Eastern Eye

I come here very regularly and the food is amazing. Not what you get in a typical curry house, and really great fish choices.
My favourite dishes are the Malabar Meen Fish Curry — coconut with mustard seed and the fish just melts in your mouth; the vegetable idli and the cabbage thoran.
Service is always very friendly, they serve Cobra on draft. Win!

Authentic and really tasty Indian food.
This place is not much to look at from the outside but don’t let that put you off. I wouldn’t go there for a special occasion but for a fairly inexpensive meal out with great flavours and attentive service it’s perfect.
It would be easy to order too much food as it all sounds amazing but we got the balance just right. Between me and my husband we had a couple of popadoms with really nice fresh sauces then shared 3 starters and 1 curry & rice.
We tried the fried paneer cheese with chilli that came in a really nice Soave almost sweet & sour tasting but with a good kick of spice. The Goan fish starter was really good and had a good dipping sauce with it.
Probably what I enjoyed most was the dosa. We just tried the starter size which is filled with a spicy potato mixture and comes with some chutneys and a sambal lentil sauce. I have seen them before and thought it was some sort of pancake which it kind of is but I didn’t know it was made from rice & lentils.
Next time I will go for the full size dosa with tiki chicken… I am already craving it as I can imagine how good it will be and I think it’s fairly healthy too which is a bonus!

Before I moved to the UK, I’d heard that Tikka Masala was practically the national dish over here, so I was looking forward to an all-​you-​can-​eat extravaganza of cheap yet amazing Indian food when I arrived. A few traumatizing experiences later I realized that most Indian restaurants here cook what locals want to eat, and they apparently don’t want to eat anything too exciting, too flavourful, or too spicy. I resolved never to visit an Indian restaurant in the UK again unless I had a personal recommendation from a foodie who knew what they were talking about. Luckily, the most recent Unilocal!event provided just such an opportunity (thanks Chloe!).
Based on photos that the restaurant had uploaded to their Unilocal!page, which I later realized were stock photos and not their own, I tried to find the Thursday Thali Special for 11.95 on the menu to no avail — it wasn’t mentioned anywhere! But when I showed the waiter the picture I was talking about, he said it was available and just not listed on the menu, and we just needed to choose between Lamb, Chicken, or Veg.
The thali comes in two courses — appetizer and then the main thali plate — and the appetizer in this case was a type of vegetarian fritter with tamarind and mint yogurt sauce on it which was very delicious. The thali itself contained a lamb curry for me (and a vegetable curry for my partner), seasoned rice, half a naan, daal, a small dish of pickles, and a medium dish of an aloo gobi type potato. I found the curry to be extremely delicious and flavorful and spicy — thank goodness! — but in a turn that really surprised me, it was the naan bread that blew my socks off.
It was the best I’d ever tasted! The waiter looked at me pretty funny when after we had finished our thali, I ordered another plain naan and a tandoori roti (if they did the naan so well, the other breads are probably delicious too I reasoned!) and the idli starter (I’d never tried it and always meant to… so I thought I’d just get it out of the way at the same time…) and confirmed that yes, they should practically open a bakery because all I want to do is walk away with endless of their freshly baked breads. I think they must make it in a traditional clay or rock oven or something because of the way the bottom is crisped so perfectly.
The whole bill came to a very reasonable 33 pounds, and I will definitely return to try the dosa which I hear is a particular specialty. The waiter, of which I think there is generally only one, must always be the same guy I keep hearing about who is extremely knowledgable and passionate about the food and always explaining the dishes and putting them in the context of what people eat in India — super awesome! So thankful to have found some decent Indian food at last!

From the outside, Eastern Eye doesn’t look appealing, with the large windows that have white A4 menus stuck onto them, and dark interior. Don’t let this put you off though, it put me off for years until I was recommended to go by a friend, and I truly believe this is one of Brighton’s best kept culinary secrets.
My favourite starter was the fried fish fillets, which are fried in gram flour so are gluten free which is good for me!
They also make their masala dosa from scratch, they soak the rice and lentils over night, then grind them in a stone grinder that they imported all the way from India! The most authentic tasting dosa I have ever had!
The curries are all amazing, with plenty of unique dishes to choose from, the Lamb Shank curry is one of the best I have ever had.
Definitely head to Eastern Eye if you haven’t yet, for amazingly authentic curries, and some of the best Indian that is available in Brighton!

Beautiful, delicious food. Tastes like in India. The staff is excellent, super friendly! Been here many times, will come back for more.

I would probably go as far as to say that Eastern Eye is one of my favourite curry houses in Brighton. It’s not the nouveau-​posh Indian food currently in fashion, such as the fare offered by the likes of the Chili Pickle and Indian Summer, but it does offer great tasting, good quality Southern Indian cuisine.
I’ve eaten here a few times: as a couple, in a group of friends and in large work parties. The staff seem to cope well whatever size your group and service is efficient and friendly.
The menu is quite extensive and has plenty to offer for meat eaters, fish fans or veggies. This time I went for the dahi samosa chat to start — hot and crispy samosas on a bed of spicy chickpeas. For main, I went for a lamb dish cooked with apricots and cumin. We also shared a dosa between the three of us as they are one of the house specialities. plus the usual poppadoms and rich dishes — why do I always over eat at places like this?! However, all the food was tasty and good quality, as it always is when I visit here.
The main downsides to this restaurant are its location on London Road, and the vastness of the space, it really is too big for this spot. Be warned, it can sometimes look empty or indeed closed from the outside, but venture in, it’s always open!
*When I started writing this review, I initially gave the restaurant four stars. However, I have since found out that one of our party was quite poorly the next day so I dropped one off — Sorry EE!

Best masala dosa in town. Food takes usually 20 mins to be served, when they are not busy I feel this is a tad too long hence 4 stars. Good takeaway service, collection only.

Best Indian Food in Brighton! Even my mum who does not like eating out loves this place as it’s authentic food just like in the best restaurants in India. The chef is well trained and exceptionally skilled at putting together fresh ingredients for a delicious experience. The waiters are friendly and polite. This restaurants deserves to be packed out every night but because its on London road it only gets a steady pace of customers. No doubt, most of them will have sampled it once and keep coming back for the great, reasonably priced food in a relaxed atmosphere. all my friends and family love this place!

About a month ago we went to this restaurant for a late friday night meal. I need to make this clear to explain my rating!
I’m meet my brother for a couple of drinks beforehand then we went to the restaurant the meal was very nice, we both had the chicken tikka massala, garlic nan and rice I probably would have already returned for another meal however. all was well until 7.00am in the morning I felt terrible! I spend the morning running to the toilet every 15 minutes. The rest of the day I felt terrible! And guess what my brother felt exactly the same so I know 100% it was the meal we had I dont think I ever had such terrible diarrhoea ever it really was terrible. I would normally never leave a negative review but the have certainly deserved the rating! I advise anybody not to risk it.

Eastern Eye is a good quality Indian restaurant that makes one of the best Dosa in Brighton, but unfortunately that alone doesn’t change the problems facing this sizeable restaurant.
London Road is far from an afluent area, so when Eastern Eye opened last year, I really was surprised. One of the big problems is that as a restaurant, it is huge, far too big for what limited demand exists.
When I visited last week it was about 8 o’clock, despite that, I was on one of only two used tables, adding up to 5 people (excluding staff). The food is high in quality and the prices aren’t too bad (a little bit high), the the unattractive modern décor and expansive lay out makes for an awkward meal.

Like mentioned previously, it’s like a ghost town in here. I like to think of the ‘towns’ occupants huddled together in the back kitchen toiling over numerous pots of simmering curries. The best thing about ghost towns are the lack of queues, and I wouldn’t mind queuing for these curries-​only a little bit though.
The restaurant is quite large and set out beautifully, and their Indian cuisine encompasses South Indian, Tandoori, Mughlai and Bengali dishes onto the menu.
The vegetarian options are bountiful and I find more interesting than the carnivorous mains-​the Palak paneer in particular (cottage cheese in a buttery sauce with fenugreek).

We recently came back from India and were fiending for some authentic southern indian as opposed to the northern indian food more commonly found in the UK. Eastern eye serves delicious food, though we’ve only tried the southern indian food such as Uttapam & Dosai.

This place does really good Indian food — not the best I’ve had, but I’m very picky — and I can’t believe how dead it always is. It deserves more customers because it has delicious dishes, friendly staff and is good value for money. So go there and give it the business it deserves!

I’m now back to visiting restaurants that have absolutely no customers inside. It gives me a chance to gaze at the surroundings, and possibly eavesdrop on the conversation the waiter is having with the cook. That’s when I learn new things. For example, on one visit to a customer-​less restaurant, I found out that the battle system is Final Fantasy XIII is going to be amazing. It’s just those little tidbits of information that I find fascinating.
However, when a restaurant is not busy AND they have great food, that is a tremendous find. I’ve only become familiar with Indian cuisine while here in Brighton, and not one restaurant I’ve been to has disappointed. And Eastern Eye definitely didn’t disappoint. You’ll get a great, low cost meal, and a great (or not so great, depending on your point of view) quiet atmosphere to sit and enjoy.

I don’t understand why this place is always so quiet. Really, genuinely great Indian food, friendly and on a main road. Atmosphere could be better — mainly because it’s nearly always very quiet.

Go to Eastern Eye now — it’s always empty despite being the best Indian in town!
This London Road restaurant offers surprisingly tasty and good quality food considering its notoriously rough and ready surroundings and neighbouring shops (pound shops, discount shops, charity shops, betting shops…). I guess the surroundings must explain why it always looks a bit dead — that and the not too welcoming tacky shop front, which also doesn’t give a great view inside of the restaurant. But I’d really recommend you give it a go — in fact this is one of my Indian friend’s favourite restaurant in Brighton!
The décor is smart, modern and comfortable. The food is good value and seriously yummy — with a great fresh range from indulgent to light and healthy. They also do a big veggie selection. Also look out for the cheapie lunchtime deals advertised in the window.
The only thing I wouldn’t reccomend the place for is a romantic meal; it’s often empty in there, so you’ll feel a bit exposed and watched by the waiter. But the place is way more dead than it deserves to be — definitely great for a group as the restaurant gets some business and you get quick delicious food!