… Bill's is right down North Road by the Pavilions. The high glass frontage is etched with vegetables and the front of the restaurant is a glossy, well-ordered green-grocer's shop where I was a bit miffed to see asparagus, because it looks like the sort of place that sources locally and seasonally, and either they had flown these in from somewhere whose only other industry is winter-sun holidays, or they've had them since last June. That said, I went to a Soil Association function in January and found asparagus among the crudités – which is like finding a Jew at a David Irving book launch – so perhaps the thrill of scented wee overrules food miles on the worthiness checklist.

Whatever. Bill's is brilliant. It made me happy as hell just being there: the lovely high, airy space of the former bus depot, the cream-painted brick, the dark wooden shelves stacked to the ceilings with Belazu olive oil, Ortiz canned fish, Dorset Knobs, fridges pulsing with good old Rachel's organic milk and stacks of Vacherin Mont d'Or (now in prime mid-season), and cold counters containing giant, rococo salads.

Good old Anna, to whom I was immediately grateful for the glory of this exhilarating walk-in larder, was the first person I saw in Brighton without a piercing. At least, without one I could see. And together, at one of a dozen wooden tables in the back half of the building, we perused blackboards that offered combinations of salads, quiches and pizza for around six quid a go, as well as others that touted Bill's Vegetable Boxes at £25, which seems a lot for a box of vegetables.

There was meat in evidence, but not much. Anna pointed out that Brighton 's population was 90 per cent vegetarian. “So few?” I asked. After a glass of slightly odd-tasting buck's fizz which a sweet, rather wan and distracted waitress in uniform red T-shirt, assured me was made from champagne and orange juice, I tucked into my starter of two boiled eggs with soldiers. Oh yes. Boiled egg and soldiers. The two things I can never be bothered to make at home are boiled eggs (because it is so hard to get them right and I hate complaining about cuisson when the chef is me) and toast, because I never have any bread in the house, which means I would have to start from flour, which is a bore when your cup of tea is getting cold.

Best thing I've ever eaten in a restaurant, no question. Two perfectly soft, really meaty eggs in matching cups with a mound of soldiers cut from crusty white home-made bread, glistening with butter, a sprinkle of salt and pepper and… Just bloody, indescribably…just the whole point of opening your mouth if you're human.

The waitress was unable to recommend a wine to accompany my boiled egg, so I tried all four on the list and decided that the Chilean merlot was the best match – information I pass on here lest you are ever sitting in front of a boiled egg and soldiers at, say, Nobu, and find the sommelier short of ideas. It also went okay with Anna's Spanish onion and white bean soup with lemon and thyme and home-made foccacia, of which I had a couple of dunks.

Next I had a fish-finger sandwich, after first checking that the fingers were Birds Eye, and thus made with fish from sustainable stocks approved by the Marine Stewardship Council – you don't have to have a pierced nose to be an eco-spod.

It came on brown bread. Brown bread! A shocking faux pas. Like mulled wine with sushi or bare feet with loafers. Brown bread is not the point of a fish-finger sandwich. White bread and Heinz ketchup and Hellmann's is the point of a fish-finger sandwich. They first claimed I'd asked for it (shame on them), then admitted that they had run out of white. But the bread wasn't too brown, and it was nice and doughy, and they had replaced the tartare sauce with mayo, as instructed, and been generous with the ketchup, and once I had removed the lettuce (la-di-da!) it was perfect.

Anna had a gigantic salad of all sorts of lovely things, including purple potatoes, with so much foliage – frisee, flat-leaf parsley, basil, batavia – that one half-expected a Japanese soldier to emerge at any minute and surrender with tears in his eyes. Except, this being lefty, pacifist, lesbo, whoopsie Brighton , he would have later kicked himself, since he could probably have taken the town on his own.