Restaurants / Reviews
Turtle Bay, Cheltenham Rd – restaurant review
Turtle Bay on Cheltenham Road had a lot to live up to. My only experience of Caribbean food has been the magnificent feasts cooked up by my lovely neighbour Marcia; could a restaurant even come close to her salt fish ackee, fried chicken, goat curry and to-die-for rice and beans?
This is the second Turtle Bay to open in Bristol with the Broad Quay restaurant rapidly becoming the place to go for jugs of after-work cocktails.
The new restaurant in the former Plantation is a little smaller but has just the same amount of pizazz. Step inside and leave behind the wet Bristol summer and be transported to the Caribbean.
is needed now More than ever
The interior designer has gone mad with every pastiche of Jamaica you could imagine; it’s a cross between a shebeen and beachside all-inclusive bar. Even the barber’s pole outside is in the colours of the Jamaican flag.
The staff didn’t seem to realise they are working in a Bristol restaurant on a recent Monday lunchtime; fun, friendly, perhaps even slightly over-the-top, they genuinely seemed to care if I liked my one-pot curried shrimp and mango curry.
Served with rice and peas in a pyrex dish (this is no high cuisine) the curry was crammed with shrimp and mango topped with a succulent king prawn and crunchy coconut.
At the first mouthful I thought the dish was going to be too hot but actually the heat was perfectly judged. I mopped up the sauce with a couple of squares of flaccid flatbread which seemed a bit of an afterthought to the dish but came in handy all the same.
There was a range of lunchtime specials for £7 and my curry was great value at just under a tenner. Turtle Bay may have cornered the cocktail market but its food is just as flamboyant and fun. Marcia’s home cooked Jamaican specialities win every time but Turtle Bay is most definitely a taste of the Caribbean.
221-223 Cheltenham Road, BS1 4DA
0117 923 2953
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