Restaurants / Reviews
Pigsty – restaurant review
The original sausage machine that was the beginning of the story of three brothers creating their own food business sits deconstructed within a wooden cabinet at Pigsty.
Olly, Max and Josh Kohn have come a long way since former Wales rugby international Olly’s sausage making days on his kitchen table at home while recuperating from injury.
The Jolly Hog sausages and bacon are now stocked in Sainsbury’s and Ocado, and served as part of a booming events business which sees their products available at locations including Olly’s former club Harlequins, The Oval cricket ground and Glastonbury festival.
is needed now More than ever
Pig Sty is the brothers’ first bricks and mortar premises – although that’s not strictly true as this latest opening within Cargo at Wapping Wharf fits within three converted shipping containers.
Takeaway options were proving more popular than eating in on Friday morning, many new customers ordering sandwiches and coffee through a small hatch including the ‘triple threat’ sourdough sarnie of bacon, sausage and egg for £7.
Occupying the corner unit nearest to the Floating Harbour on the ground floor of Cargo, Pig Sty’s breakfast options are in direct competition to Brunel’s Buttery which was doing its usual roaring trade just a few hundred yards away.
The bacon here is a little crispier than at Brunel’s and the sausage more substantial – together creating a winning breakfast that to steal a well-known advertising phrase will keep hunger locked up until lunch. A ‘morning glory’ of bacon or sausage sandwich with filter coffee from Clifton Coffee costs £6.
Bottles of brown sauce and ketchup from Stokes (be sure also to try their sachets of a zingy bloody Mary sauce) sit next to bottles of St Werburgh’s brewed beer Wiper & True on glass shelves above a restaurant painted racing green, with small mirrors adding the illusion of a little more space.
The restaurant’s suppliers are handwritten in a corner of one wall, divided into ‘our pork’ and ‘our chums’, with one of those chums paying a visit on Friday morning with a sack of his brioche buns.
It’s a morning until evening operation here, with packs of The Jolly Hog sausage and bacon also available to buy for cooking at home.
‘Breakfast in bread’ (£9) consists of sausage, egg, bacon, cheese and tomatoes; while lunch and dinner options include ‘porky treats’ such as scotch eggs and sausage rolls, and larger meals such as the ‘pig mac’ (£8), seasoned pork patty, slow roast barbecue pulled pork, cheese and ‘baconaise’ in a brioche bun.
For particularly big eaters (or rugby players), try the pig board for £30 – a little bit of the entire menu.
From making sausages by hand on a kitchen table, to supplying supermarkets and now opening their first restaurant, it’s been quite a journey for the Kohn brothers, and Pig Sty could be the start of many more pork-based adventures.
Pigsty, Cargo, Wapping Wharf, Bristol, BS1 6WP
0117 929 7700
Read more: Corks open third Bristol store – and first bar
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