Crave, Upper Belgrave Road: 'A testament to the fact that you can enjoy something while knowing objectively that it isn’t that good'

The heat is on

Jun 04, 2026

There are two ways to approach a restaurant review. You can do your research, find out who the chef is, look at the menu in advance, see if anyone else has been that you know and trust. Or you can go in blind. Both have their merits. In a city as small as Bristol, going in blind is near impossible, and so the best way is to take someone with you who is unaware of the context in which the restaurant sits, and can offer you an untarnished perspective. I was most grateful to our founding Saucer, Steve, for joining us on this review and sharing his thoughts. If you’d also like to join us on a restaurant review, consider a founding membership to support the work of The Bristol Sauce. Thank you!

If you haven’t seen ITV’s The Heat, which premiered to tumbleweed and static in February, you’re not missing out on much. It’s like Love Island has gotten its claws into MasterChef, but all the contestants, despite being fresh out of sixth form, are supposedly professional chefs. Multi Michelin-starred Jean-Christophe Novelli presides over a rotating series of kitchen disasters while Olivia Attwood narrates, occasionally popping in to witness the carnage first-hand. One of the first chefs to be sent home is Tom Lodge, who was so busy lusting after a fellow contestant that he managed to burn caramel twice and had the restaurant evacuated on his watch when the fire alarm was set off. If there’s one thing The Heat doesn’t imbue you with, it’s the confidence that any of the contestants can cook.

That said, Tom Lodge, with his bumbling, ever-optimistic outlook, unrequited crush and inadvertent comic timing had grown on us by the time he was kicked out, in a sort of David-Brent-origin-story kind of way. But, no matter how endearing he was, if there was one thing I wouldn’t do, it would be to put Tom in charge of a restaurant. Much less two.

It made our upcoming visit to the newly arrived Crave Bristol, of which Tom is the ‘creative director’ all the more exciting. Like Disneyland, we were very much hoping to meet one of the characters.

According to front of house extraordinaire Tibor, Tom was in charge of the ‘concept’ and creation of dishes at both Bristol and the original site in Exeter, but left a week ago and is now pursuing a career as a TV chef. Perhaps the Crave team saw sense and realised that Tom’s Z-lister pull isn’t quite what they’d hoped.

At Crave Bristol, it is senior head chef Sebastian Merry who is actually wielding the pans, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it’s not Tom, a curse because though I have no doubt that Seb can cook having very much enjoyed his food at two of his previous ventures - Cloak and Dagger, then Flipside. When he opened his own restaurant A.b.o.e I was less convinced.

With us on this particular Wednesday evening was second-time Craver and The Bristol Sauce’s first founding member, Steve. Steve is everything you could possibly want in a Saucer — he knows his shit about food and, especially, wine, eats and drinks with abandon and is very funny. Full marks for Steve.

Whatever happens, don’t be tempted to order the pandan negroni. Stick to the picante

If being sat on the terrace in the shade on a balmy day overlooking the Downs almost made me forget my misgivings about Crave, then service that delivered at a similar rate to tectonic plate movement brought it flying back. Once our drinks materialised, they were good; the lightly spiced picante (£12) with its hint of micro-coriander winning first place over the slightly too saccharine clarified pina colada (£12).

Steve wanted boquerones (£8) with his focaccia (£4.50), which isn’t something I’d normally order. Don’t get me wrong — I love boquerones — but one can discern next to nothing about a chef or a kitchen from a plate of tinned fish. Yet I was glad of these slithers of delicate fish as the focaccia was dry and devoid of any character — it had me wishing that Seb would bring back his poorly-named but ultimately delicious crack butter.

“The focaccia’s fucked, Tom” “Sorry, chef”

We ordered pork croquettes (£8) at the same time as the other snacks but they didn’t appear until a good forty minutes later and somehow they’d managed to forget the pork. This is the first time I’ve encountered vegetarian-friendly pork croquettes and hopefully the last.

On the other hand, the octopus dish (£11) did contain cephalopod and a skilfully cooked one at that. I have my qualms about eating octopus (I’ve literally got one tattooed on my arm) but I’ve felt a bit better after learning recently that they’re currently so overpopulated in UK waters they are munching their way through all of our lobsters. Still, there’s nothing worse than ordering your favourite animal and witnessing its massacre on the plate; torturously overcooked or drenched in something inedible. That was not the case at Crave. Whoever was in the kitchen had cooked the octopus to a deeply satisfying crisp exterior while the inside remained supple and served it on a simple bed of grilled red pepper and courgette. A suitable end indeed for an animal that has been dining out on hefty crustaceans.

The octopus’ sea-bedfellows prawn and unidentified white fish also told a tale of two halves. The white fish was dense and chewy and the ceviche (£13) it was sat in lacked the punchy citrus that should make your mouth pucker slightly, but the prawns (£16) almost made up for it; hefty sweet curls piled generously on top of a slice of bread and drenched in cafe de Crave butter. I say almost because despite having been mostly de-shelled, they hadn’t been deveined, which is just plain lazy.

And then vegetables in various forms and to various degrees of success. A grilled hispi (£11) with a slew of mustard mayo, crispy onions and fried sage topped the podium. In second place was the beetroot and goat’s curd salad with sea buckthorn (£11) — the root vegetable had gratifying bite but the curd was missing its signature tang, perhaps overrun by the sweet and citrus of the sea buckthorn.

The panzanella (£11), like the menu itself, had too much going on. Listen — I’m all for putting bread in a salad. The optimum form of salad bread is croutons. Chicken fat croutons, if we’re being specific. Failing that, panzanella is a stellar way of eating carbs under the guise of health and virtue. In fairness it wasn’t the bread in this panzanella I took issue with; it was the unripe tomatoes and swathes of leaves. Leaves! In a panzanella! The only leaves that should be in panzanella are basil, anything else and you dilute all that is good and proper in this waste-not-want-not creation. I would have rather had half as much with fewer intruders.

For dessert, we swerved the chocolate cremeux (£9) knowing full well that it is the same dish Seb had on at A.b.o.e as the ‘rolo finesse’. Good as it was, and presumably still is, we were remiss to eat the same thing again when there were new sweet items on offer. This was a mistake. The prosecco poached fruit with lemon curd and candied almond pavlova (£9) had a similar level of depth to Akito, Tom’s teammate on The Heat who insisted on referring to himself in the third person. A Biscoff and chocolate torte (£9) for all its promise was two dimensional and lacking in the caramelised joy of the sweetly spiced biscuit.

Can I wholeheartedly recommend the food at Crave? No. Did I have a great time sat on the terrace, drinking wine and chatting shit with top Saucer Steve and my fiancé? Yes. If there’s one man that makes Crave, its neither Tom nor Seb. It’s Tibor. The service picked up considerably once Tibor arrived on the scene, and from then on every time he came to our table we took the opportunity to chat with him as he shared astute recommendations on wine and food pairings. He is the epitome of hospitality and reason enough alone to go and spend a sunny afternoon on the terrace.

One of Tom’s lines on The Heat stayed with me: “when it comes to food, I’m not into bullshit”. Neither am I Tom, which is why I can’t give Crave full marks. But Tom, and Crave for that matter, are a testament to the fact that you can enjoy something while knowing objectively that it isn’t that good, and that as long as you’ve got the former to counter the latter, all is well.

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Crave Bristol, 52 Upper Belgrave Rd, BS8 2XP

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