Restaurants

If you were picking a site for a local restaurant, a glass fronted former shop with an unforgiving view of the A2206 and its unlovely flanks of brown brick new-builds might not tickle your fancy. But that’s where Arancia settled and, location aside, it has a great deal to recommend it with an excellent short menu of high quality home cooking. Identifying itself by an orange exterior in keeping with its name, inside it is bare bricks and stripped floors, with paper cloths clipped to the tables. Foodwise, starters includedchickpea and mussel soup or crabmeat and chilli linguine, and a gorgeous chicken liver salad – all for about a fiver. Mains meanwhile remain under £12 and aside from fishcakes, roast poussin and porcini risotto, they included a fine mutton and vegetable stew and an excellent juicy pork fillet with beetroot and lentil salad. Among desserts, undistinguished figs did not benefit from roasting, but there’s little cause for complaint about the food here – it’s too appetising and too favourably priced. The same goes for a wine list that includes good quality house numbers for £12-£13. A serious orange.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008