Noodles are one of life’s great pleasures. They promise respite from their forgotten position at the back of a cupboard, from a pot or a shiny packet, offering near-instant satiation. They offer entertainment, both in seeing them be hand-pulled, twisted and braided behind a pass, and then watching someone attempt to eat the non-uniform, slippery mass armed only with a set of chopsticks and a perilously thin napkin. Noodles provide the canvas for many a globe-trotting, universally-beloved dish: pad Thai, Singapore vermicelli, ramen, chow mein, pho, laksa. Noodles have conquered the Earth; almost everywhere they go, countries and cuisines quickly fall for their bouncy, chewy, slurpable delights.

Now tell me, have you ever heard of Henan? Henan is a province in central China, and it is Henan you have to thank if you have ever enjoyed a bowl of noodles in any form. Henan is considered the core region of ancient Chinese cultural history, and though noodles originated in north western China, the wheat came from Henan. During the Tang Dynasty, Henan became the definitive birthplace of traditional pulled noodles.

I had never heard of Henan, because I am a cultural ludite and haven’t been to China. Yet. I’m such a ludite, that, when I was happily chatting away to co-owner Lucy in Uncle Lee Kitchen on Friday night, I asked if Henan was the same place as Hunan. In my defence, in the UK we have Dalston and Dalston, Clapham, Clapham and Clapham, Kingston upon Thames and Kingston upon Hull, Gillingham and Gillingham, Clapton and Clacton-on-Sea, Twickenham and Ickenham. I mean, come on. But geography has never been my strong point — ask any of my friends and they’ll gleefully recount the time I drove Chris and I up to Aberdeen because I thought it was in Wales.

One of the great joys of more Chinese restaurants opening in Bristol, largely due to the influx of Chinese students, is that we can now eat regional Chinese food that is actually Chinese, rather than just the British-Cantonese stuff from takeaways. Your Kitchen is great for Hunanese, Nice Spice for Cantonese roast meats, Great Chongqing for Sichuanese, Uyghur noodles at Gulnar on Park Row and Gansu noodles at Lanzhou on Park Street. Uncle Lee Kitchen opened seven days ago serving Henan cuisine, making it the first in Bristol.

We ordered at the counter, behind which Lucy and Lee’s daughter Millie was watching Peppa Pig on an iPad, and then headed upstairs for a panoramic view of Bond Street.

Don’t tell Millie, but the golden crisp fried pork bites ( £8) were incredibly moreish and disappeared very quickly, interspersed with chopstick mouthfuls of blanched shredded potato salad (£2.50), shredded cucumber salad and a lone pickled garlic clove.

Further pork came in the form of ribs with potato, cooked in a savoury broth, which in a blind taste test I’d struggle to discern from stews my granny cooked. And, I know my geography is bad, but I’m pretty sure we weren’t driving to China every time we visited. It’s no bad thing though — food at granny’s was always hearty and deeply comforting, cooked low and slow with time and attention.

Peppa had also been minced to a fine grain with ample chives, wrapped in just-translucent skins and fried to form very good, crisp-bottomed dumplings. Much to Millie’s distress, we then moved onto Shaun in the form of Henan hand-pulled noodles in a clear lamb broth (£14.50). While the broth was very light in colour and in flavour, the chunks of fatty, cumin-laced lamb were masterful. Henan’s millenia of noodle prowess were evident in the gloriously tangled noodles; though I still think those I’ve had at Authentic Hot Pot and Lagman remain atop the charts round here.

Uncle Lee Kitchen kitchen certainly has its own distinct brand of interior design — in most restaurants you’d find candles on the tables rather than making up for the lack of electricity in the bathroom — but it has warmth to it that can’t be purchased in the aisles of IKEA or John Lewis. After the half hour chatting to Lucy and Uncle Lee himself after our meal, we felt more as if we’d stumbled into a family home than a restaurant. Lucy impressed upon us that we must return for the langpi, or cold noodles, that Henan is famed for, which weren’t yet on the menu due to the same electrical challenges that were plaguing the bathroom.

Returning really won’t be an issue. On our way out, Lucy asked if we’d leave a Google review. They’d only been open five days and a review would really help. I told her to leave it with me.

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Uncle Lee Kitchen, 22 Bond Street, BS1 3LU

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When the building that housed Bertha’s Pizza was built, in 1820, as a stable for the nearby prison, the concept of pizza was decidedly foreign in the UK. Now, a Bristol without Bertha’s seems equally so. The Neapolitan-style sourdough heavyweights fired their last pies on Saturday, marking the end of ten years of exemplary Bristol hospitality.

Bertha’s was named after the resident mammoth pizza oven, which itself went through a few iterations. The original, a Sheffield Steel wood-fired oven, started in the back garden of owners Graham and Kate. After much experimentation with the dough, toppings, firing and everything in between, Bertha 2.0 was built in situ in the back of a bright yellow Land Rover at the start of 2014. Tours around markets, festivals and pop-ups in Bristol and beyond followed. Graham, Kate and their kids moved from London to Bristol in 2014, in hope of establishing a permanent restaurant.

The bricks-and-mortar establishment came two years later, in 2016; the same year that the mobile pizza operation was named as one of the top 25 pizzerias in the UK by the Sunday Times. Quite a feat from the back of a Land Rover. Bertha 3.0 was built, no sign on her smooth mosaic shell of the 500 degree inferno she contained. Bertha’s opened on Gaol Ferry Steps in August of 2016, one of the first restaurants in the new Wapping Wharf development. Bertha’s was not the first pizzeria in the city to slow ferment a fantastically chewy, blistered sourdough base, but they quickly became a clear favourite. They made one thing, and they made it exceptionally well.

From then on, it was a near constant stream of everything that Bristol hospitality prides itself on. Bertha’s frequently collaborated with neighbours and those further flung, creating pizzas with the likes of Wilsons, Box-E, Ethicurean, Squeezed, Alp Mac, Gambas, Bokman, Danny’s Burgers, Big Nath’s, Pukka Peacock and many more.

The team supported countless charities over the years, raising thousands for the likes of Fareshare, The Mazi Project, South and East Bristol Foodbank and Blood Cancer UK. The latter fundraising event, held in April 2025, saw the return of Sam and Beccy Leach (previously the operators of beloved restaurant Birch) to Bristol to roast chickens in the pizza oven. Graham’s said that was one of his personal highlights from the last ten years. Raising money for charity was as baked into the Bertha’s operation as the long ferment of the dough.

Then there’s the ecosystem that surrounded Bertha’s. Though ideas were drawn from all over the globe — kimcheese, Philly cheesesteak and even an Ethiopian-inspired creation at a giro — most of the ingredients used were local. Not because it was cool or trendy, but because to Graham and Kate and the team it felt like the right thing to do. They cared. They cared a lot about the people they worked with too, and can count many offshoots among their legacy. GruffleTops, Midnight Pizza and Madly Gelato were all formed by ex-Bertha’s team members. One of their first chefs, George, just opened toy (sic) in Paris and another chef Jack is now at Rambutan in London. Miguel, front of house manager for many years, now runs the wonderful Food Tours of Bristol, on which Bertha’s was a regular stop.

But Bertha’s will perhaps be remembered most fondly for the aforementioned giros; evenings in which those in the know would book out a table and the chefs would be given complete creative freedom to serve whatever they wanted, providing it was on a pizza. These one-off creations would be called out and whichever table was first to raise their hands and shout (providing they had finished their previous pizza) would get it. The giros were chaotic, fun, sociable and in Bristol at least, incredibly unique.

After surviving Covid, the Bertha’s team diversified and started making high-quality frozen pizzas in early 2024. These have since been stocked in nearly 40 suppliers in Bristol and the surrounding area. Two of the pizzas have won one star great taste awards, and the frozen dough balls from which you can make your own pizzas have won two stars.

In a post on Instagram, the owners shared a goodbye:

“Over half a million pizzas, an unreasonable amount of flour, some very late nights, some offensively early mornings and more washing up than any sensible person should ever volunteer for.

Along the way there were some very loud giro nights and some fairly questionable ideas that somehow became very good pizzas. I’m looking at you, Umami Bomb — carbs on carbs for the win.

We’ve made plenty of mistakes, but we’re pleased to say we held the line on at least one thing: not a single Hawaiian made it onto the menu.

Mostly, though, we just want to say thank you.

Thank you to everyone who came through our bright yellow doors. Whether you came once, once a week, brought your kids, celebrated something, drank one too many beers, argued about whether the crusts were the best bit, or simply told someone else they should give us a try — you kept the whole slightly improbable thing going.

Thank you to everyone Wapping Wharf for making a collection of shipping containers by the harbour feel like a proper community, and a special place to spend ten years.

And most of all, thank you to every person who worked at Bertha’s. You brought the energy, graft, humour, kindness and occasional chaos that made the place what it was. We’re immensely grateful to all of you.

We’re incredibly proud of what we built, and very sad to say goodbye.”

Bertha’s may be closed, but the legacy will live on and the team, the spirit and the pizzas remembered in conversations for many years to come. Some will say Bertha’s was just a pizza restaurant, but it was so much more than that. It was the epitome of Bristol hospitality, a dream that came to fruition that impacted so many lives for the better, and an example of one thing done very well for over a decade.

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

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A one-off: Κέφι at The Scrandit

The Bristol Sauce recommending a pop-up at The Scrandit? In your best Brenda impression — “not another one!” But look, we can’t help it that The Scrandit has the most exciting food programming in the city, and even by Scrandit standards (scrandards?) this pop-up is set to ascend to a whole new level.

Read more

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found myself sitting in a beautiful British pub, scanning an overworked menu that somehow manages to travel the globe without taking me anywhere exciting, and wondering: what would the Beckford Group do with this place?

The answer is always the same. It would give the decor a tasteful overhaul without losing the venue’s inherent character, train the staff to an enviable level of relaxed competence, and lay on a menu populated by elevated British classics with a pinch of European panache.

Having established outposts across a slice of Wiltshire and Somerset with the likes of The Beckford Arms and The Lord Poulett, and conquered the Bath dining scene with the Beckford Canteen and Bottle Shop, the group has hit 2026 with a flurry of exciting openings. Corsham House is its first restaurant with rooms, which explains why James Harris of Beckford Bottle Shop has been entrusted to oversee the kitchen.

The venue is a grand Grade II-listed Georgian house that has steadily shifted shape and function over the centuries, even serving as a bank until 2016. This has produced a series of rooms and corridors that never quite seem to follow on from one another in the way you’d expect.

Its cosily opulent ground floor dining room is all brass fittings and burgundy banquettes, set off by a reflective ceiling and a marble-topped bar. To the right of the main entrance, a bottle-lined seating area that seeks to export Beckford Bottle Shop’s vibe to the countryside. To the left, a “hidden” courtyard where the well heeled of Corsham sup their negronis (£14) and peruse the menu.

As we melt into our seats one muggy Saturday evening, noughties electronica group Fujiya & Miyagi are on the speakers, muttering about tripping over their laces. I pray this doesn’t augur bad things.

Parched as the surrounding Wiltshire hills, we dive into the drinks menu, settling on a carafe of Sousón. It’s a little spendy at £39 for 500ml, but the promise of a chilled red proves too much to pass up on such a close evening. Wine is very much the order of the day here, with extensive by-the-glass options starting from £8 and steadily climbing into the mid-teens.

With something cool and acidic in our glasses, our thoughts turn to the trio of small plates that arrive in short order. Having resisted the Landrace bread and cultured butter (£5), we commence instead with the fresh crunch of crab salad (£14), sweet white meat mixed with what seem to be julienned radish and finely diced apple, then dotted with globules of pea puree and sat atop a dense puck of English muffin.

The pig’s head fritter (£10) promises much on paper, and certainly delivers in terms of porky richness. However, the greasy puddle it leaves on the plate seems a mite excessive, and it needs a more liberal application of salt to justify the sweet one-two of sliced pickle and gooseberry ketchup.

By this point I was kicking myself under the table for ordering too many fried elements, but the late addition of Westcombe cheddar curds (£7) turned out to be inspired. This generously proportioned snack has us trailing crunchy-chewy strands of dairy matter through fluffy Marmite mayo.

It’s a salty umami bomb of a dish, and one that threatens to blitz any other light bite on the table. If your palate can stand up to the pummelling, though, this dish might just settle the great Marmite debate once and for all.

From the large plates section, we opt to eschew the two meaty options. As our server sagely notes, the steak is great, but still very much a steak. I’ll also admit to having had one eye on the steak and eggs (£15) option from the following morning’s breakfast menu. Besides, halibut with charcuterie XO and chicken jus (£28) reads like it should supply enough meatiness to sate any carnivore.

In the event, the fish is a tad overcooked and, again, under seasoned, with the sauce mainly conveying a cloying sweetness. The most distinct taste here comes from the accompanying peas, which, as much as I love those little green suckers, is not what you want to hear when you’re ordering the most luxurious dish on the menu.

The signature Corsham chips with chicken salt (£7) fail to provide a sufficiently savoury counterpoint. We’re in the contentious realm of the layered fried potato here — arguably not a true chip, but unarguably delicious when done correctly (pour one out for Lucky Strike). This particular version lacks the necessary crunch and — you guessed it — salt level for the job, yielding only a vague vinegariness through the semi-flaccid starch.

Salvation lies with cheese custard. Doesn’t it always? Half a sweetheart cabbage (£19) comes doused in silky cheddar sauce, then liberally sprinkled with “onion salad” – a somewhat highfalutin term for the kind of crispy topping you might find on a hot dog. There’s really no need for such posturing, as they add the ideal savoury crunch to those contrasting earthy and tangy notes.

It’s been an evening of peaks and troughs, but thankfully the meal concludes on an almost uniformly high note. There’s a particularly sharp elderflower tart (£9), its faintly tropical-tinged filling housed in some impressively fine pastry work – though I would have preferred a little more snap to the crust.

The apple cake (£8) offers the kind of gently spiced slice of comfort that you could envision enjoying with your afternoon cuppa, were it not elevated several levels by a generous chunk of tangy Dorstone goat’s cheese. A handful of macerated currants are on hand to provide sweetness and bite. It’s one of those desserts that could serve double duty on the small plates section, such is the fine balance of sweet and savoury elements.

Propping up the moodily-lit art deco bar at the end of service, sipping a martini (£14), I’m left with mixed feelings. It’s still early days for Corsham House, a venue that will almost certainly become a lovely spot for a quick weekend break built around inventive brasserie cooking. It’s already a great place to come and enjoy a few high quality accompaniments to an excitingly varied wine list.

But a firmer hand on quality control – and the seasoning pot – is required if it’s to really make a name for itself in the ever-expanding Beckford empire.

All words and photos by Jon Mundy

Corsham House, 13 High Street, SN13 0ET

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The news

Totterdown’s Bank is launching a new ‘more accessible’ menu which supposedly features more budget-friendly options, including burgers. To celebrate the occasion, Bank is giving away the first 500 burgers ordered, providing you eat in and order a starter and a dessert. The burgers are £15, beyond that the cheapest main option is a celeriac risotto at £22. The new menu looks nice and the burgers will no doubt be delightful, but I’m not sure accessible is the way to market it.

The Orchard have indeed taken over Fierce and Noble and the whole thing has been rebranded as ‘Werbs’. A new sign on the gate promises that the site will be a bakery, roastery and brewery.

Press

CODE Hospitality published a list of the happiest places to work two weeks ago, which once again included COR, RAGU, Bank and Lapin. Anyone looking for a job in hospitality should note that it’s the second year in a row that all four restaurants have made the list. ‘Nuff said.

Closures

Wapping Wharf is truly in a state of flux. Box-E, an original feature of the shipping container empire, announced it will be closing after the tenth anniversary of the restaurant on 17th October. Box-E serves one of the best value tasting menus in the city, so if you haven’t been and want to try it, book in ASAP!

Another Wharf casualty is Pigsty, the restaurant from the Jolly Hog team, which will also be closing on 4th October. The group will continue to focus on their retail operation.

There will be another momentous Wapping Wharf closure in the coming days, but out of respect for the restaurateur and their team, I am obliged to remain quiet until they announce it on their own terms.

Over on East Street, vegan junk food restaurant VX has announced that it will be closing. On Instagram the team shared that they will be closing around mid October with an exact date to be confirmed as the landlord is selling the property.

The family behind an ice cream shop that has been open for 106 years have announced that it will be closing in November. Tarr’s Ice Cream in Brislington opened in 1920 and has been continuously operated by the same family ever since. The family have cited increasing costs as the primary factor behind the decision.

Hot chocolate fans are lamenting the loss of Knoops on Clifton Triangle, a branch of a nationwide chain that was only open for two years in Bristol. I’d encourage a visit to Mrs Potts on Park Street just down the road for those looking to satiate their hot chocolate cravings over the winter.

A stone’s throw from Knoops, Bristol and Bath Rum Distillery have also shut up shop, with the bar being listed as permanently closed on Google and on the website. The distillery’s signature product ‘Dead Man’s Fingers’, however, still seems to be going strong.

New openings

The site that previously belonged to The Social on Stokes Croft is due to become Super Nature, which will be a space for music paired with local food and drink. The team have raised £15,000 so far via crowdfunding to transform the site and are hoping to open this autumn. I have a feeling that the food operation may be a very popular Bristol pizza brand…

Ah-Ma’s Dumplings have been teasing something that looks suspiciously like a new opening, stating that something will be ‘coming soon’ on 2nd October. Ah-Ma’s already have a permanent site in the form of Clouds in St Werburgh’s. Could this be a second branch?

Bristol brewery Arbor Ales have purchased the 6 O’Clock Gin glassboat which is moored on Welsh Back and are renovating it before reopening.

Following the closure of Fierce and Noble, Danny’s Burgers are now in residence at Shredenhams, just off the Bearpit. However, I have a feeling that they may be back in St Werburgh’s before long.

New fried chicken joint Feather, on Whiteladies Road, is now open and promises ‘poultry taken to the next level’. On the menu is fried chicken on waffles, chicken skin crisps and… tomato soup?

There’s a Brazilian churrascaria coming to Bathurst Basin. Domus Steakhouse is opening in the former Paco Tapas site, which is strangely omitted from the 200-year potted history of the building that makes up the majority of the restaurant’s ‘Our Story’ page on the website. Given the prolific use of AI images on their website and social media, I am not holding out too much hope for Domus, but having experienced a proper Brazilian churrasco rodizio — where unlimited cuts of quality meat are served tableside — in Brazil, I will be interested to see how this compares.

Finally, global brand Chaiiwala has opened a second Bristol branch of their chai and desi breakfast cafe on Gloucester Road opposite the Bristol Flyer.

All words by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

The Bristol Sauce is an AI-free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

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I have a confession to make. I’ve never eaten a Dishoom bacon naan. More egregiously, I’ve never darkened the doors of Dishoom full stop. You might think that’s an irrelevant way to start the review of an entirely different restaurant, but it seems likely that to dine at the first Kush is to be at the beginning of a rollout, along the lines of the still perpetually queued-up Dishoom.

Kush is the brainchild of Aktar Islam. A chef and restaurateur of serious pedigree: Great British Menu champion, then judge, and the man behind Opheem in Birmingham, the first Indian restaurant in the UK to be awarded two Michelin stars. Nothing but rave reviews. I have never made it, despite continual promises to myself and others. Kush seems to be his diffusion brand, seemingly born of the Aktar at Home delivery service, itself spawned by a need to keep the COVID wolves from the door.

The Kush website talks about the “youthful spirit” of Clifton. As anyone from Bristol knows, in Clifton “youthful” refers to anyone under the age of sixty, while its “spirit” is very much “generational wealth and red trousers”. The place itself is dimly-lit, louche and rather cool. You could call it a mint room, although neither the apparent target audience nor the actual denizens of Clifton would have any idea what you meant, not being of the Oasis-and-alcopop generation; at least not the first time around.

On the evidence of the picante (£12) twinkling at me from across the table, the bar at Kush knocks up a mean cocktail, even if it was about as Indian as Fisher Stevens. In these days of stop-the-boats fascism on one side and no-cream-in-my-carbonara cultural protectionism on the other, a little flavour pollination should be encouraged. It is, after all, how most of the best things, food or otherwise, come to be. And this mezcal, chipotle and lime concoction — a spicy marg, to you and I — was a rather good example of the sort. In a reversal of usual roles, I went for a cobra (£6.50), which is exactly the sort of esoteric in-joke that Meg complains I include too often.

Since it is now probably too late to close my Pandora’s Box of food confessions, I might as well admit I’ve never listened to the Off Menu podcast. I am, however, aware of a segment where the guest is asked “Poppadoms or Bread?”, presumably as part of an assessment for late stage psychosis. Nobody in their right mind is choosing the mouth-drying, acrid monotony of poppadoms, which are somehow the only thing on Earth that can be deep-fried and taste like dust, and that includes dust itself. A carb that you can’t douse, blob or smother with butter isn’t a carb I want in my life. Everyone at the table knew how I felt about poppadoms, and how passionately.

Anyway we got the poppadoms. They were very nice.

Freshly-fried, frangible, textured, variable. The chutneys were even better. A traffic light in Farrow & Ball. A rusty red of tomato and chill, creamier ochre-orange and a particularly vibrant, herbal go-go-go green. A fleeting nostalgic memory of chutneys you have eaten in curry houses before, but vivid and alive on the tongue instead of sweet and gloomy.

A starter of roast bone marrow, crispy chilli beef and Malabar paratha was like catnip to me. Even at a seven pound supplement on a three course for thirty five quid menu. Two for a fiver less, four for a fiver more; not a tongue twister, just your ordering options. Indian food has always, at least in my life, been about sharing. Get a load of curries, twenty naans and five too many samosas for the table. The set menu idea puts paid to this, or at least makes it unnecessarily complicated. Nobody wants to feel like they have to pass an exam to get a curry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the most intriguing dishes carry a hefty surcharge, rendering the set menu prices basically a fallacy. As it happened, they’d run out of bone marrow anyway.

A head of corn was “ribbed” (a la Fallow, not Durex): split into four lengthways down the middle, blistered and charred then stacked and drizzled in gently aromatic, lemony butter. Each quarter soon vanished with little trace. Fragments of tiny bones and shards of shell bore evidence of what were once tamarind and chilli chicken wings and marinated achari prawns, leaving the table looking like a Daniel Spoerri tableau-piège. Both dishes, by the way, also bore hefty tariffs.

A little pile of liver fry was cooked through but springy rather than tough, bound by a thick, mellow gravy and primed for spooning onto quarters of the spongy, golden fermented rice pancake-alikes known as uthappam. This was doubly delicious in that, crucially, the chicken organs tasted great and, even more excitingly, they failed to attract the wrath of the Supplement Gods.

What were ostensibly mains were scythed into “curries” and “biryanis”. We chose two of the first and one of the second, picking up two further supplements (+5, +7) along the way, like Sonic the Hedgehog collecting rings as he whizzes through Green Hill. Old Delhi style butter chicken was a gem. Smoky chicken tikka morsels bobbed in a nutty, gently sweet sauce; the copperish hue of a posh farmer’s market-sourced organic tomato soup, far from the luminous orange of curry house lore. Its flavour was that of a tikka masala (once, let’s not forget, described as Britain’s national dish) that had travelled to meet its ancestors and come back having found itself.

Ox cheek beef nihari was better still. Ox cheek can be disastrous in the wrong hands. Cows are ruminants with four stomachs. They eat grass. A lot. Grass is difficult to digest — go and eat some if you don’t believe me. Cows ferment the grass they have swallowed in one stomach and then basically sick it back up and chew it some more. They spend hours every day masticating. That’s why if you walk past a field of cattle you’ll see them all there, clumped together, chewing semi-vacuously.

A cow’s cheek, thus, is constantly processing, grinding and smushing while the animal is alive. The result is a massive hunk of muscle, full of collagen and connective tissue but little fat for lubrication. A tough bugger, which takes time and love and tender heat to turn into something you’d want to put in your own gob. The chefs at Kush have spent almost as much time and care turning a cow’s cheek into something soft, luscious and delicious as a cow initially does making it the exact opposite. In a deeply intense, robustly spiced gravy tingling with pepperiness, plum-sized nubbins of this cheek collapsed under a just a nudge of the fork, like Reform finances under the slightest bit of scrutiny.

A Hyderabadi biryani (+£5) turned up at the table still wearing the nigella-flecked pastry hat under which it was cooked. I’d be tempted to call the thing a pie if only to enrage the pastry coffin traditionalists. The odd chunk of chicken could be found interspersed amongst well-slicked, distinctly separated golden grains of rice glistening with fat and moisture.

Of course, there was naan. Albeit a truffle and cheese naan (+£3, thank you very much), which felt like gilding the water lily, and a less rarified garlic, which very much did the job.

We were spared any surcharges with dessert, but with portions so far surprisingly generous, one for the table was deemed sufficient. Cheesecake and chocolate mousse were deemed too pedestrian, even if the former was accented by rose and saffron. Our chosen orbs of galub jamun came halved and were served cold, yet remained surprisingly soft and delicate. A scoop of vanilla ice cream was perched on top, rather too vanilla in the hedonistic sense of the word though arguably not enough in the literal, but maybe that was a deliberate attempt to protect the floral nature of the syrupy dumplings.

Kush is a tricky one to judge. The wordwang jumble of the website (“I had a wall before I had a canvas”) and graffitied branding certainly seem to be aimed at an audience more likely to be found in eternally aflame Stokes Croft or nouveau chic Bedminster than the swanky environs of York Place. That said, you’ll struggle to get out for much under £50/head once all those sneaky surcharges have been applied so perhaps those Clifton trust funds might come in handy. This apparent inconsistency and lack of local knowledge seems to betray a focus on impending roll out, or half an eye on the ambitious concurrent opening of already-acclaimed Oudh 1722 in London, rather than the eagle-eyed vision of a standalone site.

All that said, the food is undeniably very good. The trick will be keeping the poppadoms as converting, the nihari as seductive, as the rollout gathers momentum. You’d have to be a couple of grains of rice short of a biryani to bet against Aktar Islam conquering the country like tikka masala.

All words by PXandTarts, all photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Kush, 12-16 Clifton Road, BS8 1AF

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

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Bristol LOVES to call itself an independent city. It’s practically a personality trait. The murals, the music, the food, the stubborn streak of doing things our own way. People here will boycott something for moral reasons they can’t fully explain, then proudly tell you they “only support independents” while sipping a flat white from a national chain that rhymes with tar ducks.

I moved here because my partner and I “loved the independents.” We were those people. The G‑Road warriors. “Boycott Tesco!” “Long live the independents!” We said it loud and love this city’s vibe.

But… does Bristol really care about independents?

If it does, why is Gail’s packed out on a daily basis? Why are the crowds spilling out of Wetherspoons and onto the street? Why is Tonkotsu full but not Tomo, why is Pizzarova in competition with Pizza Pilgrims?

If Bristol really, properly cared about its independents, those big businesses with a million branches would be ghost towns. The chains wouldn’t see Bristol as an ideal stepping stone on their path to expansion from London. They simply wouldn’t come here.

Yes, often the chains are cheaper. They can afford to offer deals, discounts, that we can’t. They can afford marketing teams that get all up in your inbox and on billboards, while I’m over here doing the accounting, the HR, the marketing and putting the hours in behind the pass all in one day.

But you give your money to a chain and it goes to London or overseas. It’s often not getting taxed. Give your money to an indie and it stays in the local economy, and will likely end up benefitting you somewhere or someone you know down the line. It’s maybe 50p more for your oat flatty, but you’re paying to keep the money in Bristol and keep your local high street alive.

Not everyone can afford to make such choices, and I get that. But you know who’s in Gails? It’s not people who can’t afford to buy a coffee out. If you can spend £5 on a loaf of sourdough that’s stale the moment it comes out the oven, you can afford to support your local indie.

I know I’m likely preaching to the choir here, because The Bristol Sauce crowd do love their indies. And Bristol does have a better independent scene than lots of cities. But maybe you can help me answer the question. Is it because those people genuinely don’t know what a difference it makes going to an independent place over a chain? Is it because they don’t know which businesses are independent and which are chains? Surely it’s not because they genuinely prefer the food. Is it just because they don’t care and the thing about Bristol loving independents really is grossly exaggerated at best and at worst, a total myth?

Just like any big topic, racism, colonisation, sustainability — people say the right thing. But are you really supporting your independent? Or are you a closet flexitarian of localism, pretending you’re all about small businesses when actually you’re just knackered and choosing a chain is easier?

My partner and I support our independents because we want to live in a city where they exist. We show up hoping it comes full circle. Because it’s easy to not — and that’s the whole point.

Ask anyone and they’ll swear they support small businesses. They’ll champion local makers. They’ll say they choose neighbourhood restaurants over chains.

But from inside the industry, the kitchens, the dining rooms, the payroll spreadsheets, the late night messages about staff sickness, the truth is more complicated. Bristol cares, yes. But caring isn’t just a feeling. It’s behaviour. It’s habits. It’s showing up even when you’re tired. The love is real and powerful. That part of Bristol is magic. But the habit is what keeps independents alive.

So keep the culture. Keep the habit. Support your local, and don’t pretend.

All words by an anonymous chef, photos as labelled

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In English, a ‘white elephant’ is costly and useless; potentially an unwise name for an eatery. In Thai culture, it represents good fortune and prosperity. Jit and David Sprigg’s were presumably thinking of the latter when they opened their dual-nationality restaurant and coffee shop on the Kingswood Estate.

You’re unlikely to just stumble upon this place. It sits behind a sixth form college, within one wing of what was once a Victorian reformatory school, which now plays host to much more fun educational offerings: Circomedia, Royal School of Needlework, Creative Youth Network et al.

Outside The White Elephant, planters brim with colourful pansies to form a welcoming border between the car park and a decked seating area. Once in the front door, it’s a sensory blowout: the colourful space is splattered with Buddha heads, real and fake plants, and every possible variation of elephant figurine. Loud hip hop floods out of the open kitchen on a medley of cooking aromas, a telly blasts ITV 1 down onto diners and an industrial fan blows its best attempt into the 27 degree heat. A Coca Cola vending machine glows against one wall. It feels like a Khao San Road immersive experience, minus the awful tourists.

Out the back, remnants of the relaxed, local daytime trade remain: pub benches comfortably host family groups of six with younger members occasionally running laps on the grass. As evening descends, English breakfasts and sandwiches turn into burgers devoured alongside table portions of chunky chips, lurid milkshakes for little ones and booze for frazzled grandparents.

Despite appreciating eggy bread advertised as such, rather than by its ubiquitous American pseudonym, we’re here for the Thai food, and opt for two of the recommendations from our teenage server: massaman curry and pad Thai. Sadly, the air temperature trumps her third suggestion of a spicier panang. This same logic is not applied, however, when ordering the papaya salad (£8.55), with its three chilli heat rating.

As you can imagine, when sitting in a car park, atmosphere is a little thin on the ground. Fortunately, the starters arrive quickly: four duck spring rolls (£5.45), ready to relieve the roof of my mouth of its skin, and Thai fish cakes (£4.95) — both served alongside a limp carrot garnish and sweet chilli dipping sauce. Though the taste of duck is relatively mild, there is a welcome kick of spice, and the pastry is perfectly crisp. The fish cakes are more flavoursome, with a nice bit of bite, if a smidge under-seasoned.

Purple-haired Jit was working as a cleaner and carer until the end of 2019, when she left to open The White Elephant. Three months later Covid happened, so she was cooking at home and selling via delivery services until she could launch in earnest. She tells me that the local businesses and their clients quickly started eating here and she now has an established base of other customers too. Evidently, this is a well-liked eatery where people feel at home. Our neighbouring table seems more than happy to clear their own plates at the end of their meal.

This is not the spot for a rushed power lunch. The gap between courses reduces us to desperately devouring the carrot garnish with dipping sauce. Just before we start gnawing fingernails, our tofu pad Thai (£12.25) arrives with peanut crumbs, dried chilli flakes and a lemon wedge on the side. My date and I are such flavour-sluts we indiscriminately bung the lot on. The result is an explosion of taste and texture; really crunchy bean sprouts interlaced in sweet-sour noodles, cranked up by the addition of the chilli flakes, and riddled with crunchy peanut. Perhaps the tofu is ever so slightly too hard — but, my date reminds me, in a world where it can be floppy or stiff, most would choose the latter.

A bowl of massaman (£12.25) hosts super-tender chicken and potatoes swimming in a plentiful umami sauce. The sticky rice comes, as is common, in a plastic bag within a mini lidded wicker basket, then upon opening quickly evolves from glutinous through stodgy to become a solid mass, which is remedied with the pouring over of the curry. We eagerly scoop it all up using the obligatory portion of spicy prawn crackers (£3.95). The crunchy salad is full of young, green papaya (more a texture than anything, similar to kohlrabi) and raw, crisp, green beans, alongside carrot, baby tomatoes, red chilli, and a bountiful spicy-sour fish sauce dressing. Despite its listed heat rating, neither of our heads are blown off.

As we digest happily in the bright evening air and the restaurant clears out, Jit comments that between our order and the heat, this is a real taste of Thailand. Taking a moment to tune into the soundtrack of the mega-fan roaring inside, which renders the blaring TV incomprehensible, interspersed with bodies thudding onto crash mats at the Thai boxing gym next door, it certainly does feel it. This an Easyjet mini-break to Bangkok — a cheap and cheerful feast for the senses.

All words and photos by Josephine Bryony

The White Elephant, Kingswood Estate, Britannia Road, BS15 8DB

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In our two trips around the sun, we’ve published 170 articles and had 26 people write for us, with five more commissions on their way. All of those people have been paid for their work, and for many, it has been the first time they’ve written about food. That’s something to be enormously proud of. We have over 2,500 subscribers — a warm welcome to any that have joined us in the last week! (I promise we do normally publish restaurant reviews and funny columns, it’s just that this is a big anniversary. Normal service resumes on Thursday.)

I am very determined, but still the future holds a lot of uncertainty. My priority has always been paying our writers, so my own time is largely volunteered for free, which is unsustainable. The media landscape continues to be a shit show — corporate greed prioritising clicks over honesty does not a healthy newsroom make. The extremes of the political spectrum are doing their best to label the ‘mainstream’ media as untrustworthy, positing that ‘citizen’ journalists who post reels and are completely unregulated are the way to go instead. Big tech, too, are doing their utmost to take our attention away from thoughtful writing that could pose a threat to the establishment, instead distracting us with AI videos of animals at the Olympics or people filming without consent on deeply inappropriate Meta glasses. It’s not looking good.

Substack, which for a while looked like a veritable oasis in this binfire, has also gone down the pan. Despite the platform having been originally positioned as anti-advertising, Substack bestsellers can now apply for sponsorship deals. Oh and Andrew Tate is on here now, and he’s a bestseller. Not to mention the group of neo-Nazis making money from Substack newsletters too. We could get into a debate about free speech here, but I haven’t got the time. It’s not a platform I wish to be on any longer.

There are other platforms that do similar things to Substack, that will take a smaller cut of our revenue (which would be a great relief) and that would allow us greater control over our branding and content. But before we can migrate, we need to reach a critical mass, so that we aren’t cutting our foot off to spite our face when Substack itself drives a noteworthy portion of our traffic.

In the next year, we will migrate to a new platform and hopefully launch our first ever print magazine. You can spend all day reading the various arguments in the ping pong match of print is dead/print is back, but I want to try it. A printed magazine is beautiful and invites a kind of stillness that we don’t have enough of anymore.

There are substantial glimmers of hope on the horizon for food writing. The Financial Times is investing heavily in food writing and has a killer line-up of journalists. Vittles has expanded into print, and earlier this year hosted a food in print fair in London which exhibited 50 food publications and had thousands of people come to read and buy them. The Observer has just announced a new permanent restaurant critic after an 18 month interregnum (thank you for teaching me a new word).

But it remains clear that the only way to run a publication with any sense of integrity in this current day and age is to have the readers pay for it. Any other funding method invites in greed and bias. If you like reading The Bristol Sauce, please help us get closer to that critical mass by becoming a paying Saucer. If you’re already one of our 180 paying Saucers, you’re a straight up legend.

The plan is very much to be around for decades to come; to entertain, to inform and to help you eat well — free of any bias, AI slop or dodgy dealings. Help us out by subscribing, telling your friends, sharing a link. Thank you.

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

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Speak to anyone in the know, and they’ll tell you that Britain’s pub industry is on life support. Patrons, proprietors and well-wishers gather around its bedside to pick over the bones. Some argue that soaring costs are responsible, whilst others maintain that increasing isolation and loneliness is to blame. Stephen Williams, the former Lib Dem MP for Bristol West, is in the corner, incoherently ranting to himself about how, somehow, Sharia law is at fault.

Whatever the reason for the decline of Britain’s boozers (spoiler: it’s definitely not that last one), Bristol is no stranger to this crisis. Some of these beloved locals go quietly, others with spirited, yet unsuccessful community fundraising initiatives. Ultimately, a future as nondescript student accommodation beckons. In 2024, The Miles Arms threatened to become another historic watering hole lost to post-pandemic Britain. No grand closing, no fanfare, just a smattering of concerned questions on local Facebook pages, as over a century of history slipped away to the big HMO in the sky.

Thankfully, rumours of The Miles Arms’ demise were greatly exaggerated, as in March of 2025, it reopened under the stewardship of landlord Czeslaw Checko. The pub has since partnered with Pat’s Kitchen, formerly of the Star Inn across the estuary in Pill, and it was the promise of classic Polish dishes on their menu that drew me in the direction of Avonmouth’s crumbling Victorian facades. For a city with such a large Polish community, Bristol diners in search of a pierogi and kiełbasa fix are starved for choice, with The Plough Inn in Filton being the region’s only other real sit-down option.

Despite recent renovations, The Miles Arms feels frozen in time. The sound of a potted pool ball occasionally breaks through the tightly wound grooves of Jamiroquai, whilst gold rimmed chairs with red upholstery, presumably shipped straight from the set of Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights, sit atop an old-school patterned carpet. Long-serving punters sup pints of Fosters and cans of Carling, whilst the Arms’ next generation of pintsmen and women busy themselves in the newly erected children’s play area. The presence of a claw machine (£2 a pop) and the prospect of £1.50 Cornettos from behind the bar serve as a reminder of Avonmouth’s fruitless and long abandoned attempt to attract seaside day trippers.

The price of a drink is also reminiscent of a bygone era, even if that period was only around five years ago. A pint of Butcombe Original (£4) or Broad Oak cider (£3.50) represent value that’s hard to find elsewhere in the city. The intricacies of pouring the former seemed to cause the staff some consternation, as they both disappeared for a good few minutes to make sure they’d got it right. What knowledge the staff lacked in real ales, they more than made up for when it came to the menu. Their eyes lit up when asked for their Polish food recommendations, and we were eventually pointed in the direction of the vegetable dumplings, followed by the chicken medallion and the pork knuckle.

The dumplings (£7.95), which were really pierogi, were plated elegantly, and filled with a rich cottage cheese and potato mixture. We ordered them pan-fried rather than boiled, which was definitely the correct choice. The dough had a golden, crisp exterior and when topped with the accompanying sour cream, it was as good as any bite of pierogi that I’ve had in central Europe.

We’d been warned that the pork knuckle (£18.95) was going to be enormous, but even still, we hadn’t quite anticipated its Jurassic proportions. It was accompanied by a mound of mashed potato and a selection of acidic accoutrements, namely mustard, horseradish, pickles and sauerkraut. This quartet helped to cut through the fattiness of the pork, and stave off any risk of flavour fatigue. The meat itself was incredibly tender, and fell effortlessly away from the bone, whilst the skin was crisp and pleasantly salty. Unfortunately, the mashed potato was, typically of many pubs, subpar. The texture was lumpy and, although well seasoned, it had a stickiness reminiscent of cheap catering mash.

The chicken medallion (£16.95) continued the theme of generous portions. Often, dishes in the cutlet family make a trade off between the juiciness of the meat and the texture of the coating, with soggy schnitzels sometimes being the price we pay to avoid the sensation of eating a deep fried Birkenstock. Thankfully, the chicken was moist, and the coating maintained its crunch throughout. The medallion was served with cucumber and beetroot salads, alongside some coleslaw, which all added some nice variation in texture, and much-needed freshness to the dish. Given that the chicken had the same square footage as your average Clifton bedsit, we were relieved that they could provide takeaway boxes for our leftovers.

There will doubtless be many of you who’ve got this far and are thinking to yourselves: “Ok, that all sounds lovely, but if I spend too long to the west of the M5 I come out in hives”. Well, I can’t make any guarantees, but if you enjoy great comfort food, cheap pints and acid jazz as much as myself, then I’d say it’s worth the trip. Just make sure you avoid the beer garden in the week following any nearby industrial fires.

All words and photos by Tristan Rendell, edited by Sophie Scannell

The Miles Arms, 181 Avonmouth Road, BS11 9LW

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I have been a victim of Reddit many times. I’ve been berated and humbled for having the audacity to ask what I thought was a perfectly innocent question, such as ‘why isn’t my dishwasher working?’ or ‘which restaurant in Bristol would you like to read a review of?’

Yet like some masochist, I keep going back. When I tire of whatever nonsense reels the algorithm has decided to prescribe me and my allocated personality this week (the interiors of tiny homes, most recently), it is to the Reddit app I turn. To me, it feels like one of the last true-to-itself corners of the internet.

It was on Reddit that I came across the following.

This led me to all sorts of existential questions, like: what is cow equals cow equals cow? What words can I find when the letters are made up? What moo does match?!

The destination-less cow maze sums it all up. Where exactly are we heading? For anyone that can’t be bothered to study the above text in great detail, it’s an AI-generated children’s ‘menu’ (read: activity sheet, because it doesn’t contain a single menu item) from Gloucester Road pub The Crafty Cow, which makes absolutely no sense. Those poor children. I mean it’s a Greene King, so we mustn’t expect much. But it illustrates a wider problem: that AI is being used ever more frequently in hospitality, and not always successfully.

Most visibly, AI is being used to design menus and promotional posters, social media graphics, A-boards and flyers, and it’s deeply off-putting. You’ve probably seen one and they all look uncannily similar. The food doesn’t look real, nor does it look nice, and it leads me to one conclusion — if you can’t be bothered to take a picture of the food you’re serving, or it doesn’t look good enough, then why would I order it?

If I were less clued up and spent less time obsessively consuming food media, I might even be convinced that the AI photo is the real thing, and then be sorely disappointed when the actual version I’m served looks nothing like it. No restaurant using AI-generated food images is setting themselves up for long-term success.

Most hospitality businesses don’t have the money to pay for a graphic designer — and amidst the thousands of other things they have to pay for, I imagine it’s fairly far down the list of priorities and rightly so. But AI is not the silver bullet some think it is. It’s inauthentic, unrealistic and frankly weird to look at. I’d much rather see something overtly homemade that shows a bit of care, like the brilliant Picky Bits posters.

I’d rather see no image at all than one that’s been AI-generated. Leave me to imagine the finer details — that’s fine. Or take a photo of something that is imperfect; it’s food, after all, it’s not always going to be gloriously aesthetic.

I suspect we are going to see more and more of this over the coming months and years. Social media has already meant that the same dishes end up on restaurant menus across the country, leading to restaurant convergence. Now we are going to see promotional convergence too; images that all look eerily similar to promote dishes that have been doing the rounds on Instagram.

Just like the maze, the end-game here doesn’t lead anywhere good. Moo + moo = me not coming to your restaurant. In the age of AI, imperfection is the goal, and a human touch tastes far sweeter.

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Do you have a bone to pick with Bristol’s food scene? Get in touch.

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I used to live and work within the five hundred meters between We The Curious and the Hotwells roundabout and it did not make for good eating.

It was sort of the restaurant equivalent of a shopping centre vending machine. Despite being very central, the area is something of an independent food desert; you can absolutely get some dinner if you’re happy to line the pockets of Pizza Express shareholders or if you want to rub shoulders with the sorriest of stag dos in Slug and Lettuce. I had to do my shopping in a miniature Tesco which primarily serviced the nearby office workers and therefore stocked a vast quantity of soggy, fridge-cold sandwiches, protein bars and little else. For a while there was Friska, which was my go-to coffee and oops-I-forgot-about-lunch spot, but then even that closed.

The rental costs of the units on that stretch of Millennium Promenade and Cathedral Walk must be wince-inducing, so it’s little wonder few independents take the risk. When it comes to food, the reputation for the area is so uninspiring that when I arranged to meet some of The Bristol Sauce crew at Lagman and said it was on the harbourside, one of them auto-piloted to Wapping Wharf.

But change is afoot. If I still lived there now, I’d have a new independent Chinese hand-pulled noodle restaurant within a glutinous strand’s reach of my flat, and a pretty good one at that.

Lagman is not the place to take anyone in need of any of the following: table service (indeed any service at all), table cloths, comfortable seating, alcohol or even glassware, relaxing ambience, napkins, knives, the ability to reserve a table, a menu to read at said table or the option of dessert.

It is little more than a canteen or a takeaway, complete with touchscreens for ordering and numbers called out when your order is ready. You should collect your own can of something sugary from the fridge and then bring your tray back after you’ve finished eating.

In fact, Lagman encompasses many of the signifiers of omnipresent fast food joints, but with hand-pulled noodles and less instantly recognisable branding. Hopefully it doesn’t have the same vom-worthy statistics about faeces on the ordering screens. I was trying very hard to put that out of my mind as we took our wooden pews outside.

Does this mean you shouldn’t go to Lagman? Quite the opposite. You should go, preferably soon, and embrace it for exactly what it is; a quick, convenient and relatively cheap dinner that delivers a hell of a lot of satisfaction providing you get one of two dishes. Or better still, both.

The first dish you must order is the rou jia mo. The rou jia mo is often referred to as China’s answer to the beef burger, but actually the beef burger is Europe’s answer to the rou jia mo, as it long predates any meat-in-bread creation that came out of Germany or America. The filling, which was traditionally made with pork slowly cooked in a flavoursome stock laced with spices, can be traced back as far as 200BCE. The bread, which varies by region, can be partially leavened dough that almost resembles a pitta and is cooked in a hot pan, or a more paratha-like laminated coil.

Here, due to Lagman’s halal nature, the rou jia mo is made with beef. It’s a simple but perfect creation; flakey, buttery, crisp bread, stuffed with pulled beef cooked in a spiced stock and dotted with fresh coriander. Rou jai mo are not common in the UK and this is one of the first to appear in Bristol (the other being an as-yet untested version at Meet Up Noodle Bar), but it will catch on like wildfire; like dying your hair green; like stick and poke tattoos or shouting the word Jeevans every time you hear ‘Easton’ in a compulsive gentrified call-and-response.

The second essential item at Lagman is, of course, a bowl of hand-pulled noodles, which you can see being whipped and braided into shape through a window into the kitchen. Beware — not all noodle dishes here are created equal. The wide, rebelliously non-uniform biang bang noodles with tender beef short rib stand head and shoulders above the rest, all of which sampled on a recent Wednesday evening presented as far too sweet and lacking in anything else. But the short rib biang biang were resplendent with masterful spice and seasoning, dripping in umami, gloriously chewy in all the right places, firmly in the Goldilocks spice zone and have been playing on my mind ever since.

As a table of seven, we managed to order most of the menu, and I can therefore confirm that nothing else served at Lagman is worth your time. ‘Best ever chips’ are anything but; uniform McCains oven cuboids, admittedly crisp, but seasoned in a mix of sugar, salt and MSG that suggests very poor ratios. Unless you like your chips tasting like pick n mix, of course. Gyoza are no different to those that you’d come across in the freezer section of big Tesco, pickled mustard greens are fine but one dimensional and the tofu skin was more reminiscent of a pair of Adidas shoelaces that have been dragged through an unidentified floor juice than anything else.

But for short rib biang biang and a stuffed rou jai mo at student-friendly prices, this place is a no-brainer. And we’re not the only ones to have discovered it; every table was occupied, inside and out, with people happily slurping wonky noodles — chins to bowls, eyes down, t shirts and jorts stained, conversation paused. There was a steady stream of people from all walks of life appearing to place their order on the screen and then waiting patiently for their number to be called.

Lagman gives me hope — is this an independent that could not only survive this food dessert, but perhaps even become an oasis?

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Lagman, Unit 1b, Waverley House, BS1 5LW

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

Find Bristol’s best restaurants on the go with The Bristol Sauce app — available exclusively to paying Saucers.

Remember the Google map I put together earlier this year with The Bristol Sauce’s recommended restaurants? We’ve turned it into a proper site — a real, interactive map of Bristol where you can browse pins, filter by price and cuisine, see a quick summary of each place, see where chefs recommend and find the link to a full The Bristol Sauce review. It works just like an app, but without us having to spend months working around the red tape of launching something on the app store.

We don’t do this very often, but we’re limiting access to this new tool to paying Saucers only. It adds even more value for those that are paying, and will hopefully encourage some more paying subscribers which helps make the business more viable. As we’re keen to get people using this version, which we’ve been working really hard on, we will be deleting the Google map version in two weeks time.

Here’s what the new map looks like!

Huge thanks are in order for Nick, our web developer, who has worked tirelessly on this!

All the information about how to access and use the map is below for paying Saucers.

Read more

I was sitting in a seat I had sat in before. Valentine’s Day, 2020. A table for one.

I wasn’t single, but my girlfriend (who later went on to become my fiancée, then my wife, then my ex-wife) was busy. Feeding, not breaking, hearts. To the lions, wolves and tigers twenty-odd minutes down the road at Longleat Safari Park.

This time my current, and hopefully final, fiancée had the generosity to come with me.

Both times I have been engaged, I was proposed to. I can’t tell whether that is a compliment or an insult. On one hand, at least one person has been so head over heels in love with me they wanted to spend the rest of their life eating tarts and drinking sweet sherry. On the other, both parties clearly felt I was incapable of popping the question in good time when left to my own devices. I digress. But if I had concluded, after this meal, that Briar was the second best restaurant in which I had eaten at Number One Bruton, it would be similarly hard to deduce compliment or insult.

My first time in said building — a corner spot at the base of the high street — it was Merlin Labron-Johnson’s Osip, since moved on (though not far, geographically speaking) to bigger and better things. Now it is home to Briar, run by Sam Lomas. Who, twenty years after setting up The Diced Carrot in his bedroom (aged 9), has also moved on to bigger and better things. First to River Cottage and agro-tourism guest house Glebe House in Devon. Then Great British Menu, where he radiated charming leprechaun energy (definitely a compliment not an insult) representing the north west. Like the editor of this publication, he grew up there but became a traitor to his people and flew south. Now he has his own gaff in Bruton.

This time, it wasn’t Valentine’s, although the restaurant would make a good spot for a date. “My” table especially; wedged in next to the bar, a cosy enclave within a dusky yellow cocoon, shelves sparsely lined with trailing pot plants and the odd bit of cheeky exposed brick. A little fancy but not fussy. And the food is great. Or at least, a lot of it is. Enough that, if you conspired correctly, you could curate yourselves a near-flawless meal. Start with the bread, some local cider (two bottles of best-in-class Wilding are available, but I plumped for a smaller bottle of the Burrow Hill sparkling from Somerset Cider Brandy Co; woody, aromatic and powerfully apple-y) and some cured fish. End with the brown butter cake. The rest you’ll have to plow your own path.

We began, in an event as surprising as Trump attempting to bully his country to footballing victory, with bread and butter (£4). Warm bread had about it the nutty, grainy aroma of a flatbread that has been slapped onto a hot tawa, though it was absolutely not flat. It could hardly have been more spherical. Perhaps the use of heritage grains was behind an aromatic steam that puffed out as the rolls were unceremoniously ripped apart. It would be in keeping with the sustainable, local mantra of the kitchen, which extends to a small kitchen garden up the road. A pot of gold to the side contained a sunshine yellow cubical pat of grassy butter, warm and ridged like a squat radiator, sudating grains of salt like beads of condensation.

Gougères (£6) were too crunchy. Almost savoury cheddar cookies rather than custardy, puffy domes of choux. Wee blobs of pickled walnut ketchup took the classic cheese and pickle vibe and ran with it. You’d be delighted with these at a wedding buffet but I got the impression Briar could do better.

Fried chicken (£9) came perilously cold and presumably not deliberately à la David Chang. More forgotten in the holding cabinet at KFC than two star bar food at Momofuku. It was also rather dainty, not quite popcorn chicken but certainly not Zinger proportions. That said, it remained beguilingly crisp and juicy, enlivened by a gentle prickle of black pepper in the mayonnaise dotted under thin veils of pickled cucumber. And the colonel certainly isn’t emulating Briar’s farm-to-table approach and sourcing his birds from named farms.

Over the course of a year of jet-setting in which the primary focus was shovelling as many local delicacies as possible into my ever-growing gob, I ate plenty of seafood. From the incredibly delicious — sweet, buttery sea urchin melting into grade 9 Korean sirloin round a bar hidden away in Sokcho Market — to the downright fetid. That would be fermented skate, also in South Korea. Fermented skate smells like a portaloo five days into Glastonbury. I’d rather sample festering festival faeces than put myself through hongeo-hoe again.

Back in Bruton, a dish of cured wild bass, green strawberries and red chilli (£11) was very much the polar opposite. A more beautiful, precise, pristine plate of food would unlikely be found even if we traversed the globe for another twelve months. And we only had to pootle a leisurely hour down the A37. Travel = overrated.

Each irregular rhombus of fish sat atop a slice of crunchy, fresh green strawberry, a ring of chilli delivering fresh, jolting heat and a cluster of fennel flowers tweezered on top. I tend to prefer the use of tweezers for removing errant ticks after hiking through Stourhead than excessive food poncery these days, but for dishes as accomplished as this I can make allowances.

If that level of cooking wasn’t quite maintained, and not just because to do so would have been nigh-on impossible, then a dish described as duck salad (£16) must take some of the flack. Hot smoked, the breast tasted eerily of ham, with similar soft succulence, and came fanned out next to a crunchy, piquant smacked-cucumber-esque salad knitted with herbs and chilli.

After several meals in Bruton over the space of a couple of summery weeks, I can tell you one thing with the confidence of a nuclear orange president trying to steal the Jules Rimet: the arty cognoscenti love an almond sauce. Ajo blanco with beetroot and cherries at the new The Old Pharmacy aka The Pharmacy was a thing of effervescent delight. Meanwhile, a chilled almond sauce at Briar came topped with nicely caramelised knots of roasted cauliflower, a small fistful of golden sultanas, more slivers of the nut and a welcome whoosh of mint (£12). A restrained sweetness that segued us nicely into dessert.

Chocolate marquise festooned with cherries, buttermilk ice cream and hazelnuts seemed a popular choice in the room. It’s a rare dessert that has me snubbing something chocolatey, but the promise of brown butter cake (£10) did just that. What a darling little thing it was. The shape of a flattened fairy cake, it was as buttery as you’d hope from its name, crisp around the edges and moist enough to send Nigella into raptures. The repeating sense of ye olde cereals reared its head, the combination with browned butter bouncing together like Romero and Martinez — two more who tried to cheat their way to the World Cup — and just as nutty.

A thick splodge of crème fraîche was ringed by cross-sections of pinkish-green rhubarb stem. Surfaces freckled with xylem, they proved just a little too crunchy and too tart for the genteel cake, which was as debonair as the silver-haired Bruton locals.

And as for this exact spot? Two excellent restaurants from two notably distinct, yet in many ways similar, young chefs. I’d be hard pushed to pick a favourite, but if I had to spend the rest of my life with one, it might just be Briar. I guess I’ll just have to sit tight and wait for Sam’s proposal.

All words by PXandTarts, photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Briar, 1 High Street, Bruton, BA10 0AB

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

The news

Last month we reported that beloved Chinese dim sum joint Fresh Bakery was moving, but this is in fact not the case. Further intel has revealed that the team are retaining their original site and a new site. The new, bigger site, Mei Mei, houses the restaurant we know and love and is now open. The previous site is where production will continue to take place, ‘the bakery’ if you will, and will be renamed. Read The Bristol Sauce review of Fresh Bakery.

Rumour has it that Joel Viljoen — former owner of Orchard Coffee in St George, booted out earlier this year to turn the site back into a church — is buying local brewery Fierce and Noble. This hasn’t been confirmed, but the brewery is for sale on Zoopla. Hopefully God doesn’t decide to interfere with this one too.

Following a stint in Bedminster, Southmead’s casual Indian restaurant Thikanaa is preparing to reopen in a new location on Gloucester Road, on the junction with Hatherly Road and very close to Dave Giles butchers. Excellent news for those living nearby, who will now be able to get their hands on convenient, affordable and wonderfully satiating vada pau. Bad news for Southmead, however, which has lost one of startlingly few restaurants in the area which are actually worth going to. Read The Bristol Sauce review of Thikanaa.

Press

Aktar Islam’s Clifton restaurant Kush, which finally opened a couple of months ago after many delays, has been reviewed in The Observer. Reviewer Rebecca Nicholson was mostly impressed but found the service a little slow. Perhaps everything they do is slightly delayed.

Closures

Kuch, a Middle-Eastern restaurant on Whiteladies Road and not to be confused with the above Kush, appears to have permanently closed. The site is due to be turned into a martial arts space. Evidently there’s only room for one Ku(s/c)h in this town.

Easton’s Latin-American-inspired cafe Este Kitchen has sadly closed. No announcement has been made, but the restaurant is listed as ‘permanently closed’ on Google.

New openings

Red Tiger, the Malaysian restaurant that started life as a stall in St Nick’s Market, has opened a permanent bricks-and-mortar site on St George’s Road, very close to Brandon Hill. Following a soft-launch in mid-August the new site is in full swing, with a delightful menu featuring the likes of roti canai, belacan wings, tom yum fried rice and popiah goreng.

There’s a new restaurant opening on Whiteladies Road called ‘Feather’, in the site that previously belonged to VeBurger. A top local chef and Sauce intelligence officer reported that ‘they have good ovens and the lad who’s starting it is nice’. According to a job listing for the assistant restaurant manager on Indeed, the restaurant will be ‘built around fried chicken, poultry-led dishes, good wine, cocktails, and a warm, lively dining room.’ Feather will open next-door-but-one to another fried chicken restaurant, Coq, and will hopefully be less reliant on penis jokes.

Those saddened by the closure of Este Kitchen should take heart in the upcoming arrival of Los Dos Gringos in nearby Redfield, which will be a Colombian-inspired and entirely vegan cafe. Los Dos Gringos is set to open in the former Crafty Egg site and if the team’s previous market stalls are anything to go by, will serve Colombian hot chocolate and arepas, amongst other things.

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When was the last time you feasted at a restaurant? I mean really feasted. Walked into some swanky establishment and coolly announced that you will have one of everything. Thanks to VAT, the cost of living crisis, and the fact that the English view any level of self-assurance as gauche, I imagine that the answer is ‘never’.

Feasting in the modern age is something we do behind closed doors, if at all. We eat with abandon so long as it’s within our own homes, where it’s cheaper, unobserved, and where we can scoop spoonfuls of Nutella directly into our mouths without judgment. At home, all restraints are gone. There is no need to choose between having a starter or a dessert, to take hummingbird-sized sips of your £14 cocktail so it lasts the full ninety minutes. You don’t need to work out how many small plates it will take to fill the void.

When I think of what it is to truly enjoy a meal, I picture a medieval scene. An apple stuffed in the mouth of a suckling pig, fire-roasted swans, turkey legs clutched in ham-handed fists, all washed down with the blood of your enemies. While I’ve never been able to recreate this dream, Pinto is the closest I’ve come.

Pinto Thai Street Food is a tiny restaurant in Bristol’s little Chinatown, nestled between 168 Oriental Supermarket and a massage parlour. The interior is about as far away from a Tudor banquet hall as you can get. Sitting on the second floor of Nelson Street, Pinto shares its space with a butcher’s, a dim sum restaurant, and a dessert bar, ill-considerately named ‘Cream Lovers’. A wind chime tinkles in an artificial breeze, and streams of bunting sag in half smiles from the ceiling — Pinto is where I go when I want to feel properly sated.

Northern Thai cuisine is Pinto’s speciality, and it does the classics well. If you are looking for ingenuity, Pinto is not the place for you, but if you want authenticity, ineffable charm and a five-pound BYO policy — this is the place.

Being on the second floor, the window seats will appeal to the people watchers among you. A nearby rave appeared to be scheduled that evening and so during the course of our meal we saw a wizard, a man-baby, and a dominatrix all on their commute to the party. Bristol, please never change.

Always start your visit with a trip to the Tesco down the road. Buy white wine, a dry one if you can, but it’s more important that it’s cold. Your waiter will give you glasses and a cooler when you arrive.

I’ve become somewhat of a regular and I must admit that the service is as varied as the ensembles of the partygoers below. Sometimes it’s lightning, other times it’s glacial. Either way, you have the company of a bottle of wine, and while ordering may be slow the food comes quick.

We began with the papaya salad (£9.95) at spice level two. The restaurant functions on a one-to-three spiciness scale. One is boring, two is authentically Thai and three is for the sadists. Consider yourselves warned. No matter what else you get, always order the salad. It’s fresh and crunchy in an eminently drinkable lime and fish sauce dressing. It is violently delicious, which, as the dominatrix would have told you were she invited, is an addictive combination. The chilli will hurt you. You will say thank you.

The banquet continued with a beef Panang curry (£14.95), tender chunks of beef simmered in a thick lemongrass sauce, followed by a chicken khao soi (£13.95), a coconut-based noodle soup dish topped with pickled carrot and crispy noodles, which help stop your teeth from feeling redundant.

I should note here that between our humble party of two we managed five dishes, but Pinto works best when you bring a group and order recklessly. After an evening passing plates of noodles between friends, spilling sauce across yourself and the table, and laughing over unfortunate stains and glasses of wine, you begin to picture yourself somewhere between the War of the Roses and the Spanish Armada.

We also ordered a portion of pork pad ga prao (£11.95), a deeply savoury mince stir fry with bamboo shoots and green beans. If you go, make sure you order this dish with a fried egg on top. I forgot on this occasion and it’s a mistake I’m struggling to forgive myself for.

Our night ended with a plate of mango sticky rice (£7.95). I’m usually wary of tropical fruit in England. They seem to get homesick somewhere over the Suez Canal and make a grief-stricken promise to never ripen. This mango was good. Sweet, fragrant and paired well with the glutinous rice.

Is Pinto going to change your life? Unless your life goal is to buy a steak, a cake, a massage and a massaman curry all in one place, then no. But it is an experience. Maybe in a past life I was Henry the Eighth, maybe I’m just a bit of a glutton, either way I want to feel indulged at a restaurant, well fed and well drunk. I want to order without qualm and eat without care, I want to flick between spoons, chopsticks and fingernails. To tear and dip and spill with abandon, Pinto is the perfect place to let out your inner Tudor monarch.

All words and photos by Emily Coplestone

Pinto Thai Street Food, 2nd floor, Little Chinatown, BS1 2BJ

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

That will be just the job, I thought, eyeing up a mountain of lentil salad: fresh and light to counteract the heatwave. I’d come to the Bath Saturday farmers’ market to shop for a picnic and was all set to order a large portion, until I noticed the label over the bowl. ‘Unctuous’. The ick washed over me, the smug and ingratiating connotations of the word hanging heavily, taunting my hunger. What I had imagined as a crisp, balanced dressing now clung in thick droplets, cloying, viscous and quite off-putting.

Needless to say, I did not order the salad. I did, however, add unctuous to the list of Bad Adjectives Used in Menus: an increasingly large collection of descriptors that have stopped me ordering dishes.

Joining unctuous is succulent, which holds the additional accolade of dissuading me from staying in the establishment at all (see also: juicy). Staking their claim are fresh and house-made, rather stating the obvious: it’s what I’ve come to your restaurant for after all. Noah’s risks slipping into this trap; delicious, fresh and crisp feature on the menu more than once, and despite knowing this to be true about their food I still resent reading it.

An honourable mention must go to rich and indulgent, which when applied to a dessert immediately make me worry about a version of the pudding that may not be so, and conjure memories of the underwhelming chocolate fudge cake so abundant on the early noughties’ menus of my childhood, the ice cream (vanilla, of course) never quite extending the full length of dessert, leaving that lonely dry mouthful at the end. And let’s not get started on unnecessarily complicated synonyms — if I had any doubts about your crème brûlée, describing it as ambrosial has definitely not allayed them.

Any adjective begs the question: why try so hard to convince me that the dish is worth eating? Surely that must mean restaurateurs are worried the food might not be enjoyed and that’s certainly not a risk I’m willing to take. Or even worse, are they trying to tell me what to think about their food before I’ve tried it? How very presumptuous!

A well-written menu is an underrated thing. It must strike a fine balance between simply listing the components of a dish and over-selling with superfluous adjectives —it should leave you intrigued by and excited about the dish you choose to order.

Despite a few recent encounters, Bristol’s independent scene has mostly struck the balance: menus that show the chefs take their food seriously whilst allowing the diner to enjoy the meal without pre-conceived notions dictated by their description. Ragù’s inimitable tiramisu — which has somewhat of a cult following — is the perfect example. Listed simply as ‘Tiramisu, orange, nutmeg, cocoa’, it piques interest. How have they added the orange: peel or juice? Will it overpower the delicate creaminess, how will the nutmeg complement the richness of the cocoa? By the time it is served you are so captivated that all thoughts of sharing your pudding are forgotten. Any resulting frostiness with your aspiring pudding-partners is worth the enjoyment of each mouthful of cocoa-tinted, delicately spiced, intense yet mellow dessert; better than any notional version created whilst waiting. But here’s the irony: if the tiramisu was described like that on the menu, I’d give it a wide berth.

So, a plea to all those writing menus: keep it simple. Let your food do the talking.

All words by Katie Hobhouse, photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Do you have a bone to pick with Bristol’s food scene? Get in touch.

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

I’ve lived on or near North Street for eight years, and despite the area’s panoply of offerings for a Nice Meal Out (COR, Sonny Stores, Soukitchen, Other, etc), for too long it has been a Quick Lunch desert (a reliable Clark’s Pie has been one’s best bet since — well, probably since Clark’s opened some 80 years ago). Now: a new kid on the block, and a glimmer of hope. Bánh-Mì Càphê, an offshoot of Stokes Croft/Cotham Hill’s Viet Kitchen, opened in July to immediate queues out the door of people who presumably feel the same way as me.

This café slims the Viet Kitchen menu down to a clear, simple offer: four variations of bánh mì, the Vietnamese sandwich born from French colonial influence (and one of the world’s great convenience foods), and càphê, which is the Vietnamese word for coffee.

Present and correct in all of the sandwich options are the customary bánh mì trimmings: pâté, strips of pickled carrot and daikon, thick cucumber batons, coriander, chillies and spring onion. Watching the assembly line at work, I notice two things which straight away set this operation apart from most in the UK. Where most of the time a light smear of pâté is undetectable in the finished sandwich, here I watch them apply the gamey paste with appropriate generosity. They also include the traditional bơ, or ‘Vietnamese butter’, which, despite the name, is actually a stiff, yolk-yellow mayonnaise made without vinegar or lemon juice, and sometimes with oil perfumed from the frying of shallots and garlic: rich, unctuous and quite distinct from commercial mayo.

The clear menu highlight is the ‘fat pig’ special (£10.50), which is populated by wobbling, gelatinous chunks of pork belly and glassy crackling, alongside pork floss and Vietnamese cold cuts chả lụa (smooth steamed sausage) and thịt nguội (red-tinted lightly-cured ham), lubricated with a couple spoonfuls of roasting juices. It’s a sucker punch of pork, and moreish in the extreme.

The grilled lemongrass chicken (£9) is also very good, headily fragrant and punctuated with strips of paper-thin, chewy, blistered skin. Tofu patties (£9) are a nice idea for the vegan option, providing both crunch and velvety softness, but it’s here that we run into an issue — it’s the juicy animal fats that keep the meat sandwiches moist and bind their elements together, and there isn’t an equivalent element here. It tastes just a little… healthy. And while they’ve gone to the trouble of making a mushroom pâte, it is too similar in texture to the patties’ interiors, such that the two become indistinguishable.

Having been open for barely three weeks at time of writing, Bánh Mì Càphê is naturally still experimenting and dialling in its processes, and on my two visits I encountered both inconsistencies and improvements. On the first visit, the baguette looked great, but was on the drier side; rather than cracking open a portal into a yielding, soft interior, the crust shattered dustily. The second time around, a softer, more pliant baguette meant less friction to the overall eating experience, but not enough textural contrast.

Still, both examples had good structure, shape and colour, and were already superior to that of their closest bánh mì rivals in Bristol, The Hanoi Social, whose bread suffers from a much more toothsome, classically French crustiness. Bánh Mì Càphê has the advantage of an in-house bakery, meaning they can tweak and adjust as they go, and I believe their bread can get to a truly great place.

Heartening as well was a particular adjustment made between my two visits: my first sandwiches were filled meat-first, with garnishes lining the open mouth of the baguette; on the second visit, they had swapped places. To the casual observer, this may seem a trivial detail, but it has serious implications. Tendrils of pickled vegetables curling around each other, with leafy coriander poking out between violent interruptions of red chilli: this makes for an attractive sandwich, sure, but an impractical one prone to spillage, and as we know, spilled garnish = unbalanced sandwich. Reversing the assembly order not only makes for a much more architecturally sound construction, it also means that the tongue’s first point of contact is with the satisfying, umami-laden primary filling, before the jolting relief of acidity and herbaceousness restores balance.

To me, the cardinal principles of the craft of sandwich-making are good ergonomics (they are a food of convenience which should be able to be eaten on the go without making a mess), and considerate assembly (how do the selections and sequencing of bread, fillings and condiments create a coherent whole?). This little adjustment is a poor choice, perhaps, if you are prioritising the cosmetic demands of Instagram’s algorithm, but a really great one for eating. Sandwich Sandwich could learn a thing or two.

But look, after all this in-depth sandwich analysis, I’ve completely buried the lede. Bánh mì is only half of the name of this establishment, and where they really, truly excel is their coffee. Sacks of imported Trung Nguyen coffee beans sit proudly on display, and their menu has an impressive selection of lesser-seen variations on Vietnamese coffee, which is brewed heart-racingly strong such that it can stand up to lip-tingling quantities of sweetened condensed milk.

The South-East Asian palate is known for its love of intensely sugary milk drinks, but in the decade since moving away from my native Thailand, my tastes have mellowed slightly, and I now seek a more tempered sweetness. If this sounds like you too, then your drink of choice should be the salt coffee (£6.50), which is topped with a cloud of creamy, heavily salted foam. Try the layers separately for a bracing clash of opposing tastes, then mix together to create a harmonious dessert-drink of exquisitely complementary yin and yang. I approach it initially with caution — caffeine has not historically agreed with my digestive system — but it is addictively good, and I can’t resist downing the lot.

Also delightful is the coconut coffee (£6.50), where the base coffee is topped up with a blended coconut milk ice-slush — endlessly crushable in a heatwave. These are expensive drinks, yes, but this is perhaps a blessing in disguise: I couldn’t otherwise be trusted not to risk my gastrointestinal health on the daily.

As business names go, Bánh-Mì Càphê’s is about as does-what-it-says-on-the-tin as it gets. A menu as small and streamlined as this is nothing if not a clear mission statement, and a promise that they are committed to the details; which, despite some areas for improvement, they demonstrably are. It already feels like an essential part of North Street, filling a much-yearned-for gap. Rejoice, and may your lunches never be dull again.

Bánh-Mì Càphê, 181 North Street, BS3 1JQ

All words and photos by Ben Kulvichit

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

It was the hands that did it. Hands always get me. Brow furrowed in concentration, eyes sharp, and hands — those hands — laying fine slithers of vegetables against each other with such tenderness. The moment lasts for seconds but I’m left reeling all night. What else can those hands do? The thought of it makes me shiver in impossible anticipation. Don’t go there. Dangerous.

But those hands. There’s something so inherently sexy about a chef, isn’t there? But everyone knows everyone in Bristol and everyone would know immediately. It would probably be pinned in the WhatsApp groups. I want to be able to walk into wine bars on my day off without the waves of anxiety. But I do love starting my shift and noticing those furtive glances. The way you accidentally tease my fingers as you hand a plate over.

I read recently that electrons can tell when they’re being observed, just as I can tell instantly when you’re in the same room as me. My cheeks flush and I hate it. You must know. Surely. I feel exposed, like a full moon on a clear night. We sit next to each other at family meal and our thighs brush. I want to tell you about the book I read and about ideas and about food I’ve eaten and about places but you’re so busy. Getting you alone is like trying to explain the concept of pronouns to my nan. And I shouldn’t, I mustn’t. It’s a terrible idea. Plus, following you into the walk-in fridge would be downright creepy.

Instead I lie awake until the early hours, tossing and turning. I imagine every scenario ever. Murphy’s law right? If it can happen, it will. And it could happen. The forbidden-ness makes it all the more exciting.

On your days off I wonder where you are and who you’re with. The rota shows an insight into your life, but provides me with little else other than windows of overlapping excitement.

Is it that I want your power, your influence? Is it that I want your knowledge — how you can turn something so humble into something amazing? Do I want to be seen by you or with you? Would those hands be so careful, so precise, with me?

I’m writing this as a means of exorcising my demons. Or rather, demon. Does some small part of me hope that in having it published you’ll read it and realise my undying horniness for you? Yes. I lie awake thinking you’ll slip me a note during service that reads ‘I’m taking you for dinner’ and we’ll go arm in arm to Caper & Cure or perhaps Dongnae where we’ll relish every bite and then each other — locking eyes over an injeolmi.

It will end badly, that is certain, and we’ll have to avoid each other for the rest of our careers, which will be hard in Bristol village. Maybe I’ll move to Australia. Maybe you will. But in this naive, heady state of the first rays of sun, harbourside beers and you with your hands — that all feels worth it. Perhaps you’ll even make me breakfast the next day…

All words by a Secret Service Agent, illustration by @slakarts

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

The Pharmacy represents exceptional value, even after you’ve factored in the hour drive from Bristol. If you’re over that way, perhaps for a nosey around the Hauser & Wirth gallery or a stomp around the Dovecote, then I’d enthusiastically recommend popping in. If you find this recommendation to be a good one, or you enjoy reading about it, please consider supporting our work by making a small monthly contribution. If you can’t afford it, don’t worry — the people paying are paying so that you can read for free. It’s a great system, and one that keeps our content out of the hands of advertising.

God loves a trier, but she’s less keen on a rebrand. Particularly if it’s an alleged abuser and sex pest trying to reBrand himself as a born again Christian.

Let’s just say — a rebrand can go either way, and they rarely save a dying business. But it’s unlikely God has even noticed a recent sneaky little rebrand in Bruton, where The Old Pharmacy has become The New Pharmacy but it’s just called The Pharmacy and it’s not actually even a pharmacy. It’s a restaurant. The exact same restaurant as before, minus the word ‘old’ in the name. They haven’t even bothered to change the sign above the door.

Same staff, same space, same food. So why bother? According to the staff in there on a recent Thursday evening, the rebrand was necessitated by the incorporation of a new events business, Pharmacy Field Kitchen. Right.

However apparently pointless, it seems to have worked for The Pharmacy, as the PR team managed to get this non-story into a national publication which sufficiently piqued my interest enough to book a table and see what all the fuss is about.

After all, The Pharmacy is the sister restaurant to nearby Osip, which was elevated to the second best restaurant in the country by the National Restaurant Awards just weeks ago. The £165pp tasting menu at Osip is a bit out of my reach at the moment (please subscribe), but a trip to the New Old Pharmacy offers excellent value for money, and as I said, God loves a trier.

It’s a good job that the food wasn’t in the scope of the rebrand, because it’s just as piquant as ever. The menu, scrawled on a dusty blackboard at the back of a simple, olive green room, is only seven items deep. Landrace sourdough (£5) has been sensibly shipped in from nearby Bath, and was served in four thick wedges with a pot of butter. There are few better ways to start a meal.

Giardiniera (£10) was a tumble of crunchy, lightly pickled vegetables from one of the group’s two working farms, and the person serving it doubled as a grower — and thus was able to provide not only excellent gossip from the surrounding hospitality scene but also some hot tips for raising a horde of vegetables.

The beauty of such a small menu is the glee in declaring ‘we’ll have the lot!’ like a young Harry Potter when propositioned with ‘anything from the trolley?’ The only thing we didn’t order was ‘le grand aioli’, because to be quite frank paying £23 for a plate of aioli is absurd. The beetroots with ajo blanco and cherries, and the grilled peaches with peas and basil salad (both £12), however, represented unbelievable value.

These plates laugh heartily in the face of anyone declaring the farm-to-table movement a vapid trend; food this fresh is undeniable and you better hope it’s here to stay. Beetroot with cherry is not a novel pairing — the earthy umami of beetroot brought to life by its sweet, similarly inky bedfellow — but at The Pharmacy the apothecaries have further heightened it with a velvety and nutty ajo blanco and farm herbs. Peaches and peas, however, is not a combination I’ve encountered before and one I hope to see far more of — both sweet but brought round with an umami broad bean purée and sharp basil. As a sometimes jaded diner, to come across a new combination is unusual. I sat up in my chair and took note.

Then sardines, flash-grilled and burnished before being doused in salsa verde and gooseberries and served with a wedge of toast (£15). Every careful fork scrape and surgical pick to avoid those pesky little bones was rewarded with a mouthful of meaty, invigorating flavour — all the better smeared across toothsome sourdough. Unimprovable.

Dessert was the only area that this dispensary lacked in; only one option and a cop-out at that. I have a lot of time for fig leaf — it’s an excellent negroni-enhancer — and while a fig leaf ice cream with currants (£9) would make for a lovely side to a dessert but can it really stand up as a dessert in itself? We were pondering this when we discovered that the kitchen had anticipated our complaint and snuck some biscuity crumble in the bottom for texture, which was appreciated, but still didn’t quite raise this to the level of a tart or the brown butter cake a few doors up at Briar.

The bill was comfortably under £100, which made me realise that God is indeed aware of this place after all — these days, a meal this good for two with drinks at such a price is nothing short of a miracle. And in Bruton, no less, where simply stepping out of your house for a coffee and a croissant could set you back a year’s wages. I expect we’ll see a chapter dedicated to the New Old Pharmacy when they eventually get round to publishing the New Old Testament, at which point it will no doubt inspire vast pilgrimages — so take our word for it in the meantime and get there first.

The Pharmacy, 3 High Street, Bruton, BA10 0AB

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.