A.B.O.E, Whiteladies Road: 'A Gregg Wallace wet dream'
Bridges were burned, lessons were learned.
Restless chef Sebastian Merry has operated under a number of guises in the last few years. His time at The Cloak and Dagger saw him famed for roasts and his pre-A.B.O.E concept at Flipside seemed to take the food he’d created at Cloak and Dagger and elevate it further. His menus are inventive and enticing.
Earlier this year, he took the reigns of Flipside on Whiteladies Road and flipped it; now it is A.B.O.E, which stands for A Bit Of Everything. These days it’s food-led but still with a fairly decent cocktail offering. It opened to acclaim from all who were invited to try it for free. Obviously.
Whenever we’ve discussed Seb Merry’s food in private it has been very positive, but we wanted to wait for the dust to settle before visiting, especially since our lack of affection for influencers is hardly a secret. Seb was outraged when I (Meg) mocked the naming of one of his dishes after one of the most egregious influencers and we’ve been at odds ever since, culminating in death stares across crowded supermarket aisles when we’ve had the misfortune of bumping into one another.
But we couldn’t stay away forever and on a recent Saturday night our curiosity got the better of us. Despite attempting to keep a low profile and donning baseball caps we were recognised in three seconds of stepping through the doors, resulting in a very mixed welcome.
The menu reads like someone has picked out all the things that are missing from Bristol’s restaurant scene and enhanced them. It’s genuinely difficult to narrow down our selection; everything sounds great. With great restraint we limit ourselves to bread with crack butter (£4.5), Philly cheese steak tartare (£6.5), poutine (£5), celeriac cacio e pepe (£14), buttered fried chicken (£15.5) and french dip (£17).
It wasn’t long ago that Seb’s crack butter was referenced in a conversation about the best butter we’ve ever eaten. You know you’re in good company when you can dedicate half an hour of conversation to the subject. Unfortunately since its Cloak and Flipside days, this butter, like its creator, has become increasingly bitter. With less caramelisation and more seaweed than before it did little to disguise distinctly average bread, which we ate while contemplating the completely revelatory concept of sharing plates and deciding what to order.
Like Salt Bae at the World Cup, the bread in the tartare had no right to infiltrate the celebration of an otherwise winning mound of chopped beef. The bread, which had the air of top shelf supermarket loaf, was far too present and not aided by congealed taleggio which only vaguely remembered being molten.
He won’t, but Seb should be grateful neither of us are Canadian, as the poutine could have caused some sort of diplomatic furore. Had it been billed as layered confit potatoes with an alarmingly red gravy and a fine grating of parmesan, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. A commendably cooked potato nonetheless and an enjoyable enough dish if we hadn’t been promised poutine.
They say the first bite is with the eyes. If that is the case, we probably shouldn’t have actually eaten the next dish.
Ironically for a sharing plate, the chicken sheds its batter like Keir Starmer sheds his principles the second a knife touches it to reveal roast dinner stuffing. Bizarre. Combined with a pineapple-flecked masala gravy it’s giving bad Boxing Day curry. And like many a Christmas present over the years, expectations and reality are world apart. It’s asking for a Gameboy Advance and getting a knock-off Tamagotchi.
The French dip was the tartare we had earlier but cooked. It would make for a rather good sandwich but we wouldn’t have ordered it had we known it was going to be so similar to our previous bread-based experience. But that’s our fault for not reading the menu properly; we were probably too excited by the offering.
The star of the savoury dishes is a celeriac cacio e pepe, steeped with truffle, rich with egg yolk, brought round by sharp, crunchy cubes of celeriac and pickled mushrooms. It’s a Gregg Wallace wet dream and would certainly score well on Masterchef.
Amazingly, our favourite dish is the one we’d gone in hating. The Rolo Finesse should be foolproof and it is; chocolate, caramel and malt milk ice cream. It’s executed incredibly well, possibly because it is a dish that has frequently appeared in Seb’s wake on his travels and therefore is tried, tested and perfected.
We were genuinely hoping to go to A.B.O.E and build bridges but if anything we’ve probably sunk the ferry. Or rather, the Merry. We know from past experience that Seb is a very good chef but this particular visit was more an ode to inconsistency. Perhaps we will return to try again, this time in better disguises.
We nipped across the road to the newest iteration of Pinkmans for consolation and had some rather delicious empanadas and an espresso martini from their new evening offering. So if Seb is seeking retribution, there’s a reasonable chance he’ll find us in there trying the rest of the menu at some point in the coming weeks.
Words by Meg Houghton-Gilmour and PXandTarts
Photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
A.B.O.E, 109 Whiteladies Road, BS8 2PB