Welcome to Intimo!!

Welcome to Intimo - the great place to eat in Hastings.

Here you'll find out news on special events, what's happening in Hastings, how to find us and contact numbers to make your reservation.

Below you'll find links to our current menus - but scroll further down for all our latest news.

Intimo Restaurant

6-7 York Buildings, Wellington Place, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 1NN
Tel 01424 439080

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

Cashing in?

The British restaurant and hotel trade have never been slow at spotting an angle but one restaurant, in London (where else?) is really pushing its luck by offering a Valentine's Dunner for an astonishing £10,000 – plus service, natch – for a meal for two.

Two people will get an eight-course dinner featuring the restaurant world's most expensive delicacies including foie gras, truffles, wagyu beef, bluefin tuna, Beluga caviare – oh and the lucky lady, who had better not be either vegetarian or ethically minded, will also get a diamond ring worth £5,000.

Galvin at Windows, which is offering the meal to just one couple on 14 February, is confident that someone will jump at the chance of shelling out more than the cost of a hatchback car, despite the economic gloom hanging over the City of London.

Fred Sirieix, the general manager, said that just a month ago one table of four shelled out £13,000 on a meal. "It will be such a special treat; you could talk about it for years to come." But he expects any "I dos" to be given in Russian or Arabic, as Russians and Arabs make up the restaurant's core clientèle.

Thursday, 24 January 2008

On tap?

The UK's biggest water provider is linking up with the government to end a long-standing culture of tap water "snobbery" by urging restaurants and chafes to routinely serve free tap water to their customers. Thames Water is to take the lead at a time of growing consumer dissatisfaction with bottled mineral water, and concerns about its cost and carbon footprint.

The initiative will come alongside a drive to encourage the UK hospitality industry to offer customers tap water as a matter of course. It is led by the government-funded Consumer Council for Water (CCW), which has drawn up plans for a national kite mark, or accreditation scheme, which would allow consumers to choose restaurants with the friendliest policies on serving tap water based on a "tick" symbol displayed on doors, menus and websites.

Thames Water - which serves about 13 million business and domestic customers in London and the Thames Valley - will this month announce a campaign to encourage catering outlets to serve tap water without people having to ask for it. The environment minister Phil Woolas said: "It is not up to us to say what people drink. But people pay significant sums for mineral water and I welcome any campaign to drink more tap water, which is of a better quality than it has ever been before." Britons drink 3bn bottles of bottled water every year. Half a billion are flown or shipped in from overseas, leaving a huge carbon footprint. Transporting bottled water in the UK is estimated to produce about 33,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions - equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 6,000 homes.

But, just for the record - if you visit Intimo and would like tap water. It's quite simple.

Just ask!

Monday, 7 January 2008

Hastings City?

Hastings is one of several towns in Sussex which could compete for the right to become a city. The Prime Minister said this week that he wanted to see more cities across the UK and a number of Sussex towns have already thrown their hats into the ring.

Council leaders from Worthing, Crawley and Eastbourne have all come out and said they would welcome the elevation to city status.

Hastings Borough Council leader Peter Pragnell said he and his colleagues would be looking into the benefits of becoming a city.

He said: "If it is worth it, we will go for it."

The scramble to become a city started after comments made by the Prime Minister at a Newspaper Society event at Westminster.

He said: "We have 50 cities in England and we have 66 in the United Kingdom as a whole.

"I look forward over the next few years to many towns in our country becoming cities as we add to the number of cities in the UK."

Sussex already has two cities - Chichester and Brighton and Hove, but with a growing population the belief is the region could accommodate another.

And where better?

Thursday, 3 January 2008

The Ten Great Restaurant Swindles - not at Intimo though - we guarantee it!

We were interested in a report issued this week on the Ten Greatest Restaurant Swindles.

1. Sea bass or not?

Once cooked, the prime fillet of sea bass can be hard to identify – and there are many lookalike, imposter species being dressed up as the original. Among the counterfeit fish recently identified in Britain's kitchens by local authorities were the Patagonian toothfish – which is often sold under the moniker of "sea bass".

Intimo Sea Bass is ... Sea Bass. Guaranteed!!

2. Plastic salads

Supermarket bagged salads are full of additives, deteriorate rapidly, and have been vilified as an environmental disaster. But while it may be acceptable to crack open a bag in the comfort of your own home, there's no excuse for serving the stuff in a restaurant. But most pub chains do use pre-prepared salad to garnish their burgers and fries.

Our kitchen is crammed with rael, fresh lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers - honestly!!

3. Instant egg, and other powders in a packet

According to Government food policy officer Les Bailey, the appearance of the words " made from natural ingredients" on menus should set alarm bells ringing. The officer, who oversees trading standards in British restaurants, has heard of countless examples of the less work-intensive powdered egg being passed off as scrambled. Less common is powdered potato – often conspicuous by its ever-present lumps – but still passed off by crafty caterers as genuine mash.

Powdered Egg????? Michael would kill us!! Our eggs are laid by real hens!


4. Reformed ham, chicken or scampi

It's common for eateries to pass off scampi tails glued together with additives as "scampi" pieces. They can even be minced scampi that has been breaded. This is " reformed scampi", a turn-off for menu-writers.

Reformed? NO!!!!!

5. When "organic" equals factory-farmed

Foodies love organic meat, and are willing to pay vastly inflated prices in the belief that it's healthier and tastes better. But not every restaurant plays by the rules. In December, a Notting Hill eaterie frequented by Kate Moss, Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue was fined £7,500 for falsely claiming that meat it was using was organic.

When we do say Organic, we mean organic. But more often than not we serve honest to goodness meat. And we cook it well too!


6. Dodgy drinks

Drinks can account for half a typical restaurant bill, so it's little surprise that canny outlets use every trick in the book to increase their margins. Always check that the label on your wine bottle tallies with the menu – cheaper vintages are often substituted in the hope that a diner won't notice.

Check our wine list - it does what it says on the tin.

7. The fishy business of "wild" salmon

It is little wonder, given how many times we are told that farmed salmon is full of toxic nasties, that people are prepared to pay a fortune for the wild variety. However, research by the Food Standards Agency reveals that up to 15 per cent of fish labelled as "wild" is actually farmed. Its survey found that 10 per cent of "wild" sea bass on menus was farmed, rising to 11 per cent of sea bream and 15 per cent of salmon. The reason is purely financial. Farmed fish is much cheaper than wild: in markets wild salmon can cost £30 per kg, while the farmed variety can cost from just £4.20 per kg.

When we use Salmon, we always tell you the source. We sometimes use farmed salmon - which cooked right tastes just great and is priced reasonably to reflect its quality.

8. When "home cooked" means microwaved

The term " home-cooked" that is scrawled across many a pub chalkboard is meaningless. Ideally, steak-and-kidney pies, pasties and apple pies should be prepared on-site with enough genuine effort to be called " home-cooked ".

When we say home cooked, we mean home cooked. Period!


9. Boil-in-the-bag main course

The "pub grub" industry needs to produce reliable food, fast. Many outlets therefore resort to serving "boil-in-the-bag" main courses, which chefs tend to call " sous vide" – a nebulous (if gourmet-licious) term that literally translates as "in a vacuum". It is, for example, almost impossible to lay one's teeth on a freshly cooked lamb shank in UK pubs (including Mr Dancer's), because it can take up to five hours to cook. Boil-in-the-bag can be heated up in minutes.

Not even worth commenting on. Our competitors may - but we never use boil in the bag!

10. Line-caught lies

"Line-caught" conjures up images of an artisan fisher with a rod. What it actually means is that an ugly great trawler has crossed the ocean with several hundred yards of nylon and hooks hanging out the back, indiscriminately killing all sea life as well as the occasional albatross. Even then, line-caught fish is more expensive than farmed or netted alternatives, since it is normally fresher and its flesh firmer. Most consumers cannot taste the difference, and an estimated 5 per cent is mislabelled by disreputable outlets or suppliers.

We serve unpretentious food. So 'line caught doesn't enter the equation.

Phew - was that it??

Well it's all gone quiet now.

Chef has put his Christmas pinny away and has cooked his last turkey of the season - and we've picked the bones of the last bird in the house! It's been a great Christmas, with some terrific evenings. On Christmas Eve we had a large party booked in and, indeed, we saw a steady stream of visitors right through to New Years Eve.

New Year celebrations night saw us welcome 2008 with a large group of friends - both old and new.

So, what can we look forward to in the coming weeks?

Well we just start all over again!

We will continue to serve up our fabulous food right the way through the winter months - so do pay us a visit soon!

We are looking forward to some special evenings - Valentines springs to mind - and, of course we're looking forward to an early start to the busy season with Easter being early this year.

So do please pop along and visit us - lunchtime or evenings, we're not proud!