Restaurant in Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom
Brighton's serious tasting menu. Book ahead.
Dilsk, in the basement of Drakes Hotel on Marine Parade, is Brighton's most technically serious tasting menu destination — Michelin Plate recognised in 2024 and 2025, rated 4.9 across 133 Google reviews. Chef Tom Stephens (trained under Tom Kerridge and Simon Rogan) runs a ten-course menu built around local sourcing and precise Modern British cooking. Book ahead and budget carefully for wine.
Getting a table at Dilsk takes moderate planning — this is not a walk-in situation, particularly for the ten-course tasting menu on a weekend. The effort is worth it. Dilsk holds a Michelin Plate (2025 and 2024), scores 4.9 on Google across 133 reviews, and consistently draws comparisons with the better Modern British tasting menus operating well beyond Brighton's boundaries. If you are looking for a special-occasion dinner in the city, this is where to book. If you want à la carte flexibility or a shorter, lower-commitment evening, look elsewhere in Kemptown.
Dilsk sits in the basement of Drakes Hotel on Marine Parade, and the space does exactly what a tasting-menu dining room should: it removes distraction. The décor is neutral, deliberately so, with nothing competing for attention against the food. Intimacy is the operative quality here — this is a room where the distance between tables and the low-key palette signal that the kitchen is the main event. The one caveat is the music: the soundtrack reportedly runs toward Ibiza-holiday territory, which may or may not suit your mood. Book for a special occasion confident that the atmosphere is composed, but be aware it is not uniformly serene.
Chef Tom Stephens , trained under Tom Kerridge and Simon Rogan, two of the most technically demanding kitchens in British cooking , offers three formats: a three-course lunch, a six-course tasting menu, and a ten-course full tasting menu. The three-course lunch is the lowest-risk entry point if you are undecided on format or budget. The ten-course menu is the full argument for why Dilsk matters.
The menu builds carefully. It opens with snacks, and among them a smoked mackerel pâté with perry jelly and squid-ink tuile sets the register: precise, ingredient-led, with an acidity that keeps things from feeling heavy. The signature dish arrives early in the progression , a lightly poached oyster with trout roe, pickled radish, and a custard made from dilsk, the red-brown seaweed after which the restaurant is named. It is a dish with genuine structural logic: the custard carries umami depth, the roe adds salinity, and the radish cuts through both.
Bread is treated as a course in itself: a laminated brioche-croissant hybrid served with a butter incorporating garlic and crispy black cabbage. This is not an afterthought. It is one of the cleaner signals that Stephens is working at a level where technique is applied to context rather than for display.
The middle courses demonstrate how the kitchen handles contrasting flavour architectures. A turnip dashi with smoked eel and Brighton salami delivers umami through two different registers , the dashi and the cured meat , without either overpowering the other. A piece of BBQ monkfish is paired with squash, caviar, and bone marrow, a combination that places a lean fish inside a deeply savoury frame. Hogget with wild garlic and purple sprouting broccoli anchors the menu in local, seasonal sourcing , this is where the Modern British designation becomes meaningful rather than decorative.
Pink partridge breast arrives with caramelised cream, ceps, and truffle , rich without being overworked. The dessert sequence across the full menu runs to three courses, with the standout being a construction around 71% Nicaraguan chocolate and rapeseed oil smoked over Earl Grey tea and barley miso. The flavour logic here is genuinely complex: bitter chocolate, aromatic smoke, and fermented depth from the miso, landing in a way that is more interesting than most restaurant chocolate desserts operating at this price tier.
Service is described as informed, dedicated, and unobtrusive , the right register for a tasting menu format where pacing and explanation matter without interrupting the meal's rhythm.
The wine list is arranged by style and includes organic options. The honest caveat: selection under £35 a bottle is limited. This is a list built to match the food's ambition rather than to offer accessible entry points. If budget is a consideration, plan for it in advance or ask for guidance at the lower end of the list when you arrive.
Within Brighton, Dilsk occupies a different tier from the city's casual dining options. For Modern British tasting menus at this level of technical execution, etch. by Steven Edwards is the direct peer comparison , both operate at Michelin recognition level and both require advance booking. Embers offers modern cooking at a lower price point if the full tasting menu commitment feels like too much. For a genuinely different mood , more relaxed, shorter format, lower spend , Burnt Orange, Amari, or Wild Flor cover the mid-range well.
Nationally, Stephens's training pedigree puts Dilsk in interesting company. The format and sourcing philosophy track closer to L'Enclume or Moor Hall in ambition than to the more formal service architecture of CORE by Clare Smyth or The Ritz Restaurant. At £££ pricing in a Brighton basement, Dilsk punches above its postcode.
Dilsk is located at 44 Marine Parade, Kemptown, Brighton BN2 1PE, inside Drakes Hotel. Pricing sits at £££. Three menu formats are available: a three-course lunch, a six-course tasting menu, and a ten-course full tasting menu. Booking is moderate in difficulty , plan ahead, particularly for weekend dinner. The wine list runs thin below £35 a bottle. The space is in a hotel basement; access and ambiance reflect that. For more options across the city, see our full Brighton and Hove restaurants guide, hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide.
Quick reference: Drakes Hotel basement, Marine Parade, Kemptown | £££ | Three-course lunch / six-course / ten-course tasting menu | Advance booking advised.
Yes, for the right diner. The ten-course menu at this Michelin Plate-recognised restaurant delivers technically precise cooking from a chef trained under Tom Kerridge and Simon Rogan — that pedigree shows in the kitchen's confidence with sauces, sourcing, and course-by-course progression. At £££ pricing, it is a commitment, but the three-course lunch format offers a lower-stakes entry point if you want to test the kitchen before committing to the full menu.
Dilsk operates as a tasting-menu restaurant in the basement of Drakes Hotel on Marine Parade — it is a seated dining room format, not a bar-counter setup. The venue does not have a documented bar-dining option, so plan around a reserved table rather than a casual drop-in.
The ten-course tasting menu is where the kitchen makes its case — highlights from the documented menu include the lightly poached oyster with trout roe and dulse custard, a laminated brioche-croissant hybrid served as a bread course, and a dessert built around 71% Nicaraguan chocolate with rapeseed oil smoked over Earl Grey tea and barley miso. If the full menu feels like too much, the six-course version covers the same technical territory with fewer courses.
Book in advance — this is not a walk-in restaurant, particularly for evening sittings. The room is in the basement of Drakes Hotel, neutrally decorated and fairly compact, so the focus is entirely on the food. The three-course lunch menu is documented as a good entry point if you are new to the format or unsure about committing to a longer tasting menu at £££ pricing.
At £££, Dilsk delivers Michelin Plate-recognised cooking with a clear point of view — local sourcing, strong sauce work, and a chef with high-profile training credentials. The value case is strongest on the full tasting menu, where the cost-per-course ratio makes more sense than at mid-range casual restaurants in Brighton. If you are price-sensitive, the three-course lunch is the most accessible version of the same kitchen.
Within Brighton, Cin Cin offers a more casual pasta-led approach at a lower price point if you want Italian-influenced cooking without the tasting-menu commitment. Burnt Orange suits groups looking for sharing plates and a livelier room. Embers focuses on wood-fire cooking and is worth considering if you prefer a shorter, less structured format. Dilsk is the clearest choice when the specific goal is a technically driven Modern British tasting menu.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
