ONE of the city’s best-loved restaurants is preparing to open an ambitious sister establishment at the Hilton Brighton Metropole.

The Salt Room, which will specialise in seafood, will hope to follow the success of carnivore’s favourite The Coal Shed in Boyce’s Street, Brighton.

It is set to open later this month with 84 covers in the main restaurant, 60 at the bar and another 53 on the terrace.

Owner Razak Helalat said he has assembled the “best of the best” for the Salt Room, including former head chef of The Ginger Pig and The Coal Shed Dave Mothersill and a former general manager with Mark Hix Restaurants, Dariush Tamadon Nejad.

It is hoped The Salt Room will relieve the pressure on the relatively small Coal Shed, which caters for up to 1,000 diners a week with many more turned away.

It will be targeted at hotel guests as well as city diners and business people, and aims to combine views of the Brighton seafront and the two piers with simply cooked, high-quality seafood.

The large menu will include sharing feasts including whole turbot, as well as other catches and shellfish, with competitive set menus at lunchtime. The opening is part of an ongoing multimillion pound investment at the Hilton.

Mr Helalat said: “We’ve been incredibly busy at The Coal Shed, and it’s a difficult restaurant to do 1,000 customers a week – we turn away hundreds.

“The building is under pressure, there’s just not enough space.

“People said we were crazy to be opening a mid to high-end restaurant in a backstreet, right in the middle of the recession.

“But before we knew it we had David Gilmour and Nick Cave coming in. Diners couldn’t get what we do anywhere else in Brighton.

“We will stick to what we do best, which is high-quality ingredients, cooked really well, and not messed around with.

“People are willing to pay for quality, and we’ve become a bit of a special occasion place, where people don’t mind spending a bit of money.”

He added: “When people think of Brighton they think of the sea and good seafood.

“We want people to open the door and taste the salt in the air.”

The restaurant is due to open to the public on Friday, February 20.