Dine Like a Servant at The Regency Town House

Mrs Ainsley jangles her keys and notes down our names. Dressed in white cap, shawl and starched apron, she is welcoming, if occasionally severe.

We are in no doubt of what is expected of us.

To have a good time.

This is Dine Like A Servant.

Part pop-up, part living history, part theatre; a unique fundraiser at the historic Regency Town House in Hove’s Brunswick Square.

We, the guests, are not of the aristocracy.

We know our place.

We are fellow servants drawn from the surrounding homes being entertained in style by Mrs Ainsley, Mrs Rogers and her team of well-schooled maids.

And tonight we’re in for a special treat. Chef Paul has prepared something most of us have never tasted before. Curry, Anglo-Indian style, seasoned with the rarest spices from the exotic Far East.

Just don’t tell the master and mistress of the house what is going in while they are away!

Dine Like A Servant is a recent addition to the historic house’s innovative fundraising events.

With a fully working kitchen now restored to its former glory and several of the rooms beginning to be habitable, the charity is becoming more inventive.

Now I know what negus is!

We begin with a warming cup of negus. Very popular with the ladies of the period it’s a blend of port wine, sugar, citrus and spice and acts as an ice-breaker.

Taking a sip or two, I feel like a character in a Jane Austen novel or one of Georgette Heyer’s languishing females.

Mrs Ainsley soon puts paid to any ideas I may have above my station, though, with a stern reminder that what is expected of us all tonight. Good manners, gentle conversation and polite behaviour.

How much you choose to enter the spirit of the evening is entirely up to you. The readings and re-enactments all add to the experience, but nothing is forced.

Our fellow guests have a wide range of interests. Some are here out of curiosity, some for a love of history, others are regulars who always support the House.

But we’re all here for the food.

Having watched Paul Couchman at a traditional Christmas pudding workshop we’ve become intrigued by his attempts to recreate some of the period’s most fascinating dishes.

A Regency kitchen in action

We’re allowed in a little early, and the kitchen is already redolent of citrus and spice.

A team of volunteers has been at work for hours, as the servants would have been in Regency days, preparing the dishes.

Blood orange jellies are chilling, a lime posset is being poured into delicate china cups to allow time to set and pastry for the fanchonettes is being baked.

Over on the hot plate (a modern intrusion in the restored kitchen but essential for 21st century hygiene) pieces of chicken are seared and seasoned while a piquant piccalilli is plated and ready for the table.

Paul is delighted to share his recent finds.

“Curries were something very new in the Regency world, and their history is fascinating. Tonight I’m serving the first known recipe in a British cookbook, a chicken curry by Hannah Glasse first printed in 1747. I’ve also got an early vindaloo and a lamb korma.”

“When these curries first came to England there wasn’t the same range of spices we are used to nowadays, so to modern palates the curries aren’t that hot.”

But they still came as a shock to the English gentry’s taste buds.

Thackeray, in the beautifully ironic Vanity Fair, describes Becky Sharp’s first disastrous encounter with a dish from India – a passage which is read out to us later as we dine, raising a few chuckles.

“She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. “How fresh and green they look,” she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. “Water, for Heaven’s sake, water!” She cried.”

Curry, Regency style

Curry is, of course, pure invention, a concept that the Europeans imposed on India’s food culture. Locals then, as now, referred to their different dishes by specific names, but the British invaders lumped all of them together under the heading of curry.

The Dine Like A Servant menu was perfect for a blustery night, starting with a spicy mulligatawny soup followed by the three curries with rice, served with fresh salads and the crisp and pungent piccalilli.

Paul adapts the recipes for people with special diets and my vegetarian curry, though not of the period, was delectable.

The triple plate of desserts and a rich roast coffee topped off the meal.

And did the servants of the day dine quite as well as we did?

Probably not in the same elegant way, but any leftover food that was sent to the high tables of the dining room definitely worked its way back to the kitchen where the higher ranking servants – butler, housekeeper and cook – got first dibs.

The food would then work its way down the servant hierarchy until the remains were given to the poor or the animals.

What to expect at Dine Like A Servant

It’s entirely up to you how much you join in, but dining by candlelight, with gleaming silver cutlery and starched white napery does encourage you to participate.

And the chance to chat to others, drawn by a shared love of food, history and desire for a different dining experience, means the room is a constant hum of lively chatter, broken only by the occasional performance of song, conversation and sage advice from our hosts.

Conversation at our table ranged from the best foods we’ve ever eaten, how to deal with a very hot curry (sugar apparently works best), places in the world we’d love to live and the latest films on Netflix – that last one distinctly out of character!

Cost in 2019 is £35.60 per head, wine is an optional extra, and all profits go into the restoration fund.

More information about the Regency Town House in Hove

Built in the 1820s, Number 13 Brunswick Square is a grade 1 listed terraced house in a Georgian estate in Brighton on the Sussex Coast. It is being painstakingly restored by expert staff and volunteers as a heritage centre and museum, with its activities funded through The Brunswick Town Charitable Trust, a charity set up to support the project in 1992. You can find out more on their website

As well as offering guided tours and hosting Open Days, the team puts on a series of events across the year to reflect different aspects of Regency life and the arts. Part of this is Paul Couchman’s series of cookery workshops, which are fun and informative.

And you can learn more about Paul’s work to recreate 17th and 18th century dishes on his website

Disclaimer: We were guests of Paul and the team at Regency Town House

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Where to next?
• Prince Regent’s Treasures
• Unmissable things to do in Bath
• Hidden Hove