Solina, Bath: 'The pasta rocked up so swaggeringly confident that nothing else mattered'
Why you should be going out for pasta
Hello Saucers and happy Thursday. We’ve got an exciting project in the works, which I’ll be revealing more details about in the coming weeks . It’s something we’ve been working on behind the scenes to help you find great, independent restaurants quickly. A second iteration of our Google Map, if you will. Our paying Saucers will be the first to hear about it — upgrade your subscription now to make sure that’s you. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this review of Solina, which is currently in Bath but I reckon may make an appearance in Bristol in the future…
Someone said to me recently: “I don’t usually go out for pasta, because I think ‘I can just make that at home’.”
Now I’ve heard some ridiculous things in my time, but this really takes the biscuit. Let’s just dwell on that statement for a moment.
You could — in theory — make almost anything you eat in a restaurant at home. You’ve completely missed the point there. Not only are you not going to get the lovely service, the drinks, the years of expertise, the creativity of the chefs and not having to do the washing up at home, I also highly doubt that you’re going to go to the effort of finding free range golden-yolked eggs, kneading them by hand with double zero flour to make a dough, running it through a pasta machine several times until it’s almost translucent, cutting it to size or shape and then emulsifying it with a sauce. You’re probably not going to whip up a couple of small plates for starters or a tiramisu for dessert as well. And if you did, you’d be so damn tired and stressed from all of that, that you wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation over your magnum opus dinner for more than two minutes.
So the point is moot. You should be going out for pasta because the fact that a bowl of silken brilliance arrives in front of you laden with heart-wrenchingly good sauce without you having to break a sweat is little short of a miracle, and one that no, you cannot ‘just make that at home’. And now that I’ve convinced you that you should be going out for pasta, I’m going to tell you where to go.
You cannot book at Solina, you simply turn up and wait for a table — or go and find a drink in a neighbouring pub or bar and they’ll text you when it’s time to come back. And the likelihood is you will have to wait, for Solina is a poorly kept secret on the streets of Bath and suitably popular with a healthy cross section of the city’s residents.
The focaccia (£4) which you haven’t had to bake yourself, can be paired with one of two dips — white bean and truffle with confit garlic (£2.50) or sun-dried tomato and butterbean hummus (£2.50). Now if you’re sun-drying your own tomatoes, I will eat my words. Perhaps I’ve underestimated you, and you also have a fleet of pigs snuffling out truffles as I write.
If not, then I’d recommend both the focaccia and the white bean dip at Solina; the two marry together in an excellent display of bounce, salt, umami and oil. We split a single good squash and taleggio arancino (£3) — the menu reads arancini but we are not so easily fooled by Italian pluralising — and then move on to a roasted porchetta dish with anchovy dressing, shallots, capers and mustard leaves (£12).
Whatever I’d imagined this porchetta dish to be, it wasn’t. I was expected a curl of pork belly, perhaps some crackling — something bronzed from the oven. This was more like a vitello tonnato but made with pig instead of cow, and very soon my assumptions were long forgotten and instead I was fighting with Chris to get the last swoop of the plate.
The burrata with fennel, olives, asparagus, almonds and chilli (£10) was less successful — the only dish of the night that tasted like it had been made at home. Not my home of course, I’d do a far better job. This tasted like someone had lost their way in Waitrose, grabbed the first ingredients that came to mind and put them together on a plate without any seasoning. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either.
But no matter, for the thing we were actually in Solina for — the pasta — rocked up so swaggeringly confident that nothing else mattered. We’d had a terrible time reducing the ten pasta dishes to just two; it seemed such a crime to neglect a cuscini ravioli with pea, mint, ricotta, asparagus and lemon butter sauce, much less the classic rigatoni with beef shin ragu.
I reassured Chris: ‘don’t worry, we can just make them at home’ — and so we settled on a gargati with creamy pork and fennel ragu (£14) and a tagliatelle with Cornish crab, datterini tomatoes, chilli, garlic and parsley.
The pasta I make at home is actually quite good, if I do say so myself, but I very rarely go to the effort of making my own dough and digging out my pasta machine. What I will make myself is a pangrattato; a crisp breadcrumb topping that I’ll infuse with lemon zest, garlic, chilli or herbs. I’ll make too much, garnish my pasta liberally with it, and then save whatever’s left for pimping the next day’s salad. It’s good to have routines, especially when they involve adding extra carbs to your carbs.
The good folk of Solina have also caught on to topping pasta with bread, and our creamy pork ragu gargati was sprinkled with the stuff, like a Mr Whippy covered in hundreds and thousands. It added bonus texture to an already delightfully rich and unctuous dish. I wish I could make that with these two hands. I’d barely eat anything else.
The crab tagliatelle was similarly successful and a wise choice to contrast with the pork — lighter, fresher and slightly sweet. My only wish would have been for more crab, but that’s probably not Solina’s fault but rather a consequence of the octopus invasion that’s encroaching on Britain’s shorelines and disrupting the food chain.
Sadly we ended on a bum note; a too-soft and muted apple and hazelnut crumble cake served with crème fraîche (£8) that would have had you sent home on Bake Off for crimes against crumble.
Now, you might have been convinced to go out for a plate of superlative pasta that’s also very reasonably priced, but I know what you’re thinking — to go all the way to Bath as well? I mean it’s only fifteen minutes on the train, but yes, it’s an additional obstacle in the pursuit of good pasta. Though I’ve heard salacious rumours that The Walcot Group, who are to be held responsible for this excellent pasta, have got their sights set on Bristol for further expansion. We’re already spoilt with Little Hollows, Magari and Pasta Ripiena, but I say the more the merrier. Your excuses for not going out for pasta are getting wobblier by the second.
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Solina, Grand Parade, Bath BA2 4DF
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I've heard A LOT of people say they can 'just make pasta at home'. Mostly this was in the 2010s, i.e. circa Bella Italia, Jamie Oliver's restos, and Frankie & Benny's, and way before the Solinas, Padellas, Trullos, etc. I wonder what they're thinking now...