Restaurants / Reviews
L’Osteria – restaurant review
A large, open kitchen at L’Osteria in Quakers Friars allows a glimpse into how the pizzas here are created, with boxes of colourful ingredients lined up the other side of a glass partition.
A chef playfully threw some flour towards my two young daughters as they pressed their noses against the glass, spellbound by this culinary alchemy unfolding in front of their eyes.
And then it was their turn to play with the ingredients, as they were both invited to make their own creations in a delightfully unexpected surprise while we waited for our pizza.
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Watched over by our waitress and a couple of chefs, they were taught to press down the dough into something resembling an oval before adding their own ingredients – ham, cheese and sweetcorn.
Whether this is a regular occurrence, or took place because it was a quiet night soon after opening, this experience certainly beat the usual colouring in with blunt crayons for young diners.
It was even enough to forgive our waitress for forgetting our salad order, bringing two Appletizers rather than one, and a pint of Bavarian wheat beer Erdinger Urweisse instead of the requested half .
L’Osteria is an Italian restaurant founded in Germany that has arrived in the UK via Austria and Switzerland. They have chosen Quakers Friars in Bristol as their first first opening in the UK, following more than 60 restaurants across Europe, with their second due to open in Southampton later this year.
Keeping up at the back?
They even have their own song:
Bristol’s L’Osteria takes up four units within Quakers Friars built originally as shops but which now can seat 200 people inside, with a terrace outside and a private function room upstairs.
It has opened somewhat marooned in this corner, but will soon have a Cote opening next door and the first Department of Coffee and Social Affairs outside London opening opposite on the small lane that leads to Broadmead.
While our two daughters tucked into their own handmade pizzas, my wife and I enjoyed one of L’Osteria’s signature 45cm pizzas – margherita on one side and seafood on the other.
Other menu options include pasta and salads, with L’Osteria making it known that they source as many ingredients as possible from Italy.
Our pizza was so big it needed its own paper placemat underneath. Cooked with a very thin base, it was well seasoned and was perfectly good – pizza done the traditional way; but a world away from the likes of Flour & Ash, Bartha’s and Pi Shop currently leading the pizza revolution in Bristol.
Eating out as a family, however, is much more than just about the food and as five- and two-year-old trainee pizza chefs ate their own unique creations, L’Osteria was rightly praised.
L’Osteria, Quakers Friars, Cabot Circus, Bristol, BS1 3BU
0117 440 7140
www.losteria.co.uk/restaurant/bristol/
Read more: Bertha’s Pizza – restaurant review