Seven Bees Cafe

This place was originally recommended to me as «the best breakfast in Brighton»
I think it’s pretty great — and consistent. I’ve been here three or four times, and the breakfasts have always been really good.
The place itself is really tiny, with around only six tables, and nearly always full. Which shows it has a great reputation, as it’s location is a blink-and-you’d-miss-the-sign down that lane between Ship St and Middle St.
Choices on the breakfast are big, bigger and biggest. Which I think is a awesome way to choose your fry-​up. (Particularly if you’re feeling, shall we say, a little delicate?) You can also mix and match breakfast items, and I believe they do other options too like porridge, but to be honest I’ve always ignored half the menu because the full cooked breakfasts are so good.
The potato latkes, in particular, are lovely and a nice replacement for hash browns, which are usually underwhelming in my experience. The owner has obviously taken care to source good quality ingredients, and it shows.
Everything is cooked to order, and so as a result it can sometimes take a little while to wait for your food, but it’s totally worth it.
They have a nice selection of juices, and they have sweet treats on the counter, like cookies.
A real, unpretentious, good quality café.

Quaint location /​layout. Perfect for a breakfast spot. Food and coffee is good. Service kind of slow. Staff maybe a bit overtaxed but friendly.

I’ve been wanting to visit the Seven Bees since it opened a year or so ago, but my work schedule never permitted me — until today!
I know it has a good reputation for a fry-​up, but since I also heard they made ‘proper’ American pancakes really well, and have so far been very disappointed by every other establishment’s claim at authentic pancakes I knew they would be the order of the day.
And they were DELICIOUS. I had despaired of ever finding anywhere (outside of London, anyway) that made authentically fluffy, large buttermilk American-​style pancakes but Seven Bees delivered on their menu promise and gave me gorgeous, perfect pancakes. Covered in real maple syrup and with generous helping of well cooked bacon, I was in heaven. :)
Thank you, Seven Bees. I am now a devotee of your little café, and can’t wait to come back again.

Great place lovely food and lovely people. Had an excellent veggie Risotto for lunch and would definitely recommend a visit.

Only open for just over a year, this place is a little gem.
The price of a breakfast is a bit more than I am used to where I live, in Hackney, east London (£6 for a breakfast, not including your cuppa — compared to £4 at my local in E8, everything included). But the quality makes it worth it.
As much food as possible is locally sourced — and cooked to perfection. It tasted great! I might be paying more than I was used to but I am certain that they were paying more for their ingredients than my local café.
The service was quick and friendly too. Top marks to the young chap waiting on the tables for a job well done and done with a smile.
This was my first visit to the Seven Bees, but going by the first review of this café appearing on Unilocal (in April 2010) it appears that the owner has improved things by an incredible amount.

This breakfast café is tucked away on the tiny alley running between Black Lion Street and Ship Street. We decided to give it a try when we stumbled past it the other morning. It is a little bit poky, because it is very small and doesn’t get any direct sunlight, but it was an unknown quantity and so worth a shot. We looked around for a menu, but couldn’t see one. The slightly harassed sounding owner and chef informed us that they hadn’t quite got round to menus yet, but that he could do ‘anything breakfast-​y, like eggs.’ They had an apple pie on the counter, which my boyfriend made a beeline for because he had been craving apple pie for a while. However, just as he was going to order some, I noticed that it had mould in it. This put me in the awkward position of trying to convey this information to him, without just shouting out ‘IT HAS MOULD IN IT!’ I made some frantic eye movements and head nods in the direction. Fortunately he noticed and we just ordered a cup of tea. We continued to chat to the owner for a bit, who admitted that he was totally new at the café owning game, which on one level was reassuring — it would have been more worrying to think that the outfit was that shambolic with practise. We drank our drinks and left. I really feel quite guilty kicking this place, because the owner seemed like a nice guy, but given the level of disorganisation, to the degree that the food on display was actually mouldy, I would not trust this place to feed me safely. Sorry Seven Bees man!

The clue to this tiny café’s name is in its address (gedditt?). It features plastic table cloth, builder’s tea and big breakfasts for a fiver.
Located down a alley next to Brighton Body Casting and the Bodhi Garden, it ideal for an unpretentious cuppa at a sensible price before you plunge back into the postmodern maelstrom.

Really great breakfast — terrific value at only £5.
Big — really big. Excellent, really tasty ingredients.
And really well cooked — right to the last mouthful.
The food took a while to come. I could see the owner (Iain) didn’t stop all the time we waited — having cooked breakfast myself (!) I know it takes a while to cook a breakfast from scratch.
But it was a comfortable place to wait, and the time flew.
Can’t decide between 4 and 5 stars — I would give the food 5 and the décor etc 4.
Disclosure: owned and run by a colleague’s partner.

Superb little café in central Brighton, owned and run by one of my team-​mates’ partners.
That bias aside, I wholeheartedly recommend it for the highest quality breakfasts and lunchtime bites you can reasonably expect without going to a restaurant.
I had a fantastic full English: what stood out was the quality of the ingredients — the deliciously buttery mushrooms (sourced from a supplier that specialises in bringing the best mushrooms that sussex growers can put on), the crunchy snap of a sausage made of real meat (!), some yummy black pudding and the extra twist of a Polish potato bhaji type thing. Simple food done seriously well.
In our group some people had Huevos Rancheros which they enjoyed, particularly remarking on the tastiness of a freshly prepared salsa.
The inside of the café is very small (take intimate and subtract a tiny extra bit!), but nicely and humbly set out. This is about sitting down for a comfortably tasty bite with mates, not about seeing and been seen in a brasserie. The tablecloths and cutlery all seem new, clean and nicely selected.
Iain, the guy cooking the food, is the owner, and the guy that puts the time into getting the ingredients right. He can tell you where the food comes from, and what the Seven Bees story is. You can’t beat that level of hands-​on-​ness in my opinion.
The one compromise which will be familiar to any fan of quality is that the breakfast or Huevos or whatever will be cooked while you wait, so this isn’t sit down and eat — this is sit down, chat, believe in what you’re waiting for and then be rewarded with food with integrity.