You won’t find pad Thai on the menu at Namo, a small, bright Thai restaurant deep in Brighton’s Lanes. Nor will you find green curry, deep-fried spring rolls or chicken satay. No, this place is a definite cut above your average over-sweet, under-powered Siam-style crowd-pleaser. It started life in lockdown, when chef and owner Bookie ran a Thai food-delivery service from her home kitchen, before taking up residency at a local pub. Then, a couple of months back, Namo moved into its first permanent location.

The lunch menu is short and succinct, and we start with miang bites, their take on miang kam, the usual betel-leaf wrapping replaced by chicory – pert, bitter and filled with chillies, herbs, roasted peanuts and a good whack of lime. A few dried shrimp would make things better still (they always do), but this is a vegan dish, so crustaceans be damned. Still, it’s a mouthful of pure zest and vim, eaten alongside tom yum plantain chips, crisp slivers of deep-fried crunch mixed in with a delectable debris of dried chilli and fried curry leaves.

The grilled beef has ‘a mild sweetness and pleasing chew’

Then an excellent gai golae, grilled chicken with crisp skin and soft meat, topped with a gentle coconut curry sauce. The dish has a mellow subtlety, something to soothe rather than bombard the taste buds.

Nua yang, or grilled beef, has a mild sweetness and pleasing chew, along with the merest whiff of Mekhong whisky, while muek grob sees beautifully fried squid, dusted with larb spices and served with a blob of fresh mayonnaise. There’s a sly, dry heat, a good lime kick and sweet herbal sigh.

Home-made sai ua – northern sausage (Bookie is from the north of Thailand) – is stained yellow with turmeric and has that essential slightly acidic bite. It comes garlanded with pickled ginger, coriander and lettuce – though I do crave the usual raw ginger and whole chillies, to really add serious porky punch.

But the food at Namo is not about blowing one’s head off or overdoing the funk, rather skilled, resolutely modern Thai cookery that manages to meld the traditional with the personal. Prices are reasonable, the service lovely and the dinner menu looks interesting still. I cannot wait to come back.

About £25 per head. Namo, 24 Ship Street, Brighton; namobrighton.co.uk

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