The Ivy's £19.96 Cool Britannia 90s menu

The Ivy Brighton is leaning into nostalgia this autumn, and the price tag is the first clue. The restaurant has launched a limited-edition 'Cool Britannia' menu built around the 1990s, and it comes in at £19.96 for two courses, with dessert an extra £8.95. The menu runs daily from 2 September to 6 October, so it's already a few days in and has about a month left to go. At the Brighton site, it's served Monday to Friday from 11:30am to 6:30pm and on Sundays from 11:00am to 6:30pm.

The menu is a nod to the era, with a few dishes clearly playing on 90s memories. Starters include a glazed onion soup with gratinated cheese croutons, gratinated halloumi with fire-roasted pepper purée, and kiln-roast salmon rillette served with dark rye bread and basil pesto. The one that will ring most bells is the grilled Robata chicken skewers with Bang Bang peanut sauce, a reimagined version of the Bang Bang Chicken that was a fixture on tables back then. Mains keep the theme going with a 90s-inspired coconut curry with sweet potato, salmon linguine in a smoked salmon cream sauce, and chicken supreme with smoked pancetta and chestnut mushrooms. If you want something heartier, there's a minute steak with peppercorn sauce and thick-cut chips for a £4.95 supplement. To finish, the desserts run from a sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream to a mango vanilla sponge, a plate of mature cheddar with crackers and apple, and the Platinum Sundae.

Mark Askew, Group Executive Chef at The Ivy Collection, described the menu as celebrating a defining moment in British culture through dishes that feel both nostalgic and timeless. It's a fitting brief for the restaurant's setting, too. The Ivy Brighton sits at 51a Ship Street in the middle of the historic Lanes, and the interior is an informal but sophisticated space taking its cues from the nearby Royal Pavilion, with art of the pier, marine life and Brighton beach, leather benches, an onyx bar and hanging lights. There's an outdoor terrace, private dining areas — The Tidal Room takes up to 20 seated diners or 40 for canapés — and baby changing facilities on site.

For context, the restaurant is part of The Ivy Collection, a group with more than 50 locations across the UK, now owned by DIAFA, an affiliate of the Abu Dhabi-based IHC Group. The Ivy itself started in 1917 as an unlicensed Italian café in London's West End, before Richard Caring bought it and the wider Caprice Holdings group in 2005. The latest figures for the parent company, Troia (UK) Restaurants, showed revenue up 4% to £327.1m for the year ending 5 January 2025. The partner on this menu, Cointreau, is the French orange triple sec from Rémy Cointreau, founded in 1849 and still the standard pour for Margaritas and Cosmopolitans. The Ivy Brighton stays open all day seven days a week, with breakfast, weekend brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, light snacks and dinner, and a smart-casual dress code. A short walk away, The Ivy Asia Brighton handles the Asian-inspired side of things, while the main site is well known for cocktails like the Candy Floss Fizz and the Pavilion Passion.