March Digest: Bristol food and drink news
A major Bristol hospitality group has gone into liquidation
Hello Saucers. The end of March is nigh, which means two things.
The March digest is here and is full of local insights, breaking news and hot gossip. If you want to read all of it, you’ll need to be a paying Saucer, which brings us onto…
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Here’s hoping April brings good things and sunshine. Thanks for reading! Meg X
The news
First up — some of Bristol’s best burgers are on the move. Fat Dads have once again moved further down Cheltenham Road and can now be found at The Full Moon in Stokes Croft. I do admire Paul’s determination to move no further than a few hundred meters at a time, leaving nothing more than a trail of breadcrumbs and burger grease, like a Bristolian Hansel.
Danny’s Burgers, currently based at Fierce and Noble in St Werburghs, may also be on the move — the group are investigating a second, bricks-and-mortar site in Brislington. More as we have it!
Press
We might as well rename this section the Dongnae edit. The Chandos Road favourite was reviewed in The Observer at the beginning of the month by Rebecca Nicholson, who loved it. Naturally. Here’s a quote: “Like a plain white T-shirt on a supermodel, everything about Dongnae simply shrugs: yeah, I know.” In addition to this rave, Dongnae has been praised by The Guardian, Financial Times, The Telegraph and, perhaps most importantly of all, The Bristol Sauce, which surely just leaves Giles Coren or Tom Parker-Bowles to come. Well done to the team for once again earning Bristol some national attention!
The Good Food Guide have released their list of the top 50 bakeries in the country, and very kindly put it behind a paywall. Fortunately the good folk at the Evening Standard have listed all fifty here for anyone interested. Three Bristol bakeries made the list: Farro, Hilda and Hart’s — huge congratulations to them, and here’s hoping for a couple more additions next year.
Closures
It’s all change on Stokes Croft: both pan-Asian street-food joint Tuk Tuck and The Spaghetti Incident (Italian, in case you didn’t guess) have announced closures only a week apart. Though it seems a proper goodbye for The Spaghetti Incident, you will still be able to order Tuk Tuck goodies via Deliveroo from their sister restaurant Pocha on Whiteladies Road.
Interlude Coffee have left their original St Michael’s Hill site with the promise of opening new premises, but a location has yet to be announced. We — and many others — hope they’re back soon and bring their Picky Bits with them.
According to Companies House, Hyde & Co — the group behind several Bristol restaurants and bars — have gone into liquidation. The group manage Bambalan, The Ox, Seven Lucky Gods, Hyde & Co and The Milk Thistle, all of which seem to still be open as normal, suggesting perhaps the businesses have been transferred to another company.
I’m rarely pleased to see a hospitality business close, but I was quite happy to see the back of the two Bristol Brewdog bars following the sale of the company at the start of March. However, the Millennium Promenade branch will apparently be reopening and is looking for staff. I wonder if James Watt will try to weasel his way back in.
Leading us nicely from closing into openings is Flour House, who have moved from Park Row to North Street. With the opening of their new North Street site in what was previously home to Kitchen by Kask, the Park Row operation is now closed.
New openings
After a tortuous wait, purveyors of the finest loaded roti in all the land Brother Thai are finally opening their Bristol branch in the Carriageworks on Stokes Croft on Thursday, 9 April. This will be the group’s second branch — the original site is in Cardiff — though you may remember them from pre-Covid Harbourside Market appearances. Read The Bristol Sauce review of the Cardiff branch.
Following the dissolution of East Bristol Bakery late last year, the now vacant site on St Mark’s Road is set to reopen as Staple Bakery on Saturday, 4 April. Staple Bakery promises pastries, drinks and bread with sourdough made from British milled organic flour. Staple Bakery is being opened by the team behind well-established Chai Guy on the same road.
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