Mangosteen, Cotham Hill: 'From the get-go, Mangosteen is easy to love'
Having taken over the site of the much-loved Pasta Loco, Mangosteen has big boots to fill. It’s inauthentic, overly sweet and utterly joyous.
Food writers are snobs. We are constantly searching for the best. The newest flavours, the most authentic recreations, produce or ideas that make the tiny neurons in our food-obsessed brains buzz with excitement. We have high standards. Standards that are set by the constant pursuit of perfection, a trial that takes place in restaurants, markets and shops around the country, day in, day out.
If my som tam salad doesn’t sear my tastebuds with heat, it’s not a good som tam salad. If my curry doesn’t sing melodies to the tune of coriander, coconut and citrus; it’s getting marked down.
You’re right to roll your eyes. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Do you think my family enjoy coming out for dinner with me and watching me dissect every detail? But they’re not food writers. This is more than just my job, it’s my raison d’être. It matters.
Every now and then somewhere like Mangosteen drags you off your high horse. Cheap enough to make you think you’ve been whisked back to 2014 and sticky in all the right places. The snob in me, who has been temporarily silenced, screams that it’s not authentic, not spicy enough, an appropriated, westernised take on Thai that will make other food writers wince.
And yet it spoke straight to my heart. It took me back to Chinese takeaway childhood Friday nights; the only time we were allowed to eat in front of the telly. It’s named after my favourite fruit, discovered on my first trip to Thailand. Its bloated corridor of a restaurant has taken over the site that belonged to Pasta Loco, a restaurant that I adored and have extremely fond memories of. From the get-go, Mangosteen is easy to love.
Though basking in the glow of the neon-wall sign, I quickly realised this is not somewhere to come for an overdue catch-up. The tables are packed closer than the segments of its namesake fruit and the acoustics are awful. No wonder I couldn’t hear my inner snob, I couldn’t hear anything. At 6.15pm on a Friday night it was packed and raucous. But the energy was infectious and the look of the dishes whipping past at alarming speed had me ravenous.
Having to agree at the time of booking to relinquish the table in 1.5 hours always makes me twitchy. I needn’t have been, for within twenty minutes of sitting down our tiny table for two was a Tetris game of bowls and plates, so much so that I had to balance my eye-wateringly sweet elephas maximus cocktail (£9) on the adjoining counter.
A tapas approach to Thai food served as an enabler to my already fervent desire to order most of the menu. Astoundingly most of the prices don’t stray far from single digits, which didn’t make choosing any easier. Som tam salad (£6) was a refreshing tangle of crunchy veg but was noticeably lacking personality by the way of spice, fish sauce or even the promised sweet papaya.
Honey on meat is my achilles heel. The one mainstay on every Chinese takeaway receipt of mine is honey barbecue ribs. Crispy honey chilli beef (£9) did a stellar job of satiating my cravings. A first world problem admittedly, but there’s nothing worse than biting into a crispy chilli beef and having it crumble to dust in your mouth; all batter and no beef. Not here - I’m pleased to report reassuring chunks of cow in every mouthful.
There was significantly less meat in the sweet and sour aubergine (£8), much to the relief of the fair weather vegan sat opposite me. I’m not sure how authentically Thai it was, but it did a good job of avoiding becoming the pile of sweetened mush that many vegetable Chineasy dishes are destined for.
A vegetable mie goreng (£7) suggests that Mangosteen is willing to take inspiration from seemingly most of South East Asia, but it does so reasonably well. Thai duck red curry (£11) does not sing of the streets of Bangkok - it’s too tame - but its creamy sweetness makes bowl-scraping inevitable.
For those looking for adventure and authenticity when it comes to Thai food in Bristol, I’d still recommend making the Gloucester Road pilgrimage to Jean’s Bistro. But Mangosteen expertly asserts the happy medium in the Venn diagram of vibrant flavours and the westernised South East asian comfort food flavours that so many of us know and love. It’s a nod to the culture of a Friday night Chinese takeaway with a bit of a party atmosphere and less of the next-day MSG mouth clag. Sometimes we have to put the snob in us to bed for the night and embrace our inner child.
Words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Mangosteen, Cotham Hill, BS6 6JY
Great read. What’s with the numerous references to Chinese takeaways and ‘Chineasy’ food? It’s a Thai restaurant.