Mugshot – restaurant review

Meeting the owner of a restaurant, as a customer, is usually reserved for moments of absolute disaster, where they are hastily summoned from a dusty back office somewhere upstairs to deal with something major. Not so at new steak and pizza restaurant Mugshot on St Nicholas Street, where Brummie co-owner Adam Bryan is front of house in a three-piece suit politely welcoming every guest with a smile.

Adam seamlessly strikes up conversation with each table in turn, casually taking a seat in their booth, and turns out to be an electrician and first-time restaurant owner with endless enthusiasm for steaks, emerald velvet and the 120-year-old solid walnut chairs he’s sourced for his new restaurant.

He regales stories of designing the large sepia-tinted menus himself, researching the history of the building with his historian dad and discovering photos of it and its next door neighbour roofless after the bombing raids that levelled Castle Park, and of being born in the wrong era. “Though I’m not sure how the beard would have gone down in the 1920s,” Adam admits, “nor the tattoos.”

The 1920s-themed interior of Mugshot is done to an impeccable standard

The decor makes for a welcome change from the identikit white interiors filled with plants that so many of Bristol’s recent new openings plump for: here deep wood panelling meets bright white plaster cornicing and two sparkling chandeliers spill from the red-painted ceiling in the upstairs dining room. Downstairs is dark and moody with the highest quality fixtures and fittings.

Gramophone-fuzzy music plays over the speakers and the air is smoky with the smell of steaks sizzling on volcanic hot stones that are brought to the table to cook your own meat on, the various cuts brought in fresh from Ruby & White Butchers on Whiteladies Road.

Pizzas start from £9.50 and include several vegetarian options, but this really is a restaurant for carnivores. Choose from sirloin, fillet or rib eye if you’re on your own (from £22) or groups can share a hunk of porterhouse or chateaubriand (from £68).

Steaks are served on hot stones, allowing you to cook your meat to your tastes at the table

Shortly after the bartender knocks up a Diamond Spritz (£7.50), chosen from a small cocktail menu decorated with vintage mugshots where the criminals, including Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, are impeccably dressed in trilbies and suits, the steak arrives sizzling. The triple-cooked chips are hot and fat and succulent and a side salad of rocket is smothered in parmesan.

The steak comes with your choice of butters and sauces to cook it in, which pleasingly slot into the wooden board. The garlic and honey butters are rich with intense flavours, though the beef dripping is rather overwhelmingly salty. However, it’s lots of fun to be cooking hunks of meat on the table, smothering it in sauce and butter and dragging the chips through the residual smoky fat.

“Don’t be shy with the butter, get a big knob on there,” says Adam with a wholesome laugh as he passes the table.

The steak itself is lean and well-marbled with fat, cooking up beautifully as the butters melt into it, and a side dish of seasonal vegetables (£3.50) is well cooked and adds some welcome greenery to a very protein-heavy meal.

Mugshot is a happy little vintage escape from the busy modern world (minus the charging points under every booth and the offer of a lead if you need to charge your phone up so you can spam Instagram with interior shots). When the bill arrives it comes with an old fashioned mint humbug to finish off the meal: no detail too small for a restaurant that delicately strikes the balance between a fun theme and a serious love of food.

Mugshot
15 St Nicholas Street, Bristol, BS1 1UB
www.facebook.com/mugshotbristol