The name ‘Fourth and Church‘ has a low-key, mid-century metropolitan elegance to it, suggesting a well-loved neighbourhood establishment of decades’ standing. It was actually opened in 2015 by sherry evangelist Paul Morgan and fellow chef Sam Pryor, who met while working at world-class Brighton vegetarian restaurant terre à terre. It’s well named: the door opens into a half tapas bar, half restaurant, half wine shop (never mind the arithmetic), as my long-suffering wife and I arrived on a Friday night in September. It’s a dirty job, she says, but someone has to do it.
A Hove Institution with Continental Soul
The 30 or so covers are spread around the bar, in the two window nooks and on a few tables in front of the bottle-lined walls. The selection includes newly discovered wines from less familiar wine countries like Georgia and Hungary and what must surely be the broadest sherry selection in the land. Sherry is, like so many things we import, desperately misunderstood in this country: it still bears the scars of a class war that happened two generations ago, when posh grandparents drank fino (dry) and the matching-sofa set went in for cream (sweet) sherries.
Their offspring grew tired of the former or sick of the latter. Despite a few attempts to defibrillate its reputation over the last few decades, sherry has yet to be ‘fashionable’ again in this country. And we’re now moving into a generation that might never have tried it. But let’s move on, as co-founder Paul and I will be back here on this topic soon.
Passionate Hospitality and Punchy Snacks
Manager Anna and her staff sat us at the bar and chose our dishes from the short menu composed of snacks, small plates (starters) and large plates (mains). Unlike those restaurants where the staff arrived yesterday and haven’t tasted the menu (they always answer “It’s all nice – depends what you like”), Anna settled into the task with relish.
As snacks, she chose for us the cloud-soft white pittas from local supplier Mamoosh, coated in a salty rub and filled with caramelised onion (very satisfying, and just an anchovy short of a pissaladière). The other was herring, pickled red onion and dill oil, light and punchy. Anna packed in some desk-based job in COVID to join the team here. I can’t remember the job; it sounded unspeakably dull and complicated, I think her memory of it is fading too. It’s lovely to see the staff joshing with each other, chatting with locals, and generally spreading good cheer.
It’s a triumph of hospitality that no one really seems to be working, despite a full house and an ambitious menu.
Paul takes them to visit the bodegas (sherry houses) of Jerez every year. This sounds like a great road trip, but you’ve got to watch us sherry types. We’re hopeless evangelists.
Standout Small Plates and Benchmark Flavours
The first small plate was whole roast scarlet prawns in a deep verjus-and-saffron sauce.
The prawns were the big, meaty kind that are so good, you might be tempted to split their heads open and suck their brains out, leaving nothing but those hard little black eyes looking back at you (guilty).
The other small plate was based around one of my favourite food doubles: the deeply earthy duo of black pudding with runny egg yolk. It’s almost impossible to screw this up, but this version (‘morcilla with potato terrine, red pepper shallot dressing and confit yolk’) has now joined a drunken feast many years ago in Madrid as the benchmark of the type.
Mains, Margaritas, and People Watching
Finally, we shared the pan-roasted lamb rump, beetroot dahl, chaat masala carrots and tamarind jus. The lamb was rare, the accompaniments imaginative and well executed, Levantine in spirit if not in fact, in the sense of the aromatic, acidic tang of tamarind doing the work of dried lime or pomegranate or harissa.
As for drinks, my wife started with a jalapeño margarita with a mouth-puckering aromatic rim. It seems these are ‘on trend’ now, but we don’t care, as we both love jalapeños. And booze. Wine is for the weak, so we sup from the fabled flagon of sherry available here, trying out a manzanilla and an amontillado (both dry types), while chatting to the staff and laughing about a man who walks past with a metal flamingo under each arm.
The best thing of all was a would-be Lothario out on a date with a stunning black-haired woman. We could see he was showing off to her and were desperate to eavesdrop, but he knew we were watching, so we had to turn our attention elsewhere. There are a few chance encounters like this, another one as someone comes to join us at our perches at the bar, but it’s not overwhelming; just more European than British in feeling. The Lothario had the right idea though; you might take a date here if you wanted to seem effortlessly cool, in the know and a dash continental. It’s not unlike Poco in Alfriston, a wine shop, cookery school and trattoria, but this is the urban cousin. And Fourth and Church is every bit as unique as life’s other famous intersections like Haight Ashbury or Hollywood and Vine.
