Restaurants / Reviews
Molto Buono – restaurant review
Many new restaurants and bars opening in Bristol these days tend to do so with significant fanfare. Previews, pre-launches, opening parties, their own Instagram hashtag and more ‘influencers’ than you can shake a selfie stick at.
So it’s refreshing that a new Italian restaurant has opened quietly on Park Street with little fuss and is already giving diners a genuinely fantastic experience without the need for over excitable chatter on social media.
Molto Buono is very much a family affair, with three members of the same family working on a recent Friday evening: dad front of house, daughter waitressing and son in the kitchen.
is needed now More than ever
An ortolana pizza (£8.50) – mozzarella, grilled Tuscan artichokes, courgettes, peppers and aubergines
The restaurant now occupies what was most recently the wonderfully eclectic shop Love From Random and before that a Christian bookshop.
Downstairs is the bar and open kitchen while upstairs a second dining room has a ceiling bedecked in fairy lights and dripping with greenery.
Our drinks orders were muddled up and half of the table’s food order not taken. But that is half of the fun in a place like this as it is finding its feet.
Molto Buono’s upstairs dining room
Pizzas here are made with a dough recipe said to have passed down through the generations, Fior Di Latte cheese and are either rossa or blanca, with or without tomatoes.
A diavola (£8.50, with tomatoes, mozzarella, and salami from Naples and Emilia Romagna) came piping hot out of the oven, the cheese still bubbling. Beyond the crispy crust, the thinly-cut salami was delightfully smokey.
At £6.50, the traditional margherita with basil and a drizzle of olive oil is great value – even better when it’s part of the £6 children’s menu alongside a soft drink and a dessert which for two young sisters on Friday evening was a Kinder egg.
The deliciously decadent profiteroles (£5)
From the pasta selection, the pesto (£6.90, with pine nuts, garlic, basil and olive oil) was simple but effective and eaten by seven-year-old Mersina with barely a pause for breath.
While Mersina and her sister Lois enjoyed their Kinder eggs, the profiteroles (£5) filled with chocolate and pistachio cream were a deliciously decadent way to end the meal.
Molto Buono is exactly the type of Italian restaurant you want in your neighbourhood. It just happens to have opened without much fuss in the middle of Bristol.
Molto Buono, 59 Park Street, Bristol, BS1 5NU
Read more:
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
