Those of you nursing a jaded, been-there palate probably think there's nothing much new in the world of food. Same old, you sigh. You obviously haven't been to Bill's.
Bill's is one of those places that, as soon as it opens, makes you wonder how the devil you did without it. If you live in Brighton - or indeed anywhere within a 50-mile radius (and that includes all you London day-trippers) - this place is guaranteed to draw you in. But it's just a greengrocer, you shrug. With a café attached. So?
So, try ordering a salad. It arrives laden to the point of blow-out, an explosion of batavia, basil, mesclun, and other luscious leaves you can't quite name ; purple potatoes, thumb-nail cucumbers and groundnut sprouts. Have it with a slice of pizza, topped with apricot, spinach and cambazola. There's a hint of Manhattan's Dean & Deluca here, but owner Bill Collison has never really been far outside nearby Lewes, where he started out as a greengrocer in the mid-Eighties.
'My family were gypsies,' he says. 'They brought us up fruit-picking in Kent, then my father had a nursery - he eventually stuck me in a shop selling carrots and potatoes because I was getting a bit wayward.' Bill's was soon a local honey-pot, full of hunter gatherers on the lookout for the unusual.
'It was amazing, even 15 years ago,' says Bill's business partner Tania Webb. 'He had 10 types of mushroom, yet we were in London struggling to get Asian ingredients and Bill had them down in Lewes!' When the town flooded in 2002, Collison set about recreating his shop, adding the phenomenal food from head chef Andrew Pellegrino.
The team opened a second Bill's late last year, just a skip from Brighton's Pavilion. 'The site was originally an old bus depot, so it's got a really high ceiling which gives the whole place a kind of New York warehouse feel,' says Webb. While punters flock here for superior bacon butties and boiled eggs with soldiers, they tend to leave with rich pickings from the shelves, tubs and baskets. The place is stacked with Dorset Knobs and fairy cakes, Israeli toasted couscous, French pistachio oil, home-made chaispiced biscuits, own-label pickles and preserves.
What's new and enticing about Bill's is this 360-degree food experience, a step on from the 'deli-next-door' popularised by Terence Conran and his Bluebird Café in Chelsea way back in 1997. At Bill's, you don't simply eat lunch and then mosey over to the shop; you dine right there, in among the produce. This is Deli-Dining for our foodie generation. Within minutes of parking yourself at one of Bill's communal wooden tables, conversation might turn to Flower Marie, a superlative local cheese. The atmosphere is steeped in food, a rich soup of chat about chard, squash and rhubarb, about what's ripe and what to do with that gaudy dragon fruit or those white physalis.
'I do the props, the styling, the shows of produce,' says Bill. 'I bring in logs, pumpkins, old tins - it's a bit of theatre really. The Lewes branch is more theatrical still. It's like painting a picture every day, I was in the shop at 3am this morning making it all look beautiful. The fruit and veg on display is also the store for the kitchen, so what doesn't sell today is juiced tomorrow, or turned into soup.' Regular customers are used to the sight of Pellegrino in his chef's whites perusing the shelves for more white beans or horseradish. 'This is a lifestyle for us, not just a business,' says Bill. 'We're really into finding the next new thing. Everything we sell is a bit, you know, sexy... We stock the things that everyone wants in their larder.' Antonio Carluccio stopped by the other day for some anchovies, even though he sells them up the road at his own just-opened deli ('Bill's are better than ours,' he confides).
'A lot of people refer to Bill's as "that veggie place",' says Tania. 'But it's not. You come here to spoil yourself silly. It might just be cheese on toast, but it's brilliant cheese on excellent toast.' I'll drink to that. You can make mine a strawberry, celery and mint smoothie. Chin chin.
· Bill's Produce Store, The Depot, 100 North Road, Brighton (01273 692894); 56 Cliffe High Street, Lewes (01273 476918)
