Sam's Master Grill, Cheltenham Road: 'Maybe one to avoid on your birthday if you’re of a nervous disposition'
One of Bristol's best Persian restaurants has had a makeover
I’ll admit, I was a little saddened to see Sam’s Master Grill had moved and in the process lost its kitsch waterfalls and plastic garland decor, but Phil’s review has restored my faith. It seems the food is as good as ever, and now with more seats and more staff — a greater number of people can enjoy it, and enjoy it they will. I have a deep-seated love for Sam’s Master Grill. It’s another one of those restaurants that will likely never feature in glossy magazines, but it’s well worthy of your time and is extraordinarily good value. Take a small army with you and order less than you think — the restaurant may have grown but the portion sizes were always that big.
While attention has been focused on the catastrophe unfolding in Iran, Bristol’s Persian scene has come up with much happier news. Sam’s Master Grill has been reborn, sloughing off the old, tatty vinyl frontage and emerging gleaming new just down the road. Gleaming new and much bigger, taking over two adjacent shops. Sam’s is writ large, literally: the new sign would easily be legible from the M32 if St Werburgh’s didn’t get in the way, and there’s another huge version on the wall inside for good measure.
The patron himself is, of course, not of diminutive stature. Kurdish-born Saman Tav, chef, political activist, spice merchant and catering entrepreneur in one imposing figure, patrolling the floor marshalling his expanded team — 12 people now — via their secret service-like earphone sets.
The new interior is bright, white and minimal, a total departure from the dark rustic look of the old place, and the grill — sorry Master grill — occupies a long kitchen area at the rear rather than the front window as before. Sam’s kitchen is a compact engine room of state of the art stainless steel machinery from Iran, America, China and the UK, assembled with fanatical precision and cost efficiency by Sam himself and powered by gas and super-fast induction heat. If you’re imagining bags of charcoal and bellows, you’re way off.
The kitchen turns out excellent grilled meat — it wouldn’t be Master if it didn’t — marinaded and brush-basted, mostly lamb and all halal (in case that influences you for or against). We had a good mixed grill of chicken and minced lamb kofta (£20).
Skewers of mixed liver and heart (£10) made a nice starter, as did a delicious dish of mirza ghassemi (£8), a rich, oily mix of smoked aubergine, garlic, tomato, and scrambled-in egg, a bit like a Persian piperade, served, like everything, with voluminous circular sheets of thin naan for scooping.
The starters were very good with an unusual Italian rose, Chiaretto di Bardolino — ours as Sam’s isn’t licensed, but does charge extremely modest corkage: £3 for a bottle or £1 a can. We took along some Bordeaux for the mains. You might think it logical to go for Shiraz, but though the Iranian region of Shiraz did make wine in pre-revolutionary days, the grape now known as Shiraz, or Syrah, didn’t originate there. There’s an interesting wine made by the Khaledi family, expatriate Shirazis in California, but unfortunately it’s not available in the vicinity of the railway bridge on Cheltenham Road.
I have to mention Sam’s other new gadgetry extravagance; high tech but retro entertainment gear. We were startled out of our contemplative Bordeaux sipping by a number of coloured lights we hadn’t noticed suddenly beginning to revolve and flash, followed by booming music from camouflaged speakers. Just a birthday of course — a bit of cake and clapping. Order was soon restored sufficiently to get on with the eagerly anticipated main course of dizi.
Apart from the grills, Sam’s does an interesting range of more unusual stews and braises, in addition to the common beef and sour herb ghormeh sabzi and lamb and yellow split pea gheimeh. Dizi (£22), also known as abgousht, a rich stew of lamb, potato, onion, chickpeas and white beans flavoured with turmeric and dried lime, is a dish rarely encountered in the UK, at least in its full version.
Sam’s staff do it properly, beside the table like a steak tartare: pouring off the liqueur from the granite cooking vessel — the dizi — holding it with big iron tongs, to serve as a bowl of exquisitely savoury broth. The meat and vegetables are then pounded with a pestle to make a delicious gooey mash, which you wolf down with scooping naan and bowls of pickles and salad.
I’ve eaten full-dress dizi twice in my life. The first was in Qom, the Ayatollah Khomeini’s stamping ground, and I have to say the clerical version was marginally richer and smoother, but Sam’s is still an absolute treat. Not content with dizi, I had to go back the following day to try the whole stewed lamb neck (£25), another dish left overnight in the oven, in this case in a mixture of oil and water, making it a little like a French confit. A huge portion served with barberry-strewn rice; succulence dialled up to eleven — I can hardly bear to imagine how delicious the Ayatollahs’ version must be.
There’s only one dessert, a smooth saffron ice cream (£7), but it’s really good, made in-house of milk, vanilla, saffron and rose water. It would be great with a slosh of Armagnac, but walking in clanking two bottles of wine seems louche enough without adding a third of spirits.
After that there’s Persian tea, served on a tray with swizzle sticks of crystallised sugar to stir in and dates (£8). All in all, a very smart new location for Sam’s masterclass in Persian cookery, and one continuing to attract parties of Iranians over from Swindon and Cardiff, though maybe one to avoid on your birthday if you’re of a nervous disposition.
All words and photos by Philip Sweeney
Sam’s Master Grill, 203 Cheltenham Road, BS6 5QX
The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.
 | A guest post by
|