For 12 years, The Set has operated without a place to call its own. Launched by chef Dan Kenny as a Brighton pop-up in 2014, the tasting menu concept has moved between a succession of shared kitchens, most recently operating from Café Rust on Preston Road.
That changed earlier this year when Kenny took over the nearby former Kitgum Kitchen site, transforming it into a tiny counter restaurant seating just 12 guests. They are joined by a single front-of-house staff member making The Set a three-person operation.
Its diminutive size is central to the business model. Located away from Brighton’s more expensive central restaurant areas, the site is exempt from business rates and requires relatively few staff. The restrained set-up allows Kenny to serve an ambitious tasting menu of around 17 courses for £99 while keeping overheads under tight control.
Kenny is one of a small but growing group of chefs exploring extremely intimate restaurants as a way of navigating the financial challenges facing fine dining. Other recent examples include the eight-cover Gwen in Machynlleth, Wales, which was relaunched by former Casamia chef Peter Sanchez-Iglesias in June, and Jonny Mills and Hannah Barr’s eight-seat Sǣl, which opened in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter this month.
The Set has been an itinerant restaurant concept for more than 10 years. It must feel good to finally have a permanent home
It really does. We’ve been sharing kitchens with other operators for some time, most recently Café Rust. I’d liken it to sharing a flat into your 40s. There comes a point when you want your own space and for the TV remote to be where you left it when you wake up in the morning.
Was it always the plan to open such a small restaurant?
Yes. We have to be realistic. Our main tasting menu is the longest and most expensive in Brighton and Hove (around 17 courses for £99) so we’re not going to be packed every night of the week. Top-end restaurants are also very expensive to run, and having a small site with just three full-time staff really helps. This part of town is key, too. It’s central enough but isn’t an expensive area in which to operate. There isn’t a lot of passing trade, but we don’t really get walk-ins. They happen occasionally, but we certainly don’t rely on them.
The site is so small that you don’t have to pay business rates. How big a difference does that make to your numbers?
It saves us between £3,000 and £4,000 a year. It isn’t a game-changer, but it isn’t insignificant either. Oddly, we have to pay the council around £400 a year to check that we aren’t eligible to pay a fee, which is absurd. It’s a very small space but it works well. We went through several different designs. At one point, we planned to seat people opposite each other on a counter with a gap in so we could work through and serve them but realised an L-shaped counter around the kitchen would make better use of the space. We visited lots of small restaurants in Japan and the UK and took down key measurements to see what worked and what didn’t.
Can you actually make money from a 12-cover restaurant?
Yes. All three people involved in The Set full time are making a reasonable living. But the budget is quite rigid at the moment, and our margins are razor-thin because I’m paying off some unexpected costs associated with the opening. When we launched, I had only £900 in the business account, which was scary. By the end of the year, half of The Set’s debt will have been cleared, which will make things much easier. I’m happy to build the business slowly and hopefully eventually reap the rewards of being pragmatic.
One thing that sets The Set apart from other micro-restaurants is that the offer changes throughout the week…
I didn’t like the idea of The Set sitting empty for three days a week. We serve the full tasting menu on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, while Friday lunch is ramen and a few snacks. On Wednesdays, we run M.A.D (Midweek Affordable Dinner), with two sittings for a shorter, £45-a-head set menu. It isn’t something we make a lot of money from, but it gives people a taste of what we do. They often book the full Set experience off the back of it. When we launched, local sushi chef Masu came in on Sundays. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, so we’re now looking to replace it with other things. We’re working with Ridgeview on a Sunday sparkling wine and raw-bar concept and also want to host some guest-chef events. Eventually, we’d like to do something for charity on Mondays and Tuesdays, but we aren’t yet in a financial position to do that.
Are you out to win a Michelin star?
Any chef working at this sort of level who says they don’t want a Michelin star is lying. This set-up allows us to be very consistent. It’s just Marcin Miasik (The Set’s head chef) and me cooking here, and we’ve worked alongside each other for more than 10 years. It would be a great accolade. We’re focused on The Set for the moment, but we would eventually like to do some other things, although probably not in this part of the market. But we love it here. It’s a very efficient way of cooking for and serving people because everything is right in front of you. It also creates a lovely supper-club atmosphere, with all the guests talking to each other by the end of the night.