#casual-fine-dining

#casual-fine-dining

About forty miles outside of Birmingham, Alabama, tucked into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, sits one hole-in-the wall U.S.-based restaurant with food good enough to convince customers to load up the car and take the hour-long drive necessary to grab a plate. Chefs Valentin and Jose aren't cooking up Old World food exactly, but rather a combination of the hearty, comforting dishes that have come to define Italian-American cuisine, steaks of all sizes, and a variety of seafood dishes to boot.

Cagali and his partner, Charlie Lee, the general manager of Da Terra, have set up shop in Church Rd, Hove, which seems appropriate since Mare means tide' in Portuguese and the restaurant is a stone's throw from the sea. In charge of the kitchen is Ewan Waller, a protege of Cagali, and Mare is being pitched as a casual fine-dining space.

This summer, fans of Trivet - chef Jonny Lake and master sommelier Isa Bal's debut - were delighted by the news that a sister restaurant was on the way. In mid-September, Labombe fledged from a weekly pop-up, based on a fictional restaurant from Lake's school days, to its own standalone, bricks-and-mortar destination, on the ground floor of the Como Metropolitan hotel.