Brighton has more restaurants than any other town in the country with the notable exception of London. There are more than 400.

It outeats Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, even though these grand cities are much bigger.

But restaurants tend to come and go with a few notable exceptions, especially hotels which keep their dining rooms but often give them new names.

It all started, as so many things did in Brighton, with the Prince Regent, a noted trencherman. He persuaded the great French chef Carême to work for him at the Royal Pavilion in 1816. One banquet had 36 courses.

Soon there were restaurants to join the pubs, hotels and coffee houses. The most famous for many years was Muttons, named after the proprietor rather than sheep, which survived for more than a century.

Ethnic restaurants started to arrive in some numbers during the 1960s and often lasted longer than the home-grown variety.

Perhaps the smartest Chinese restaurant was the Lotus House in West Street, closely followed by Nanking in Market Street and Choys in Little East Street.

The Ashoka in Church Road, Hove, became the first really elegant Indian restaurant in the 1970s and still survives.

In the Lanes, Vassos in Brighton Square pioneered Continental licensing laws, while round the corner was the popular Four Aces.

Brighton was famous for having a branch of the seafood restaurant Wheelers in the Lanes but it did not last nearly as long as its home-grown competitor English’s in East Street, which is more than 150 years old.

There were Italian restaurants in Brighton long ago but the boom came in the 1970s with the opening of Al Forno in East Street and Al Duomo in Pavilion Buildings.

They were soon followed by Pinocchio in New Road and Donatello in Brighton Place, the biggest restaurant in the city.

Bardsley’s in Baker Street has been run by the same family in Brighton since 1926 and has had several branches.

Food For Friends on the edge of the Lanes has been a notable and inexpensive vegetarian restaurant for more than 30 years, while the award-winning Terre à Terre in East Street is 20.

Browns, a chain that tends to be favoured by students, started in Brighton in 1973 and is still in Duke Street.

More recently celebrity chefs have arrived with mixed results.

Aldo Zilli did not last long in Jubilee Square but Jamie Oliver thrived in Black Lion Street and Antonio Carluccio in Church Street.

Preston Street used to be called the street of restaurants but has gone into decline. That title has now gone to Church Road in Hove, where there are more than 40.

Surprisingly there are few top-class restaurants in the city. The most famous was Le Francais in Paston Place, Kemp Town. Owned by Claude Frecker, who also ran the Royal Crescent Hotel, it had a star chef in Yves Botasso. The nearest equivalent today might be the Gingerman in Norfolk Square.