Restaurants / Reviews
Bosco, Clifton Village – restaurant review
Grab a seat at the bar at Bosco, sit on the tall wooden seats and watch the magic happen in front of your eyes.
I could almost reach out and touch the chef as he pummeled and stretched the dough and then artfully placed the ingredients – including cured pig’s cheek and slow-cooked tomato sauce for the amatriciana pizza (£11).
Nearby was the glow from the wood-fired oven that the chef was stoking when not talking about house refurbishments with an American customer also at the bar.
is needed now More than ever
Soon my pizza was cooking inside the oven and after barely two minutes it was out again, steaming as black pepper and thin slices of fior di latte mozzarella were deftly added to it.
And what a pizza, the cured pig’s cheek the undoubted highlight: sweet, fine strips of meat that lifted the pizza from great to excellent. An example if there ever was one in the use of top quality ingredients.
With a slightly blistered and chewy sourdough crust, the Napolitan-style pizzas here are inspired by those that owners Miles and Charly Johnson encountered on their travels to New York and San Francisco.
This Clifton Village restaurant is the second Bosco in Bristol, arriving just over two years after the original Bosco on Whiteladies Road – with more potentially to follow in Bath and Plymouth, with the Johnsons now free to concentrate solely on this buisiness after recently selling the Kensington Arms in Redland.
In what used to be the student favourite Pizza Provencale, it’s a long and thin room – with the pizza oven and prep area on the right as you walk in, and a larger open kitchen on the left opposite a selection of cured meats hanging from hooks, preparing the likes of small plates of meatballs and Italian sausage, salads, pasta and fish dishes.
More seating is available at the far end of the restaurant, underneath shelves packed with wine bottles.
Pizzas ranging in price from £9 to £13 are either rosso or bianco (with no tomato), from the Bosco, with mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil; to the Bosco carne with the addition of veal meatballs, coppa and prosciutto.
Sit back and watch the pizza magic at Bosco, which on this form and ambition won’t be a solely Bristol restaurant for much longer.
Bosco, 29 Regent Street, Clifton Village, Bristol, BS8 4HR
0117 9092 770
www.boscopizzeria.co.uk/clifton-village
Read more: Your Bristol Favourites: Pizza