Brighton Rocks!

Laura and I recently went down to Brighton, Why is this, you may ask? Because Laura's favourite musician, Ryan Adams, was playing an acoustic set down at the Brighton Dome. She got tickets. A couple of years back he was scheduled to play the Dome, and she had tickets then too, but Ryan, silly bugger, went and fell off stage the night before and broke his wrist and so the show was cancelled. So she had been looking forward to seeing this show for A WHILE.

We got the train from Appledore to Brighton and on the way, the excitement was starting to show somewhat.

Yippee! We were finally on our way to see Ryan Adams, and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, we would see him later that night.

When we got to Brighton, our first priority was getting checked in to our hotel. That way we could drop off our overnight bag and go scope out some shops and food etc.

We got checked in to our room, and we were hungry by that point. It was mid-afternoon and walking down towards the hotel we'd walked past an interesting place on North Street called Foodilic, which looked fabulous and smelled good too. The place is an all-you-can-eat joint where the food is interestingly tiered in the front window so that all can see, and the smells  that waft out the front door are enticing, to say the least. So we decided to head back there once we were checked in.

So, so glad we did.

As you can see Foodilic's food is not only affordable at £6.45 to stuff yourself silly, but the colours, smells and textures on offer were simply amazing...

I was blown away by the sheer deliciousness of it all, not to mention the cool-looking tiered dishes.

Without a doubt, my two favourite dishes were the pesto-flavoured pinto beans with red onion, above bottom left, and the sweet potato, butternut squash and caramelized onion in the second pic, top left. I could have eaten that sweet potato dish till the cows came home, I'm not kiddin' ya. Let me tell you something, I lived for ten long arduous years in the South, where sweet pertaters are a BIG DEAL, and I never once felt inclined to eat them there as they tend to smother them in either heaps of butter and brown sugar OR f***in marshmallows (toasted), neither of which are what you might call a "taste sensation". More like like hot vegetable candy goop. But these sweet potatoes were literally to die for.

I also liked the tabbouleh-ish salad I had heaped on my plate, apparently entitled Parsley Salad with Cracked Wheat and Olive Oil.

I would say there was a lot of Mediterranean/Eastern European influences in the food. I could find nothing there I did not like, and there were plenty of amazing choices.

In addition to all that, they also do amazing-looking desserts...

However, I stuffed myself to the gills, and so I have yet to sample them, but that tiramisu calls my name. Next time I go to Brighton...

I also snapped a quick pic of this banner near the hotel. Another date to put in the calendar.

Oh, and the Ryan Adams show? Pretty darn good.