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On a sojourn to Hastings with my nephew, my young charge suggested Harris having had it recommended by a chum. I was somewhat foxed by the notion but agreed to accompany him in the interests of familial relations

Acclaimed as Hastings second-best restaurant is almost too inconspicuous to find. Camouflaged in ecru paint (for the less erudite I mean pale drab beige), it drops like a workman’s cottage straight onto a narrow pavement of the old town, is unmarked by potted box or bay, and no sign of the tweeds associated with the Harris’ creaking above the door; I observe in passing that should it ever hang a painted board, the illustration it should be of its cousin, the gabardine rain coat, with its smooth hard-wearing woollen fabric woven with a pattern of a thousand parallel diagonal twills… The barman of a nearby Nelson pub pointed to it with the words "they like to be invisible don’t you tell them I sent you”

Inside, the ceilings are low, the temperature a trifle tropical and, if nearby diners reach the raucous stage of mindless jollity – as they did three tables away from mine – the racket obliterates all possibility of conversation. We were reduced to counting waitresses (one, I think, for every other customers although they were engaged in their own frivolity) and pensive contemplation of the tablecloth.
There passed across it much to contemplate. In the spirit of enquiry we chose to take a peek at the Menu – the conjured sequence of experiences in smell, sight, sound and touch as well as taste, all the Five Senses of the Renaissance tastes teased into an exquisitely scribed menu which was somewhat disconcerting but I am coming round to the idea that it’s the work of a control freak, or as I suspected, a genius.
Each tapas is minute, minuscule, Lilliputian – no single word for tiny seems quite strong enough; each is presented with exquisite punctilio by the waitress who then address to their charges a lengthy exegesis on the how and why and what of it.
Nothing on the dish is mere food, for every scrap of it – the homoeopathic spot of quince or jus, the two-millimetre cube of manchago – is intended to evoke a memory, trigger a change of mood, or light the dead fuse of old emotion, and for this, as in the Old Town Museum, a curator of interpretation is required.
The plating and presentation were as a series of homages to Russian Constructivism, mature Miró, Ellsworth Kelly and early and late Kandinsky.
My enquiry of what is the best way for one to tackle the Higaditos al Jerez (Chicken Livers in Sherry Sauce) was met with the suggestion “Pop it whole into your mouth,” but as I wrestled with mine it exploded in my clumsy fingers and the only memory roused by its meagre crumbs was of accidental gulps of perfumed bathwater as a child.
Then on to the Jamon Serrano which arrived with the Salmon Ahumado as small as postage stamps and quite as thin, with the instruction, we thought, consume by colour the fushian pink ham before the lighter rose of the Salmon. “Why?” my young companion asked. “Why not?” was the reply. With these I think the trick was that the salmon-seeming sliver disconcertingly tasted of Jamon, – but by then the first hour had passed and I was on the verge of the confusion that I occasionally suffer when deprived of food.
A single prawn in its shell followed, chopped, I think, and certainly ruined in a mess of white wine and garlic, it’s bed fellow a Tomato onion Salad, a bed of moss under another rising Macbeth mist, as the setting for a shred of mushroom on half a skinny soldier of toast.
With all this the Spanish house wine was recommended. To accompany the subsequent three shrivelled prawns, a French wine was suggested, and with the Albondigas (Meatballs in Tomato & Red Wine Sauce) (at last a mouthful). Then, after the Pelegrino that was paired with “The Sound of the Sea”, we were advised to have wines from Portugal, Italy, Austria and Australia.
As the Rioja I chose was, at £19, one of the least expensive possibilities in the formidably wide-ranging lists, I imagine that an unguarded pair of merry diners following the Harris promptings could easily tot up enough tenners to get the bill within reach of £50 – easy as pie for a party of four.
With The Sound of the Sea, roughly the halfway mark, ennui set in and I lost interest in the fiddle-faddle of it all. For these fishy dishes with a slightly squid squalid resemblance to the froth and detritus left by a retreating wave, we had to listen to just that from the kitchen – the crash of falling water and the drag of shingle.
Colas de Cigales y alioli (Crayfish Tails with Garlic Mayonnaise), Patatas Bravas
Garlic Mushrooms Solomillo De Pollo en Salsa Guindilla Dulce (Diced chicken Fillet in Sweet Chilli Sauce) Fabada (Peasant Dish made with butterbeans, chorizo & Bacon in a Red Wine & Tomato Sauce), more theatre mist, more conjuring, more alchemy, more voodoo, more cold fusion – not since I saw the dried blood of St Januarius in Naples miraculously liquefy have I witnessed so much shamanism.
The chef the genius behind all this folly and pretension pronounces these to be Nostalgia Foods and has, in his own words, left no stone “unturned in the quest for the childhood flavour hit” – but for me the only memory recovered was of bathwater circa 1934.
I have no doubt that this is an unfair review of the chefs abilities – no doubt because in the midst of all this lunacy he gave us solid proof of sanity with a Deep Fried Whitebait so memorably delectable that it will remain for me the benchmark by which to assess all subsequent ; Deep Fried Whitebait in addition, his white bread is far from white and has the most scrumptious crust, his salted butter is sublime, his espresso has the real Italian kick and his wonderful waitresses perform with an amused gravitas that overtly informs clients of their place.
After a period of pensive reflection my companion, with all the gay abandonment of youth, concluded this tapas Menu must, be put down as a self-indulgent folly; no sane man could choose to eat it twice. At £25 a head, it is no more expensive than a modest seat at J P Weatherspoons near the Bayswater Road, but I’d rather spend four hours there with Percival than in the wilds of Sussex.