Gourmet Warriors at The Gallimaufry: 'The menu now reads like a Race Across the World challenge'
A wild ramen chase
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A buzz alerted me to the fact that someone had sent me a post on Instagram. I opened the message and gasped. A place in Berlin had created something I’d never even conceived of; a combination of my favourite Mexican food and my favourite Japanese food. Birria ramen. It was genius — you could envision how delicious it would be. The birria broth would lend itself so well to a ramen base and the noodles would allow a slurp-ability you could never achieve with a taco alone. On top they’d piled the slow cooked birria beef, diced onion and fresh coriander. I started planning a Berlin trip immediately.
When I got to Berlin, the two market stalls that had collaborated to make this ramen of dreams were no longer working together. I was devastated, consoled only by some very good tacos al pastor. But the itch needed scratching. If you want something doing, sometimes you have to do it yourself.
Back in Bristol I got to work. My then-employers Bristol24/7 had a food event coming up, and so I pitched a collaboration to Bristol’s ramen master — James from Tomo No Ramen — and Bristol’s birria kings — Gourmet Warriors. It’s one of the things I love so much about Bristol’s food scene: people almost always say yes, even to the most madcap of schemes. We got together to plot and test. The birria broth cut with Tomo’s house stock and a miso tare. Noodles made on site. A cheese crisp, fresh coriander, onion. A birria taco for dipping. It wasn’t perfect, but it was damn good. I said to both parties that they should continue the collaboration, but as so often happens in the busy and challenging hospitality industry — the less fun tasks are the ones to take priority.
But then 2026 rolled around and brought with it the news that Gourmet Warriors would be popping up at The Gallimaufry, serving, among other things, birria ramen. Gloucester Road’s premiere indie pub The Gallimaufry has a very good reputation for food, having been home to Sky Kong Kong and Fat Dad’s last year, and every run-in I’ve had with Gourmet Warrior’s birria tacos has always ended with me sporting a giant grin and consommé-flecked fingers. A match made in food heaven, surely.
Gourmet Warriors have taken this opportunity to expand far beyond tacos, and beyond even just Mexico and Japan. The menu now reads like a Race Across the World challenge; there’s siu mai (Chinese) stuffed with Thai pork and prawn. There’s a laksa dip (Chinese/Malaysian/Indonesian), sambal matah (Malaysian) and Korean fried chicken, along with the birria tacos and ramen. All of those places produce outrageously good food, but difficult to do them all justice in what is essentially a pub kitchen. It suggests a madcap attempt to capture evasive food zeitgeist rather than a well thought-through menu — but that didn’t stop us hoping for the best and ordering most of it.
I barely need cover the birria tacos (£13.50 for 3), which were as good as ever — meaning they were flawless and actually better than a good chunk of the ones I’ve polished off on various trips around Mexico. The Better Call Seoul Korean fried chicken tacos (£12.50 for 3) were made up of quite good fried chicken but bad everything else. Something had gotten waylaid in the composition and the combination of corn tortilla with Korean toppings just didn’t work, despite that country’s affinity with corn. It may have been the sad iceberg lettuce. It may have been the miso mayo. Having waited nearly an hour for the food, I was too hungry to pick apart each component, but something wasn’t quite right.
Sambal street nachos (£8.50) read like a bad hungover cupboard raid or a Deliveroo mix up — corn tortillas mixed in with prawn crackers and served with two sambals and a salsa. Now this is fusion cuisine. In fact, I think they may be onto something. Though you can hardly call them nachos as none of the toppings were, well, toppings — it was more chips and dips, but nevertheless a very enjoyable mix and match type affair.
Birria siu mai (£6.50 for 4) let the side down; too loose, flabby and bland. It takes a very skilled hand to make good dim sum and these hands are trained in the far more fast and loose form of birria tacos. Why siu mai? It seems like an odd choice to me. Why not load the birria onto chips or something else more easily achieved and pub friendly?
And finally, the ramen (£14.50). Really good ramen takes years, nay, decades, to perfect. Chefs dedicate their lives to it, toiling away in search of the optimum noodle bite, the most sensual mouthfeel, the deepest umami flavours. Gourmet Warriors have not done that. What they have essentially done is take their birria — which as we have already established is very good — and combined it with overcooked, cheap packet noodles. The result is something you’d be quietly chuffed with if you’d made it as a random leftover lunch, but it’s not a patch on what it could be if someone who actually knew ramen was involved. Here it was garnished with a very chewy and quite unpleasant cheese crisp, pickled red onion, raw red onion, pickled carrot and heaps of coriander. None of the toppings were particularly good and they didn’t do anything to distract from the very overcooked noodles.
So the search for a birria ramen continues. I still have resolute faith that it can be done and can be done very well. It is not being done here. Go for the birria tacos and maybe the ‘nachos’, but don’t stay for the rest of the menu. After all, Fat Dads have only moved down the road to Blue Lagoon. Burger for dessert it is.
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Gourmet Warriors, currently in residence at The Gallimaufry, 26-28 Gloucester Rd, BS7 8AL
The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.
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Alas, the search continues.