Chai Shai – restaurant review

Here’s something bound to cause an almighty argument: what would you choose as your last meal on earth, if the options could only come from Bristol?

Let’s open out the parameters a bit: you can have breakfast, lunch and dinner, with time for elevensies and maybe a mid-afternoon snack as well.

My tuppence worth would be a coffee in Full Court Press on Broad Street, accompanied of course by a pastry from Hart’s Bakery. My wife Jo and I had our wedding reception here so for my last day on earth it would be wonderful to bring back those happy memories, as well as visiting a cafe that I have visited every week since it opened.

Elevensies must be a cake from Ahh Toots in nearby St Nick’s Market (where we got our wedding cake from which I managed to forget to take to the reception, but that’s another story). Lunch will involve a cycle out to The Ethicurean for a meal rooted in whatever season my last day on earth will fall in, with produce from one of the most beautiful parts of our corner of the world.

If the day solely involves eating and drinking, it will most certainly also mean an evening trip to the pub for one last drink of the finest tipples from local breweries including Milk Stout from Bristol Beer Factory – a beer which when I arrived in Bristol in the early noughties was the drink that first introduced me to the world of real ale.

But this will be after a trip to Chai Shai where for the last few years I have visited without fail every Tuesday evening with a tiffin, a half of whatever new beer is on cask or keg in the Bag of Nails almost next door, and a copy of The New Yorker magazine.

We all have our favourite Indian restaurants but nowhere is better than Chai Shai, opened at the beginning of 2014 by Faruk and Shilpi Choudhury, who were then the lord mayor and lady mayoress of Bristol.

As I have made my weekly visit to this restaurant tucked away at the bottom of Jacob’s Wells Road, I have watched it develop: Shilpi’s menu has evolved to both reflect and challenge customers’ tastes, there is now more space downstairs for diners with the counter pushed back but still meaning that the small open kitchen is on display, and extra space for diners has been created upstairs meaning that hungry customers don’t have to be turned away at busy times.

Chai Shai has all the qualities that make it Bristol’s best Indian restaurant. And it’s possible to be fed extraordinarily well on their sides alone. I know one person who will cross the city just so she can taste their peshawari naan (£2.95), filled with almonds, golden sultanas, pistachios, coconut and warm spices.

Time a visit here right and you can see the poppadoms (75p each) being made in the kitchen, piled up one on top of each other and at their best eaten straight off the hot plate with a selection of homemade chutneys – the firey orange one tempered by the milder white one, made all the more marvellous by dipping in a selection of samosas (£2.60) or pakoras (£2.10), the best I have eaten anywhere apart from my friend Kamalpreet’s Gujarati grandmother.

And if you have any room left after that, the curry that I recommend to everyone here is the saag gosht (£9.40), the mutton most definitely not masquerading as lamb but the star of the show; with a seasonal mixed sabji (£8.40) the vegetarian choice; and both best accompanied by a delicious dhal.

So that’s my very last dinner sorted then, collected in a tiffin from this small, wonderful family-run restaurant tucked away in the shadow of Brandon Hill.

Chai Shai, 4 Jacob’s Wells Road, Hotwells, BS8 1EA
0117 925 0754

Read more: My Bristol Favourites: Shilpi Choudhury