It did. Building control told us there was the remains of an ancient church behind the building. The dig was initially exciting but it turns out it’s not that exciting to watch a couple of guys painstakingly sifting through rubble. Nothing was found in the end and it put us back about three months.
Where is the site?
It’s the former Oki-Nami on Brighton’s New Road. We’ve been on site for about a year and were supposed to launch in April. The build has been a much bigger undertaking than we anticipated because we’ve got the whole building and its Grade II listed so there’s been a lot of red tape. Furna is within the ground floor and basement. The upstairs are being used by my business partner’s wife for a high-end textile and design retail space.
Tell us about Furna’s layout and design
We’ve kept some of the original features to maintain the building’s Georgian heritage, including the ceiling coving and the floor-to-ceiling windows to the front. I initially wanted to go quite modern but that would not have been right for the building. It’s going to be a luxurious space and will lean more towards the classic than the contemporary. We have a beautiful bar and area for pre and post-dinner drinks as you walk in and a 26-cover dining room. The main feature of the ground floor is the fully-open kitchen which will allow the chefs to serve many of the dishes and interact with the guests. In the basement we have a walk-in wine room and a semi-hidden PDR for six with its own kitchen that we’ll also use for mise en place and menu development.
What about the team?
My senior team is largely female. They are all people I have worked with in other places. Isobel Humbey is sous chef, Jessica Elliott is pastry chef, Ross Truman is general manager and Rosie Greene is running the bar. They’re people that I trust and have the same vision. They all left there jobs in April so they’ve been waiting to get going for some time. We have six services a week so we can concentrate on the one team and we can all be here all the time. The staff also get three days off a week that way. We want to create a family vibe and bring back and front of house together. Furna will initially be open Wednesday to Saturday for dinner with lunch served on Friday and Saturday.
What will the format of Furna be?
We’re offering a £90 tasting menu with wine pairing priced at £65. They’ll be snacks, a bread course and three or four savoury courses before we move onto sweets. We will also have a cheese trolley. It’s a shame cheese trolleys have disappeared from dining rooms. We will source all our cheese from Courtyard Dairy in Yorkshire. The whole menu will change very regularly, as will the wine pairings.
What style of food will it be?
It will be food I love eating and cooking. It will be my take on classic dining. There will be some Asian influences but they will be subtle - it won’t be fusion. There will be a lot of work done behind the scenes but the plates will be quite simple. We will be working with whole animals to allow us to serve extras made with ‘lesser’ cuts, for example the venison dish we will launch with will come with a consommé made from the bones and a pancake made with braised-down neck. We will be using some local suppliers including Trenchmore Farm but I don’t want to deprive Furna of great produce because it’s not from down the road. We will be using some of the best suppliers in the country, including Celtic Seafood for our scallops and Lyons Hill Farm for our venison.
What else will be on the launch menu?
The selection will include baked potato parker house rolls with roasted yeast butter and fermented honey; BBQ oysters with bonito butter, walnut and caviar; milk-brined veal sweetbread with kabocha squash, maple sherry and roasted chicken sauce; and salt-aged Sika deer with beetroots, Agen prunes, bone marrow and bitter chocolate.
And what’s behind the name?
We originally wanted to call it Fable but when we tried to trademark it we discovered that someone had trademarked it for a Manchester restaurant that never opened so we could not use it. We came up with a number of other names but found they were also taken. In the end, I worked with Good Noise (a Brighton-based branding and design agency) to delve into the history of the area. We found that the road was once owned by two brothers - Robert and Thomas Furner - so we modernised the spelling. It also means man that puts bread in the oven, apparently.
It looks like Furna has required a major investment...
Yes. We’re in it for the long haul. We’re not going to open and then move onto something else in a few years. I didn’t want to cram in covers. We can do a maxim of 32 across the main dining room and the PDR but we have the space to offer a great experience. It will also be a nice environment for the staff - the kitchen is high-spec and we have a lot of back of house space. Without a happy team we have nothing. This is a big investment for me and my business partner but we want to get it right. It’s been quite a journey to get to this point. I’ve been in Brighton for a long time. This project has come from the heart, it’s my vision and a showcase for what I can do as a chef.
Tell us about your background
I’m originally from Yorkshire. I arrived in Brighton in my early twenties and worked at Terre à Terre for four years. That was a great experience because it was a restaurant that was ahead of its time - very few UK places were using Asian ingredients and technique in the early 2000s. I then worked at The Real Eating Company and The Ginger Pig (both in Hove). I ended up becoming head chef for Ben (McKeller, the Ginger Pig’s owner) before overseeing the food at Razak Helalat’s Black Rock Restaurants. I opened two restaurants for him (The Salt Room and The Coal Shed London) and stayed for around five years. The standard of food was great but it was a relatively high volume operation and the scale of the business was such that I wasn’t really cooking anymore. I returned to Ben to oversee The Gingerman (the group’s fine dining flagship in Brighton) and worked there for a few years over the Covid period, which was in some ways a stepping stone to what I’m doing now.
