The Coal Shed turns 15 with a £35 anniversary menu

If you have been meaning to try The Coal Shed but have been put off by the price tag, this week is the time to do it. The fire-cooking steakhouse is celebrating its 15th anniversary by turning the clock back to 2011, running a three-course menu for £35 a head at the prices it charged when it first opened. It runs from Monday 12 to Sunday 25 October at both the Brighton and London sites, so there is still a week left to catch it, and it works out at almost half the price of the usual à la carte menu.

The menu is fixed, so you know exactly what you are getting. It opens with the BBQ Jacob's Ladder, a slow-cooked beef rib starter, before moving on to the dry-aged Chateaubriand served with the restaurant's classic beef dripping chips and peppercorn sauce. It finishes with a sticky toffee pudding topped with beef fat caramel and vanilla ice cream. If you want to make a night of it, there is an optional three-glass wine pairing for another £35, with each wine chosen to suit the starter, main and dessert. The anniversary menu runs alongside OctoberBest, Brighton's annual restaurant festival, which takes in special menus from top independent restaurants across the city until Sunday 25 October.

For context, The Coal Shed opened in Brighton in September 2011 and has since become one of the city's most established steakhouses. Its founder, Raz Helalat, who has lived in Brighton since the age of five, says that when it opened everything centred around great produce, fire and generous hospitality, and that those values have not changed fifteen years on. The cooking method is a big part of the appeal: a Josper oven running at 300°C is used to grill meat and fish over fire and charcoal. The Brighton site sits at Clarence House, 30-31 North Street, surrounded by the Lanes and North Laine and a short walk from the Brighton Centre, Theatre Royal and the Brighton Dome. The dining room holds 140 seats and has three private rooms, it opens Monday to Saturday from 12:00 to midnight and Sundays from 12:00 to 11:30, there is a DJ on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and the venue is cashless.

Beyond the anniversary menu, the place is known for its sourcing: cuts of pure-bred cattle from specialist farms, 28-day Irish steaks, and seafood and crustaceans from the South Coast. Every Sunday there is a full shared roast from 12:00 to 16:30, with vegetarian and vegan options alongside the 35-day aged beef rump, half-roasted chicken and sirloin on the bone. There is also a wine list, cocktails, wines and beers, and a cocktail bar with its own bar food menu, with group bookings for one to nine people and events for ten or more. Helalat, who studied Finance and Economics at the City University of London before dropping out to pursue music production and working in Brighton restaurants and bars before opening The Coal Shed, has since opened The Salt Room, The Coal Shed London and Burnt Orange, the latter of which was voted best restaurant at the BRAVO Awards in 2022 and 2023. The London site is over at One Tower Bridge, Crown Square, so the anniversary offer is worth catching here in Brighton while it lasts.