Restaurants / Park Street
The Florist – restaurant review
While Goldbrick House’s gold-and-purple exterior gave little away, its successor The Florist is far more expressive. From the extravagant window display dripping with wisteria to the gilt lilies on the handle of the pastel blue front door, intricately carved with flower motifs, the floral theme is pervading.
Roses climb the ceiling as you ascend the stairs to the first floor dining room, where further greenery drips from the windows over a dozen tables and the air smells like fresh flowers. Above the chintzy fabrics of the upholstered chairs, the walls are decorated with huge hand-painted bouquets of roses on whitewashed brick.
The industrial touches continue with copper-backed menus, carefully rusted lampshades and polished metal-topped tables at this lavish new opening on Park Street from the New World Trading Company.
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Decoration in the first floor dining room
The large ground floor bar is supplemented by a second on the upper level, which is just as well as the cocktail menu is extensive, running to 17 pages through gin-based, classics and contemporary twists, starting from £7.25. Mocktails are also on offer, including the refreshing Juniper Garden (£5.50), which comes garnished with a huge fragrant sprig of rosemary and is a balanced blend of lemon, elderflower, juniper and vanilla, the sweetness just edging out the sharp.
The food menu also runs to many pages, and, somewhat strangely in such a manicured setting, never settles on a coherent theme. The offerings encompass build-your-own deli boards (£11.50) with options ranging from Italian prosciutto to Lancashire hot-pot, Asian-inspired starters of curried mussels in a coconut sauce (£7.50) or vegetable ramen (£4.95), mains including rump steak (£16.95) as well as burgers and kebabs from the rotisserie grill.
With some difficulty, I selected grilled sea bass with a raw pad Thai salad with satay sauce (£14.95), plus a side of kale and tender stem broccoli with chilli and sesame (£3.50).
An Instragram-worthy plate of food
On this recent weekday lunchtime, the restaurant began to fill up exclusively with well-heeled female diners ‘doing lunch’ and taking photographs of their surroundings for Instagram.
Despite being open for only a matter of days, thousands of photographs of the interior have already been tagged across social media, no doubt helped by a weekend-long opening shindig which saw dozens of ‘influencers’ invited to join in the celebrations and create that much-desired buzz.
Both dishes arrived fast, brought in by the very attentive waitress who even had a floral cover on her iPad when taking the order. The skin of the fish was crisp, the grilled lime adding a nice smoky sharpness to the dish.
However, the fish had been rubbed with so much salt that it hugely overpowered the delicate taste of the sea bass, and though the flesh flaked away, perfectly cooked, the salty taste pervaded and required gulps of mocktail to wash it down. The satay sauce was positively anaemic, but added a pleasant sweetness when it mingled with the lime and mint of the salad.
The dish’s saving grace was the raw salad – clean and sharp and vinegary, with crunchy textures from the carrot and edamame beans. It would be perfect except for the halved peanuts that had been chucked in, seemingly straight from a packets of salted nuts.
The side of kale and broccoli was almost inedible; the sweet slices of chilli that offered barely-there heat could do nothing against unpleasantly briny undertones.
The second floor restaurant offers far-reaching views and is also exquisitely decorated
It was a great shame for the food to have let down the whole experience, as the team behind The Florist have clearly put enormous amounts of time, effort and money into making the place look incredible. As a night-time spot for a cocktail and a catchup, especially on the second floor where high windows pour light over the stripped wooden floors and beams that drip with flowers, it’s surely unbeatable.
But in the same way that artificial flowers are the poor cousin of the real thing, The Florist can’t compete with Bristol’s big hitters in the restaurant scene just yet.
The Florist, 69 Park Street, Bristol, BS1 5PB
0117 203 4284
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