SunRa Kitchen, Nelson Parade: 'Here the SunRa really shines' - restaurant review
Caitlin visits what is possibly the highest-rated restaurant in Bristol
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Huge thanks to Caitlin for another corker of a review - and what a find!
Hope you’re all having a lovely weekend and thank you for reading. It means a lot. ~ Meg
SunRa Kitchen, a Middle Eastern joint on the Bedminster roundabout – where else are you going to start the evening with an interrogation about your Eras Tour experience whilst chowing on chicken schnitzel, and round it off with baklava and discussion about quantum dynamics?
It’s a one man band, and Dom, the man, is quite the character. He is a falafel-frying, neighbourhood Mac Demarco; down to earth but, comically, perhaps not always on this planet, and perpetually charming in a genuine, uncle-ish way.
Born in Israel, with stints in Mozambique and Canada plus a 17-year Bristol taxi career behind him, he can happily chat away to anyone, whether in English, French, or Hebrew.
I make plans to visit on a weekday evening, though it’s more of a lunch situation but is open until 7pm on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Given the whole place is barely big enough to fling a falafel, you can forgive my mild concern upon seeing, through a window dripping with condensation, a musician sat strumming away on one of the sum total of two seats.
It turns out the musician is Riley*, Dom’s stepdaughter, who’s killing time after college by providing SunRa patrons with an acoustic Taylor Swift set. After bounding (can you bound a 40cm distance?) up to us to make introductions she’s promptly relegated to a footstool, guitar in hand.
“OH my God oh my God oh my GOD I CAN’T!” Over the course of the past five minutes, Riley has discovered we are also Swifties and she is beside herself; wanting to compare notes about Eras Tour surprise songs.
“You had Carolina and No Body, No Crime didn’t you? Oh my God I was LITERALLY just playing Carolina. What’s your favourite Taylor Swift song? Dom’s is Fearless isn’t it Dom? He really likes that one. Oh my God! (whispers) Are you guys together?”. I tell her we’re married. She squeals.
In the background Dom is making our dinner whilst riffing on marriage, Herman Hesse, Wagner “he had some weird chords”, and his top picks from the Fearless album.
The time has come. Across the counter he hands a fat tortilla wrap jammed with hot falafel, fresh coriander tomato salad, hummus, tahini, couscous, red cabbage, pickles and as much spice as we want (£8.5). We also have a loaded chips version of this on request, falafel swapped for chicken schnitzel (£9).
The thing is, what SunRa cooks up is fairly similar to what you find in the Eat a Pittas of this city, but it hits different when it’s served by the disarmingly-chummy Dom who gives out extra falafel while you wait.
And it is delicious – the salad juicy, the chicken succulent, the falafel fried to perfection, the pitas still steaming, and all elements seasoned to that bliss point.
We get peanut butter and sesame seed brownies (£2.99) and baklava (£3.99) afterwards to have with the rest of our cans of Fanta. “Oh, the brownies are really, really good,” he says. Does he make them himself? “Yes”. Fair enough, Dom, say your truth and say it loud.
Somehow, yet more people are coming inside the restaurant to put in their orders. Dom chats away in Hebrew to an Israeli PhD maths student, and Riley comforts a woman who’s had a rough day at work whilst Taylor plays from a Bluetooth speaker.
SunRa Kitchen doesn’t have a website but its Instagram account is where Dom addresses his ‘fellow umami falafel-munching insta followers’ and encourages them to ‘come get da best chicken schnitzel wrap in brizz’. I can confirm I have joined his falafel-munching brigade. Dom’s perfect five-star Google rating, at 274 reviews strong, suggests the brigade is a big one.
I follow one of those historical Bristol comparison photo Facebook pages, whose posts of car-less Redland streets and Hotwells spa rooms give me regular hankerings for a world I know not of (that in my mind is idyllic and definitely not disease-ridden, impoverished, or realistic at all).
I like to think of SunRa as a remnant of this un-modern, slower world where people recognise each other in the street. And slow it is – back to the one-man-band-of-it-all, you really can’t expect SunRa to get you food in a hurry, but I’d take this arrestingly-yellow-painted shopfront and its revolving door of Swifties and deep thinkers over a pitta conveyor belt any day.
*Name changed for privacy.
All words and photos by Caitlin Johnson-Bowring
SunRa Kitchen, 1a Nelson Parade, BS3 4JA
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Pleasant experience, good grub, with a sprinkling of personality. The sort of place that reminds me, in a good way, of humanity. The polar opposite of the whole ghastly food charade you might come across nearer the middle of town. It is perfectly possible to have a conversation with the prop. while he prepares your freshly made coffee and wrap. Now how's that for a refreshing change!?
Has caught my eye every time I have walked past (mainly because of the promise of baklava inside) I will now go and try for sure :)