Little Bay Restaurant

The Little Bay restaurant is a recent edition to the Brighton eatery scene, offering something remarkably different from the usual Italian or Fish and Chips. The restaurant is attached to the Umi hotel on Brighton’s seafront and offers its diners a theatrical experience two nights a week where professional opera singers serenade the whole restaurant.

The restaurant, which seats 150 people, is fully decked out in baroque-style furnishings to suit the vision of its owner, Peter Ilic, who had a cosy, romantic and sophisticated atmosphere in mind for his diners. Little Bay prides itself on offering people what it calls 'modern European bistro-style food', for very reasonable prices. A three-course meal before 7pm will cost you just £11.50 and after 7pm, just over £15, which is undeniably, good value for money.

Some of the starter choices include warm salad of honey-glazed goats cheese, moules marinières and choux de crab and some of the main course offerings are confit leg of duck, roasted salmon fillet and vegetable moussaka. While the menu sounds pretentiously impressive, you do get what you pay for at Little Bay - i.e. fairly average food. The dishes are presented well and there's a good selection to suit most tastes but the finished product is a little disappointing. For example, the confit of duck is tasty but the 'noodles' that come with it are, in fact, spaghetti (which is a little cold) that comes in a honey-ginger sauce that doesn't really compliment the duck. The choux de crab, which is a sort of hard profiterole with dark sweet crab meat in it, is just fairly bland and a bit of a bizarre combination of ingredients. However, the steak I had was pleasantly surprising - it arrived exactly how I like it and although I had to order chips as a side dish, at £7.95 for a steak, it's hard to complain.

The saving grace of the place, though, are the deserts. Please try the delicious white chocolate and pistachio parfait which is simply melt in the mouth, or go with a classic - profiteroles - which are jazzed up with a yummy banana cream. If you like mixing things up every now and then, then visit on a Wednesday or Friday when the Opera nights are on. You won't be able to hold on to a conversation with your dinner companions as it gets very loud, but the singers are incredibly talented and there's a very festive, jolly ambience which is quite contagious. And try to get balcony seats if you can, to observe the action from above and enjoy your meal away from the hubbub of the rest of the restaurant.

For more information and to see the menu, go to www.littlebay.co.uk or call 01273 731 330.