Fairlight, Sri Lankan Restaurant Guide

Unlikely but promising something spectacular – that’s the potential of this brave newcomer: the passion project of chef Jack Lury and his wife, Issy Cianchi, set in a small, 10-seat basement that’s a stone’s throw from this not-so-lovely portion of the British seafront. It’s a dream that started life as a delivery business during Covid, and opened here in Spring 2025 – rather late for feedback in our annual diners’ poll. But in her June 2025 visit, The Times’s Charlotte Ivers went wild for cooking that showed “an extraordinary level of ambition”. Drawing on Jack’s British and Burgher (European-meets-Sri Lankan) heritage he creates fusion dishes of huge imagination and variety, and according to Charlotte, “If this is not quite yet a five-star restaurant… it will be soon”. She concludes: “Who creates a ten-course menu for their first permanent restaurant? A madman, that’s who. But one of quite clearly astonishing creativity and talent”.