El Diablo, Gloucester Road: 'My existing crows' feet have grown two new toes from wincing' - restaurant review
The new Mexican on Gloucester Road has certainly landed with a bang
604 million people listened to podcasts on Spotify last year, and I was one of them. According to my Wrapped, I listened to 1,402 minutes to be exact. I divided my time between politics and internet discourse debrief A Bit Fruity by Matt Bernstein which I’d highly recommend, as well as The Sporkful, The Full English and Gastropod. I suppose that’s actually a pretty good summary of my personality; three quarters food and one quarter internet. Classic millennial.
If I’d been able to hear myself think while I was in the new Mexican restaurant on Gloucester Road in early December, I would have been recalling an episode of Gastropod called 'Why are restaurants so loud?’
You can probably see where this is going.
When he was touring his new book last autumn at St George’s, Jay Rayner was asked about the difference between food critic and restaurant critic. I hadn’t really pondered the distinction before, but his logic was sound (pun intended). A food critic only critiques the food, a restaurant critic considers all aspects of a restaurant, for all contribute to the overall experience. Service, atmosphere, comfort and - as I have come to understand well - the amount of noise.
Going back to the episode of Gastropod, the presenters explored the work of veteran Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema, who had so many readers complain to him about the seemingly ever-increasing volume in restaurants that he started measuring decibel levels and including them in his reviews.
So instead of just bemoaning my lack of ear defenders in El Diablo, I channeled my frustration at not being able to hear anything anyone was saying into downloading a decibel-measuring app. The noise, a mixture of Hans Zimmer style end-of-the-world soundtrack and people shouting at each other, peaked with a resounding chorus of Happy Birthday at 89.
Here’s an extract from the Gastropod episode about what that actually means:
“60 to 70 decibels would be: a conversation is easy. And 70 to 80 is: must speak with raised voice. And it gets more dire with every, you know. Fortunately, I’m not going to too many places with 90 or 100 plus decibels, at which point it actually gets dangerous. After 80 decibels, that is like city traffic comparison, there, and that actually gets dangerous over sustained periods”.
It is hard to enjoy food, let alone two hours in the company of friends with whom you’d quite like to converse, when you feel like you’re stood in front of a festival sound-system. I actually think my existing crows’ feet have grown two new toes from wincing so much.
Goodness knows how the staff at El Diablo are staying sane with noise levels equivalent to being up close and personal with a lawnmower for ten hours a day. Clearly it was getting to them, as they seemed to keep forgetting they had been over to check on our table 30 seconds prior; as if the feeling of claustrophobia wasn’t already bad enough.
That said - although you probably didn’t hear it - some of the food was good. The nachos (£9), generously loaded with studs of pork carnitas (£4.5 extra), guacamole, salsa and queso fresco, were freshly fried and some of the best I’ve had in this neck of the woods. If we’d left after that and a distinctly unspicy spicy margarita (£11) I would have only had a mild case of tinnitus and a moderately good impression of the restaurant.
But when have I ever left a restaurant after one dish?
According to the internet, diablitos are either a canned spicy ham spread or a Mexican-inspired cocktail. On Gloucester Road, they are mini patties of homemade corn tortilla dough rolled with oyster mushroom birria, fried and topped with queso fresco and pico de gallo (£8).
I think what has actually happened here is that the team at El Diablo have taken the wondrous Guatemalan dish garnachas, also popular in Oaxaca, Mexico, and commodified it. The result was still very good, if a little underseasoned. In Oaxaca they are swabbed with pork lard; missing here, and arguably the best bit. The comments I managed to pick up from round the table included ‘sort of like a Mexican onion bhaji or a medu vada’, or a ‘sexy but subtle hash brown’. Not bad.
As the noise levels continued to increase, my enjoyment of the dishes went in the opposite direction. Baja fish tacos (2 for £9.5), one of my favourite things to eat and to cook, were drowned in a suspiciously vague and quite unpleasantly bland ‘house Baja sauce’, and were sadly lacking pickled red onions, guacamole or indeed anything else that might have offered some semblance of flavour. The batter was soggy and heavy, probably partially contributing to the collapse of the homemade tortilla underneath the second it was lifted off the tray.
If, like the tortillas, I was considering giving up after the fish - the nail was firmly in the coffin after the birria (2 for £9.5). We have some stellar birria options in Bristol; Gourmet Warriors’ goat sensations can be procured from various markets and at The Plough, and I recently discovered the excellent Arditos Kitchen, currently in residence at Lost and Grounded.
If those two represent one end of the Bristol birria spectrum, unfortunately El Diablo represents the other. It takes quite the talent to be able to make beef brisket lose any meaty flavour, by cooking it in a sauce that simultaneously dries it out completely. They might have been able to save it if they’d swaddled it in melted cheese as many places do - but no. They kept it plain, simple, and - by the time it was combined with an undercooked tortilla - almost inedible.
I won’t bother you with the cactus salad (£5.5) or the refried beans (£2.5); neither merits the word count.
In a bid to relieve myself of the disappointment and the noise I ordered a far-too-sweet negroni (£12) which was especially painful given our proximity to Filthy XIII, Bristol’s best cocktail bar.
With that it was time to call it a night. Four times. Before my compadres noticed I was saying anything.
I made a joke last year (which went down like a lead balloon) hypothesising that they might need to offer ear defenders at the door of a certain new Bristol restaurant. It turned out not to be true, at least not of that restaurant. Moral of the story? Always bring your own earplugs. I am now having to listen to my podcasts with subtitles on.
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
El Diablo, 39 Gloucester Road, BS7 8AD
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Dos Dedos, Bath: 'A better start to a meal has rarely been had'
I thought I’d start this review with a Haiku. Haikus are Japenese and this review is about Mexican food, but fusion cuisine is all the rage these days and why not? I’m feeling creative.
A friend of mine (restaurant reviewer) recently wrote an article about noise levels in restaurants and how this is an area often overlooked by restaurant owners. Another fun write up to read too, well done.
As a Mexican living in Bristol it has been a respite taking away the nostalgia of the flavors that you come to miss being in the UK, thank God finally a restaurant that does not offer you "spicy crema", or it invades you visually with the stereotypes that people have of Mexico in other countries such as "frida kahlo"pictures and colorful flowers, or papel picado everywhere, find on a menu "gorditas"which are called (no "garnachas"garnachas is the general description of deepfried masa dish and depends on the state cause in veracruz garnachas are just deep fried tortilla with salsa on top and some topping), nopales salad and black refried beans in a menu is pure gold to find them outside of México.
El diablo restaurant its a deep breath of hope for a "chilanga" living in bristol to be close to home.