Wilsons, Chandos Road: 'It is the best restaurant in Bristol, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong'
Featuring a 132kg tuna and a small existential crisis about meat
Putting restaurants into local and national context can be helpful. It helps readers assess whether or not to visit, whether it is worth their money, whether they will like the food. Or it just provides interesting background information to those who have no intention of ever stepping foot through the door.
Putting Wilsons into context presents a challenge; realistically one can only compare Wilsons to previous visits to Wilsons, because locally Wilsons is peerless. It is the best restaurant in Bristol, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
So why bother reviewing it then?
The primary reason for my most recent visit to Wilsons was an extraordinarily large tuna, line caught on Monday morning. Perhaps the most bizarre and rare invitation I have ever received was to watch owner and head chef Jan Ostle and a handful of other chefs from around Bristol butcher the thing on Monday evening. Having seen the beast whole, then in parts, having tried the raw flesh and sucked the bone marrow from its spine - I felt it would be rather rude not to return a few days later to see it grace the menu. And I didn’t want the tuna to think I was rude. After all, there was 132kg of it so I didn’t fancy my chances in a fight.
To comprehend how Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Wilsons can all sell a dish under the same name, ‘carrot soup’, is to understand the scale of the universe. Mind boggling. The first course at Wilsons was only competing with predecessors from the same kitchen and even then it beat them. Lightly foamed, turmeric yellow, studded with crunchy morsels of fermented green tomato and topped with an onion crumb. It looks like a child’s painting of the sun and it tastes just as sweet.
The bread is inevitably good, so much so that the restaurant in question has opened a shop a few doors up dedicated to the stuff. It is served with cod’s roe bathed in a puddle of herb oil, that like most of the produce at Wilsons, is mighty proud of having only been picked from the market garden this morning, and rightly so. Though it's the cultured butter, flaunting cheese-like qualities, that is the superior accompaniment.
Then we’re reunited. Three cuts of the tuna; loin, head and belly. The head has been minced into a kofta that would put kebab shops out of business if it went mainstream. Somebody warn Jason and his Donervan.
Belly has come to teach us minimalism. The cut is marbled with thin veins of fat, or thin veins of flavour; when treated well they are one and the same. It’s been briefly introduced to a piece of hot charcoal, sliced wafer thin and sprinkled with a fine layer of salt.
Loin is also served raw; a thicker cut topped with grated turnip, nori and bathed in clementine ponzu with clementine leaf oil. The quickest on the palate and least punchy of the tuna tripod but impressive still.
Perhaps it is still rude to think this is a fitting end for such a mighty fish.
This tuna must have spent at least a decade in the water, if not longer. Is it fair that it ends up on my plate? If it hadn’t, would it not have ended up in another mouth higher up the food chain? I watched it be taken apart. I know that every inch of its huge body will be used. As we eat, I find myself thinking about an episode of a podcast I listened to recently, entitled ‘Is it wrong to love meat?’ in which author Amber Husain berates chef and restaurateur Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
I fear I am falling exactly into Hugh’s army and the middle-class meat-loving category that Amber describes; I rationalise eating meat (and fish) by making sure it’s sustainably sourced, used wisely and treated ‘fairly’. I can’t possibly be the climate culprit because I buy the expensive, good meat and I have the time and resources and knowledge to cook it, all of it. Urgh. Something to dwell on, when I am not busy trying to stop myself melting into a messy puddle of happiness on the wooden floor.
The tuna and meat debate continue to swim through my mind through the trout and fallow deer courses, both of which are exemplary. Brown butter hollandaise hiding a pile of creamed leeks and a shard of fish crackling (skin and scales - yum) are the kind of touch that make it so easy to love Wilsons.
Market garden herbs show off again in a sharp, aniseed fresh pre-dessert sorbet, topped with torched meringue. And then for the finale, an entire tarte tatin with bay leaf ice cream, proving that quality and quantity need not, in fact, be mutually exclusive.
As mentioned earlier, Wilsons is the best restaurant in Bristol. My most recent visit only confirmed what I already knew to be true. But it was impossible to ignore the handful of empty tables in an already petite restaurant. Christ, if we can’t pack Wilsons out for every service then we really are in a mess. It’s only £35 for lunch for God’s sake, and that includes a glass of wine. The evening menu would have Robin Hood scratching his head; £68 for six courses sure feels like stealing.
As also mentioned, it’s important to put restaurants into context. Bristol is inconceivably lucky to have Wilsons, but is Wilsons lucky to have Bristol? The only Bristol restaurant to make it into the top 100 in the UK, and now also the only to have a Michelin green star in the city, is saddled with empty seats.
Without wanting to fall into the trap of the old use it or lose it adage, Wilsons is one of the few restaurants in Bristol that is shouting for our city in the national culinary conversation. And yet we don’t do such a good job of shouting about it within the Bristol echo chamber. Jan and his team, from the people picking the herbs in the market garden to those turning up at 10pm to help butcher a tuna, have a talent and determination that is rare. We mustn’t let it go unrecognised, or uneaten. So grace their doorstep, and do it soon, while that tuna is still on the menu.
Wilsons, 24 Chandos Road, BS6 6PF
Words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
I felt EXACTLY the same on listening to that episode of the full english. I actually emailed Amber and she recommended me a great book Sunaura Taylor's book Beasts of Burden. Maybe you will like it too