece of nouvelle cuisine in a tower, and my nachos arrived as a natty nest and not your usual gut-busting, artery-clogging extravaganza.

Similarly, our main courses of ribs and chicken burrito were also pleasingly light and well presented – this is a Tex-Mex with pretensions.

So now we have two choices in Worthing. The hearty, authentic food at Montague’s, and the more modern touch of Liming. Thankfully neither push Tequila Slammers on a heaving mass of partying, vomiting bores. And all the better for it!

We’ll definitely be returning.

Restaurant details:
Liming Mexican Grill & Bar
13/15 New Street
Worthing
West Sussex
BN11 3BT
01903 202520

Trouble is, great quality raw fish comes at a price; sometimes too great for my credit card, especially when my nearest and dearest remains to be convinced.

The Japanese restaurant in Worthing closed not long after we moved here. We never tried it because the prices were high, and what I saw of the fish didn’t impress.

So, when it comes to me getting my fix of Japanese food, it’s a hop on the train into Brighton, where there is an unexpected and unassuming gem. E-Kagen, so I’m told, was founded by the chef who wasn’t happy with the standard of ingredients he was working with at one of the city’s more high-profile eateries.

He’s gone exactly the other way with E-Kagen. Here the sushi is exceptional, but the decor basic You’ll find it above a Chinese supermarket in the North Laine area, not far from the station.

Last night, when we arrrived at 6:30 after a hard afternoon trekking around artists open houses (part of the Brighton Festival), people were queueing to get in. It’s good to see the word’s out.

I’ll make no bones about it. I’m a sucker for this kind of place, where the food is what matters, not the surface gloss. Where your money goes into where it counts.

Restaurant details:
E-Kagen
Sydney Street
Brighton

Situated in a bit of a no-man’s-land on The Strand, just up from Durrington-on-Sea Station, don’t think this is just another coffee shop servicing the local businesses – although it looks as if it does that very well, too.

I discovered last night that the Levant is what the French call the Near East – Turkey, the Lebanon, Syria and so on. And that’s where much of the food on the menu comes from – although there are plenty of Italian influences around for lunchtime, and what looks like a pizza oven towards the rear of the restaurant. The owners are from Beirut, originally and the chef from Damascus.

The food is great value. If you’re a meat eater, go for the £9.75 mezze – more subtle, well-cooked, just simply enjoyable food than you really should find room for. There are the familiar favourites like hummous (but more refined than you get in most places) and tabouleh (packed with fresh herbs). But there are some unfamiliar dishes as well, like the fried meatballs consisting of smooth-textured seasoned mincemeat surrounding differently-flavoured coarser mincemeat – and the cured beef that’s like a cross between bresaola and biltong. The Levant serves proper flat bread, rather than production-line pitta, as well.

There’s plenty for vegetarians, too, including a £7.75 mezze.

Think of this place as serving tapas, but from the Levant, rather than Iberia, and you’ll be getting somewhere near the experience.

The Levant isn’t licenced, and won’t be, because the owners don’t drink alcohol. There are non-alcoholic cocktails and wines – we had a fizz, from a producer called Carl Jung (yes, really), which was really very nice. Possibly the only time I’ve ever enjoyed a non-alcoholic wine

The chef makes some fantastic pastries. Again, they’re far more delicate and refined than you usually get in a Greek or Turkish restaurant. You can buy them to take home, too, but my diet says an emphatic no! Sam and our friend Ian both had a wonderful chocolate cake with ice cream.

So is this the best food in Worthing? I really can’t think of anywhere I’d rather eat at the moment, at any price.

Restaurant details:
The Levant
6 Strand Parade
Goring

I’d been told that Food in central Worthing is owned by the same people as the excellent Fish Factory, so was keen to give it a try. As it happens, having been to Food, I’m not so sure if it is.

The Fish Factory does very little apart from fish, and does it very well; from yesterday’s experience, Food takes a very mainstream modern menu and does it not very well. Not that we had very much to complain about, but the food was just so-so, in a restaurant that had all the ambience of a tyre bay just after going-home time.

When you order main courses of calves’ liver and duck breast salad, you have so many previous experiences of the same dishes to compare them to, and there were bound to be have been some better ones. So Sam’s rather overcooked liver and my slightly tasteless duck breast with a one-dimensional dressing and badly chosen salad were bound to struggle against our expectations and others’ high standards.

This kind of food isn’t difficult and must be really good if we’re going to return. It wasn’t, and I doubt if we will.

And then sometimes the damned garnishes just creep up on you unannounced and sit there like a bacon sandwich at a Jewish wedding. Ah, actually this is a story of a bacon sandwich and a garnish, would you believe?

Stopping at the otherwise fine Sea Lanes Café by the beach at Goring-on-Sea for a late breakfast, my wife and I had a couple of rather good bacon sandwiches. Nicely crisp bacon on fresh white bread, and not at all greasy.

But – and it’s a big but – not only was there a garnish (a garnish with a bacon sandwich!), but it was a particularly bizarre one. It consisted of the usual timid piece of lettuce and lonely slice of tomato, but sitting on top of the salad ensemble was a slice of orange, slit radially and with the free edges pointing in opposite directions. The piece of fruit sat up proudly as a major feature of the gastronomic presentation.

What are these guys on??