I like seafood. There, I've admitted it. I know oysters are said to be like eating snot off a tortoise but I disagree. As to their aphrodisiac properties, I think that's a myth, though a friend once warned me that if you don't swallow quick enough they make your neck go stiff.

Anyway, we noticed Riddle & Finns Champagne & Oyster Bar, which has recently opened in a narrow passageway in Brighton's Lanes, just off North Street. There's a bar outside to the left of the door, where you can eat if you like to be jostled by fatties squeezing down the passageway. The kitchen is long and thin and visible through the window, which stretches along the front of the bar I just mentioned. This is greatly reassuring, since you can see what the chefs are up to and do your own impromptu environmental health review. In the window on the right of the door is a superb display of fresh fish: a work of art.

We were there at 2 o'clock on a Friday in August and hadn't booked, but they said five minutes, which is what it turned out to be. It's small so we waited in the lane. We could have browsed the Laney shops all around but since these are mainly full of tourist crap, we didn't.

OK, 'Riddle & Finns' is a silly name, but they do nearly everything else right. Inside I liked a lot. Beautiful bevelled oblong white tiles right up to the ceiling, nice, original fishy photographs and etchings, red floor, and HUGE and high marble tables with high stools. You need all that table space too, what with the quantity of fishy detritus - shells and whatnot.

This was a birthday splurge so we went for a cold seafood platter for two - with whole crab (£40). Good value, because we got a very impressive display on a sort of raised circular wire-coat-hanger thing. The seafood was beautifully presented on a tangle of bladder-wrack with some bits of black string all mixed up in it. There were a thousand black winkles, and a few empty shells - remember the music hall song that went something like: 'I can't get my winkle out, isn't it a sin, the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah PIN'? Anyway we had three pearly-headed pins - as there were three of us: me, Maz, and young J - and they were nicely presented too, stuck in a champagne cork. With the winkles were a load of helical greenish whelks - a bit too rubbery for me, langoustines, shrimps, razor-shells (disappointing), lovely cold mussels, and maybe stuff I've forgotten too. On top was a fantastic crab. We got those nut-cracker things (made in Germany) for the crab but I ate mainly the soft gungey meat on a bit of bread. I like it; the others prefer the white meat. We were presented with a plate of this bread when we came in. It was a nice display too, with three little accompanying dishes of mackerel pate, horseradish, and something else. They charge you for this without telling you first, which I wish they wouldn't. But like everything else it was good and very well presented.

Along with the crab, the best thing was four rock/pacific oysters. They are the wrinkly pale ones. They do the dark round native oysters too (more expensive) when there's an R in the month. DELICIOUS! J, who is 13 and not sure about oysters, tried one for the first time. He swallowed, wondered for a second, and then shuddered all over. I guess they're an acquired taste.

I asked for the 'cheap' champers (£30). 'You mean our nice house Champagne,' said the charming and helpful waitress, who said she was called Katherine, when I asked her. And that's how you spell it, because I asked her that too.

We got through two finger bowls and a mountain of paper napkins and we were all full up by the end.

Maz had lemon pie for afters and coffee. While I was checking out the disabled toilet she asked for a Scotch for me, though it wasn't on the list. They gave me an Irish coffee without the coffee and charged me the £6. But there you go, it was nice they bothered. I asked for tap water and Katherine didn't bat an eyelid. Instead she said, 'Would you like ice?' That's the way to do it.

One thing spoiled the atmosphere a bit. They keep things like spuds and boxes of fish out the back, and the only way for the chefs to reach it is through the emergency doors at the rear of the restaurant. These doors, let in the wind, sending napkins flying - on my table -and the view out the back is a brick wall and a blue skip. No good chaps. Do something about it please.

All in all I'm a fan of this place. Just see what you can do about those doors.

Pricey but good value. Recommended. Perry Stalsis 2006.