Rice & Things – restaurant review

It’s the little restaurant in Stokes Croft that makes the biggest impression: Bristol just wouldn’t be the same without a cloud of blue smoke blowing over the traffic waiting on the corner of Cheltenham Road and Ashley Road. Time it just right and the smell of Rice & Things’ rickety metal barrel barbecue smoking away on the pavement outside is guaranteed make you salivate on your way home.

Give in to the craving and you’ll find a compact dining room, set up for both take away customers and those who would like to eat in, decked out in a tasteful green colour scheme without gimmicks – just a Jamaican flag proudly flying above the door to the kitchen.

The menu is extensive, and, as you’d hope, covers all the classics. Mains, which start from £7 to take away or £10 to eat in, include curry goat, fried chicken and jerk chicken, alongside curry tripe and beans, oxtail, cow foot and brown stew fish. They come served with one of your choice of white rice, rice and peas, festivals or dumplings, plus you can order extra dumplings, festivals and plantain on the side for just 50p. There’s even sweet potato pudding and Jamaican fruit cake (£3.50) for afters, if you can find any room.

You can eat in or take away at Rice & Things

I opted for a small portion of ackee and saltfish with rice and peas (£7), and after a short wait on the comfortable padded seats, browsing the impressive flyer collection, my number was called and my food ready. Stomach rumbling in anticipation, I headed outside to find a wall to perch on to eat my meal, sidestepping chef as he poured water into the hot barbecue with a hiss, smoke billowing around him.

Opening my takeaway carton, I found a very healthy portion of vibrantly-coloured food that was steaming hot and smelled like paradise. The rice and peas were fragrant and well-seasoned, with a gentle spicy kick. Kidney beans nestling in the mix had soaked up all the flavours, and added a satisfying bit of substance to every second mouthful.

As for the ackee and saltfish, everything popped – from the flashes of red amongst the flesh of the yellow ackee fruit, to the salty taste of the fish that was extremely well-balanced and stayed strong but avoided being overpowering. The texture of the ackee was perfect – almost a meaty feel that wasn’t too soft or floppy, but kept some bite. Mixing the elements of the dish together, it was sweet, salty and spicy in alternating heaped forkfuls, and it was thoroughly disappointing to scrape up the final grain of rice and realise it was all over.

Ackee and saltfish with rice and peas

As Bristol’s food scene burgeons and the city become home to more restaurants that all seem to be shopping from the same catalogue, it’s a blessed breath of fresh air to step into somewhere that isn’t pretentious. At Rice & Things, there are no glossy posters of turquoise seas, no palm tree motifs or tin roofs to pretend you’re in a beachside rum shack rather than an urban jungle – crimes against décor that Turtle Bay, who took over the city’s much missed fellow Caribbean joint, Plantation, are guilty of.

The team in the kitchen haven’t even jumped on the health food bandwagon or the vegan trend: they are just cooking the same Jamaican food that they always have, piling it up on the plate with a smile and keeping the prices down to a level that makes it affordable for a huge swathe of the city. No wonder the customers keep following their nose and flocking to their door for another full plate.

Rice & Things
120 Cheltenham Road
BS6 5RW
0117 924 4832
www.riceandthings.co.uk