Bristol’s food scene
How has Bristol – a city renowned for nautical terms and scrumpy – turned into a magnet for creative young chefs, with exciting new openings every other week? This is one constantly evolving food scene the challenges of the past 18 months can’t keep down
Renowned over the years for commodities as varied as tobacco, sherry, aircraft, pop music and graffiti, Bristol’s latest claim to fame is food. For a decade now, restaurants such as The Ethicurean, Wilsons and Littlefrench have received rave reviews by everyone from the Financial Times to swarms of online fans equipped with the latest phones and adjectives, ‘banging’ being a favourite. The fact that a whole host of food writers, actual and aspiring, live in the city has helped.
The apogee came last December with BBC Two’s Remarkable Places to Eat Christmas special, which was devoted not to Lyon or Bologna, but Bristol. Star chef Michel Roux Jr and celeb maitre d’ Fred Sirieix wandered the streets swapping badinage and chorusing ‘Wow! That’s amazing!’ at anything edible in their line of vision.
‘When I started out you could count the serious restaurants here on one hand,’ says Stephen Markwick, Bristol’s most eminent senior restaurateur and former proprietor of the town’s one-time gastronomic flagships Bistro 21 and Culinaria. ‘Now Bristol’s become a magnet for creative young chefs who can’t afford London property prices.’ We’re sitting in the small shop premises in which, 40 years ago, Stephen created Bistro 21, treating a generation of lucky Bristolians to a masterly rendition of the Anglo-European, Elizabeth Davidinfluenced repertoire that was then fashionable: wonderful game terrines and venison
casseroles, salmon, crab and sole from Cornwall, eels from Somerset, and rarities such as fried sand eels from the River Exe.
In 2018 the restaurant, now named Bulrush, gained its first Michelin star under the ownership of its current chef. George Livesey is a textbook example of the new wave: having worked for Michel Roux’s family at Le Gavroche in Mayfair, he now turns out recherché little dishes combining classical technique and fine local ingredients with obligatory novelty. We taste a tartare of cured and smoked venison with juniper mayonnaise, pickled shimeji mushrooms and seaweed powder, and a pink peppercorn macaron with duck liver parfait, plum jam and dried plum skin powder. Not much in common with the previous generation’s cooking, then? No, agrees George: ‘Although the parfait is straight out of Le Gavroche.’ Stephen, meanwhile, perusing the new decor, comes across a hidden patch of old Bistro 21 Artex wallpaper, the gastronomic equivalent of a lost mosaic discovered under vinyl flooring.
Bristol is a goldmine for the culinary archaeologist, full of monuments still functioning but under new regimes; bistros of early TV chef Keith Floyd, historic inns belonging to the Fifties and Sixties empire of the Italian-born Berni brothers. At the same time, the Georgian terraces of Clifton and the grand old banking halls around Corn Street are being augmented by upwardly mobile areas such as Bedminster, the busy Gloucester Road – famous for its unbroken ranks of proper old-fashioned shops – and the old badlands of Stokes Croft, Southville, Easton, St Werburgh’s, all
evidence of a decade of constant restaurant expansion, interrupted but far from obliterated, by the pandemic.
The most talked about new chefs work in a modern British eclectic style far removed from the old Floyd/Markwick mode, still resolutely innovative but with the old French influence replaced by newer trends – Scandinavian, foraging, fermentation – with the regional British content represented by the ingredients. The great wealth of historic South West food – documented by writers such as Jane Grigson, Theodora Fitzgibbon and Andrea Leeman – dishes like sautéed elvers, jugged hare, leek pie, pork or rabbit with cream and celery, is largely absent, but for many of Bristol’s new chefs the modern mantra ‘local’ is still a prime ambition.
Josh Eggleton, probably Bristol’s busiest restaurateur, with half a dozen addresses in his stable, is a leading example. His first venture, the Michelin-starred Chew Valley gastro pub The Pony & Trap, now closed for conversion into a sort of mini elBulli workshop space, set the tone for Josh’s hearty but ambitious St John-influenced fare. Josh worked furiously through the crisis, setting up a big-tented lockdown brasserie complex, Breaking Bread, on The Downs – with dishes like the old West Country staple of faggot refashioned from game and adorned with burnt leeks and consommé – and preparing his brand new Pony Bistro in Bedminster. This was immediately booked solid, serving similar regional creations with a twist like trout confit in goose fat and Walnut Whip Alaska. Josh fitted in co-running a food and drink festival and leading food tours of Bristol, visiting outstanding suppliers such as Rare Butchers in Bedminster and The Bristol Cheesemonger at Wapping Wharf.
Jan Ostle, of Wilsons, star of the new foodie mini-Mecca of Chandos Road, works in a similar style, though more minimalist, and shares Josh’s fierce pride in his supply chain. Over lunch of sea urchins just delivered from Cornwall, mallard shot by Jan, and vegetables grown in his rented smallholding, he comments: ‘The best produce has an inimitable character from its place of origin – it’s the same as terroir for a wine.’
Afterwards, we drive out to meet some examples on the 18th-century aristocratic country estate of Belmont, lavishly restored to produce the grass and wildflower-fed cattle and sheep prized by Bristol chefs. In the woodland, a little posse of squat black Berkshire pigs pauses from rootling for nuts and appears, trotting jovially among the firs when called, blissfully unaware that Jan’s dealings with the superb Belmont pork tend to involve one-month, dry-aged loin steaks served with lobster XO sauce.
Fifteen minutes away, on the other side of the airport, another grand country estate hosts The Ethicurean restaurant. Converted post lockdown, like several others of the new wave, to a set-price tasting menu ‘experience’ format, it occupies the walled kitchen garden and outbuildings of Barley Wood, once owned by the Wills tobacco family. Co-owner Matthew Pennington has us taste examples of the huge range of fermented vegetables he uses, and the results of his team’s incessant search for local alternatives to imported fruit and vegetables – brine-fermented squash for passion fruit, crab apple verjus for lemon. He details the stories behind the return of products like salt marsh lamb from the banks of the Severn, goat bacon, once known in the West Country as rock venison, and Dorset-farmed Arctic char, the ethical gourmet’s salmon, killed by the ikejime Japanese humane fish slaughter method and delivered to the restaurant only when pre-ordered.
Ikejime may be in its infancy in Bristol, but fish in general is in buoyant shape. The fine 19th-century fish market closed down, frustratingly, just before the millennial food renaissance that rescued its neighbour, the historic St Nicholas Market (St Nicks boasts a nicely diverse lunchtime café scene). But fresh,
south-coast fish is available daily in new outlets like the sales counter of Mitch Tonks’ former Fishworks, nowadays known as Spiny Lobster. This includes the occasional hyper-local find, like a batch of conger eels, once commonly used in soups and pies, caught by resident fishmonger Barny Peterkin. There’s a heartening trend for serious chefs to get into traditional fish and chip shops, pioneered by Stuart Seth’s late lamented Louisiana fusion chippy Soul Fish, and followed by Josh Eggleton’s two branches of Salt & Malt.
Beside Bristol Bridge, near the old fish market, a big converted barge with panoramic windows is the latest contender. After four decades’ successful operation as the rather smart Glassboat, its chic little cocktail bar has just been replaced by a gleaming steel Dutch chip frying range, and its menu, overseen by chef Jake Platt, offers expertly cooked fresh Brixham and Newlyn seafood, from lobster, crab and mussels (done in cider) to a textbook ray beurre noir and a version of the celebrated fish soup of Stephen Markwick, for whom Platt once worked.
Needless to say, everything vegetable is big in Bristol. Six years ago, former solicitor and reformed omnivore Sue Miller spearheaded the vegan home catering revolution, delivering Tuscan ribollita soup and Thai massaman curries made from the produce of her barrister husband’s allotment, under the banner Miller Green. No longer delivering, at millergreen.co.uk they are still sharing their knowledge and recipes to encourage vegan eating online.
The new waterfront restaurant quarter of Wapping Wharf, meanwhile, has seen the birth of Bristol’s own star veg chef. Beside converted warehouses, vintage cargo ships and cranes and blocks of new flats, rows of stacked shipping containers house eating places including Root, another member of the Josh Eggleton portfolio. ‘The original idea was to reverse normal practice, with vegetables being the central element of dishes, and meat as accompaniments,’ explains head chef Rob Howell, showing me a copy of his new book Root. Today, a sparse confetti of pancetta in my Caesar salad is the only trace of meat on the menu. ‘I’ve phased out everything but the veg due to customer demand,’ he says.
Across an ornate metal footbridge over the Avon, among the redbrick terraces of Bedminster, the pro-veg movement proceeds apace. The epicentre of Bedminster’s gentrification is the massive russet cube of the old Wills Tobacco Factory, transformed 20 years ago into a theatre and restaurant complex by architect and catering entrepreneur George Ferguson, Bristol’s first elected mayor. Sitting in Tobacco Factory’s stripped down industrial café – very New York or Berlin for its time – George outlines the 100 per cent vegetarianand-local policy, ‘grown seven miles away on our farm.’
For those without farms or allotments, select greengrocers are sprouting. Bristol boy Hugo Sapsed, an escapee from the London menswear business, has just opened the second branch of Hugo’s, deploying experience acquired during a year’s apprenticeship with legendary Reg the Veg, Clifton’s veteran fine greengrocer. ‘There are so many great growers within ten miles,’ says Hugo, ‘they compete to produce the best mixed salads, up to 20 different leaves. And the great range of old apples is coming back.’
The Bristol food scene is not, of course, all single-orchard heritage apples and rare-breed faggots. An extraterrestrial food blogger on its first trip to earth might conclude the city’s
specialities were pizzas, hamburgers and something indefinable called tapas. But Bristol has always boasted fine practitioners of the great European cuisines, and there’s a new generation adding their own touches – steak tartare as starter rather than main, carbonara redefined to include cream and mushrooms – which Michel Roux Jr takes as evidence of the city’s vibrant non-conformist spirit.
Of the classic Euro-sources, only France, chief inspiration of the Markwick/Floyd generation, has declined in influence, with one notable exception: Littlefrench, the excellent bistro belonging to Freddy Bird. In compensation, the stock of splendid repurposed historic interiors, chiefly old banks, has just been augmented by an unusual new European representative. An exquisite Grade-l-listed historic friary found in the shopping centre has transmuted into Klosterhaus, a glamorous mega-canteen that outblings even the most showy of they city’s brasserie-style dining rooms and specialises in German and Mittel-European cuisine.
But Italy and Spain exert bigger influences than ever. The last of the old Fifties Berni family restaurants, Guiseppe’s, ploughs on doggedly in the wake of more authentically Italian newcomers like The Spaghetti Incident or Molto Buono, or fashionable modern Anglo-centric, like the elegant, high-ceilinged Marmo.
The old bow-tied waiters from Jerez who officiated in sherry dynasty Harveys’ restaurant in the Sixties, have been replaced by enthusiastic young tapas-serving local equivalents in places like Bravas, or Paco, or Bar 44, whose proprietors, the brothers Tom and Owen Morgan, are renewing Bristol’s historic sherry connections via energetic travel around the bodegas of Andalucía.
Bristol’s culinary input comes from far beyond Europe, as you’d expect from a great historic port. Jamaica, for example, is an important component of the cultural mix. According to Matthew Pennington, The Ethicurean’s early goat research involved sampling every curry at the annual St Pauls Carnival, and delicacies like goat curry, jerk chicken and ackee and saltfish are available at popular eating places such as Jenny Reid’s stall in St Nicks Market and Glen Crooks’ Glen’s Kitchen in St Pauls, the latter run by a one-time performer at legendary St Pauls reggae club The Bamboo Club.
Then there’s China: the Cantonese food legacy of Bristol’s old guard, families such as the Wongs, Hos and Lis who arrived in the Seventies from the villages around Hong Kong and Guangzhou, continues, represented notably by the Mayflower, late-night, afterwork favourite of the city’s chefs. It’s been supplemented by a new wave, catering to the city’s recent influx of 5,000 Chinese students with pan-Asian dishes attuned to their tastes. Navigating suavely through this scene is MasterChef finalist Larkin Cen; the son of a Hong Kong family who ran a takeaway in Cardiff, he gave up work as a solicitor to start the flourishing Woky Ko mini chain of quality pan-Asian diners, developing dishes like his fusion of Japanese ramen with Sichuan pork ragout.
More hermetic, so far, has been the food of Bristol’s big Somali population, often supplied by female cooks both amateur and professional, such as Halima Aisha, a former cookery teacher from Mogadishu, who now runs the kitchen in Waamo café in Easton. Here, men play pool in the back room while Halima’s hillib iyo bariis, goat or mutton in a spicy okra sauce, is consumed in the Fifties diner decor. But Somali food is crossing over to the pop-up circuit, via young cooks such as Fozia Ahmed and Iman Salati. Iman’s tweaked bariis iyo hillib (rice and meat), in the form of arancini-like globes, can puzzle Somali customers. ‘I sometimes get asked where the rice is,’ smiles Iman. A restaurant is in her sights, and Somali fusion could easily be the next big thing. When bariis iyo hillib croquettes with designer cider pairing is all over Aldi, remember where you heard it first.
‘There are so many great growers within ten miles. They compete to produce the best mixed salads, up to 20 different leaves. And the great range of old apples is coming back’