I enjoyed a fabulous afternoon at the Coal Shed’s super new high street home

It’s part the growing roster of restaurateur Razak Helalat, whose Black Rock Group began with the Coal Shed in 2011 and now includes The Salt Room, Burnt Orange, Tutto, and a second branch of the Coal Shed up in the capital.

Last month The Coal Shed moved from previous its home in Boyce’s Street (between West Street and Middle Street) to a much larger site right in the middle of the action on North Street.

On a busy sunny Saturday afternoon we made our way through both sides of Middle East tension in the form of chanting protestors, and impossibly loud buskers, into the more serene and stylish surroundings of the new restaurant.

Stepping inside was a sudden but very pleasant gear-change from the high street hullabaloo of the city centre.

It was perfectly-lit and oozing comfort, and immediately felt like the kind of place you’d want to hang out and kid yourself that your presence is making the place even more attractive.

Trade was brisk and although seemingly fairly full, there was a real sense of space inside. It’s divided into five areas, which all have slightly different lighting and a different feel.

The designers certainly had plenty of room to work with because the site, Clarence House, a former coaching inn and hotel, is a not inconsiderable size which takes up both 30-31 North Street.

They’ve done an excellent job with the historic Georgian building with warm amber lighting, plenty of dark woods and some swish furnishings.

We had the best seats in the house in terms of viewing the impressive open kitchen where there were flames aplenty, adding exactly the sort of backdrop you want to see in at a grill restaurant

The original Coal Shed was one of the first in Brighton to use a Josper Grill, a high-quality beast of a charcoal oven, which helped inspire their name and did a wonderful job of their steaks.

There’s fire aplenty at the new kitchen adding exactly the sort of backdrop you want to see in a grill restaurant,

Their website proclaims them to be The Master of Fire, a pretty cool sobriquet, and although a little bit grand is just about fair enough considering the consistent ‘cooking over-flame’ ethos.

Amid the flames the tattooed and mohawked-executive head chef Lee Murdoch cuts a burly, dominant figure at the pass and in the kitchen.

Ahead of the restaurant opening there was talk that Lee’s new menu would be a tad more refined with more veggie, vegan and seafood dishes, but retaining the successful principle of cooking over fire.

We started with some extravagant nibbles in the form of potato and caviar. Bite-sized crispy triangles of crispy Golden Wonder potato (the actual spud not the crisps popular in the 70s and 80s) with a serving of salty, insanely moreish Exmoor caviar atop a dollop of crème fraîche.

From beginning to end we were superbly looked after by Elsa, who knew the fairly extensive menu back to front (pretty impressive considering the place had only been open a few weeks), and expertly steered us through proceedings with some great recommendations including a slightly bonkers cocktail and a gorgeous light starter.

In recent years the Black Rock restaurants have more than held their own in Brighton and Hove cocktail arms race, with the mixologists at both the Salt Rooms and Burnt Orange serving up some superb creations.

That know-how has been carried over to The Coal Shed’s new cocktail menu, which the pre-opening publicity described as drawing inspiration from the “best bars of New York and London”.

The new restaurant has, unlike Coal Shed number one, a very cool bar with space to sup on leather stools and banquette tables.

Sister venue Burnt Orange was billed as “grown-up, late-night hangout”, and although The Coal Shed closes a little earlier, it feels like they’re aiming for a similar vibe in that part of the restaurant.

Elsa’s cocktail tip was the Dill and Pickle Martini, which had a fair splash of pickle brine among the more traditional ingredients, making for a pleasantly piquant mix which my salt-and-vinegar-fearing dining chum baulked at but I absolutely loved.

Even more impressive was my second (and last) cocktail of the day, a A Fat Old Fashioned (not an ex-girlfriend’s description of my dress sense) but an awesome beef fat-washed bourbon (Evan WIlliams) with bitters and salt.

I since looked up the process of ‘beef-washing’ a whisky and I’m still none the wiser, but I’m grateful for whatever culinary chicanery was involved to produce this absolute brute of a blend.

Far less brutish was the shared starter of the watermelon Ceviche. The bright and beautifully put together veggie plate was a great example of the aforementioned new approach at the restaurant.

A herb oil was a light counterpoint to the creaminess of avocado and a sesame milk dressing, and a smidge of smoked Shishito chilli gave added punch without overpowering this excellent delicate dish.

As a pair of enthusiastic carnivores it would have been madness not to have a steak at Coal Shed, and accordingly we opted to share a steak and some seafood.

The steak, a Irish Heritage Breed Ribeye, medium-rare with butter and salt (at “300°C of heat”) was perfectly cooked and astonishingly tender. Wonderful stuff.

Chunky beef fat chips were the no-brainer steak accompaniment, with a more left-field choice of a spinach Rockefeller spinach, with Pecorino hard cheese, and a cream sauce spruced up with a big splash of Pernod.

Seafood Bonne Femme was super-light fish stew of scallops, king prawns and a dreamily buttery wild seabass. A simple but classically French dish and one of exec chief Lee’s favourites according to the ever helpful Elsa.

My dining chum is a sweet fiend and her face lit up like the Paris on Bastille Day when I suggested the dessert selection for two – a jamboree of the chef’s favourite puds.

I couldn’t get enough of the striking Kiss at The Opera, a rich dark chocolate mousse, enveloped in a bright lipstick-red coulis, and looking a lot like it had been created by Andy Warhol.

Her fave was the brûlée brioche, which she described as ‘toffee mayhem’ featuring a variety of textures (popcorn, Dulce de Leche, and honeycomb ice cream).

It’s difficult to imagine the restaurant as being anything other than another success for Razak Helalat. He seems to have kept much of the original Coal Shed formula and added the more popular elements from his other venues (the seafood, the whopping great cocktail list, and a wider choice for veggies and vegans). And combining that with a gleaming new venue and a beefed up menu (pardon the pun) is also going to get even more bums on those beautifully upholstered new seats.