Restaurants / Food and drink
Edit – restaurant review
As the bassy background soundtrack pulls you in, it soon becomes clear that Edit, a unique new audiophile restaurant On Cheltenham Road, a concept inspired by the Tokyo food and culture scene and brought to Bristol by Just Jack’s Dan Wild and his wife Rhiannon, will soon become a popular hideaway.
“We’re here to create an eclectic experience for both DJ and diner,” the waiter explains as he leads us through the restaurant, pointing out the ridiculously impressive sound system that has been installed.
In each corner sits a speaker and nine more cube-shaped speakers hang from the ceiling as part of a Klipsch heritage sound system. Edit – in what was most recently Amici – is certainly ready to shake things up in the Bristol food and drink scene, adding yet another dimension to the city’s huge variety of dining experiences.
is needed now More than ever
The Bladerunner soundtrack (the theme for the night) seems to control the whole experience: reaching a powerful crescendo as we are welcomed into Edit’s alternative world and gradually quietening as we finally turn our attention to ordering.
The menu of Asian-inspired tapas is varied. Our waiter advises us to order a mixture of meat and vegetable small plates, which include fried tiger prawns (£2.50), edamame and truffle dumplings (£5.75) and a noodle salad (£5.25). Each dish is well priced, but you’d be sure to rack up quite a bill if you really wanted to fill your boots.

Small plates of Asian-inspired food are on offer at Edit
The drinks menu matches the food, with an extensive list of wines, cocktails and locally-sourced spirits and beers. Turning the page, you’ll find even more liquid infusions (cue soundtrack crescendo bouncing off the thick stone walls) including Japanese rice beers known as Akashi-Tai Sake.
Confronted by the choice, a bottle of bog standard red is ordered, delicious all the same, just perhaps not quite as adventurous as the peach and banana flavours of the Junmai Daiginijo rice beer.
As the tiny dishes arrive at the tables around us, it’s clear that on a Wednesday night, the environment Edit creates thrives more on intimacy and lowered voices as opposed to long tables of loud chatter – with the steady flow of people enough to make you feel you’re a part of something special.
Anyway, the chance of being heard disappears with the reverberation of symbols and percussion crashing against the ceilings and walls as the food arrives.
The fried tiger prawns (£2.50) are soaked in delicious wasabi mayonnaise, while the crisp calamari with mango chilli sauce (£5.50) goes hand in hand with the delicate flavours of the warm noodle salad with mushrooms and peanuts (£5.25).
However, as a bite is taken out of the steamed lamb dumpling (£5.50), the music switches track, and the jarring momentary silence is coupled with disappointment, as the tough and bland pastry overpowers the taste of the filling inside. Equally, the crosnes (Chinese artichoke) served with butter and coriander (£4.50) lacked flavour and didn’t add much to the Asian taste experience.
Edit is there to appeal to all the senses, and although the taste experience might not necessarily leave you hanging over the back of your chair with your stomach stuffed full, the audio, visual and alternative nature of the experience fills those gaps.
As if to prove the point, when we get up to leave – thanking co-owner Dan who leans against his impressive DJ decks – the final crescendo of the soundtrack carries us out onto the cold street and back to reality.

This photo and top photo by Stuart Smith
Edit, 239 Cheltenham Road, Bristol, BS6 5QP
www.editbristol.com