News / Restaurants
‘The city, after London, that excites me the most to eat in is Bristol’
Pasture, the Lido, Box-E and Root all get namechecks in Saturday’s Guardian as its restaurant reviewer Grace Dent becomes the latest national critic to fall for Bristol’s charms.
“Six months into my tenure as your restaurant correspondent, I have decided that the city, after London, that excites me the most to eat in is Bristol,” Dent writes in her review of Pasture on Portwall Lane.
“Yes, it’s a surprise to me, too. Bristol is remarkably self-effacing about its greatness. It’s almost as if it saw what happened to Brighton in the 1990s, when everyone with a fine arts degree, a will to procreate and a dream of making artisan candles was priced out of Westbourne Grove.
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“It suits Bristol, perhaps, that the last time many British people remembered it was 2011, when Tricky loomed mysteriously on stage with Beyoncé at Glastonbury like a man kicked out of a lock-in returning to demand one last drink, then vanished again like a trip-hop Mr Benn.
“Maybe Bristol won’t thank me for telling you of restaurants such as Sam Elliot’s Pasture. Or for mentioning the lovely Lido, with its pool-side bistro. Or the 12-seater gem Box-E. Or the veggie-centric small plates at Root. Or any projects to which Josh Eggleton turns his hand.”
Inside Root at Cargo 1 in Wapping Wharf
Dent, who was in Bristol last month to host a special edition of The Food Programme on Radio 4 during the Food Connections festival, wrote that Pasture owner and head chef Elliot “combines brilliant local produce, lovely, knowledgeable, chirpy staff and a reckless approach to pushing culinary boundaries”.
On the panel for the debate recorded at City Hall was Tim Hayward of the Financial Times, who in 2017 praised Bristol for being “the city with arguably the best food scene in the UK”.
Hayward recently joined Bristol24/7 Editor Martin Booth, Crumbs editor Jess Carter, television food series producer Andy Clarke and blogger Natalie Brereton for Bristol’s inaugural Too Many Critics, where food writers swapped their pens for pans to cook a four-course Mediterranean-inspired meal raising money for Action Against Hunger.
The Too Many Critics Bristol team – from left to right: Steve Ashworth, Andy Clarke, Jess Carter, Natalie Brereton, Tim Hayward and Martin Booth. Photo by Kirstie Young
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