People / My Bristol Favourites
My Bristol Favourites: Alex Hayes
Alex Hayes is the award-winning chef behind Squeezed in Wapping Wharf.
He is also one of the panellists in the new EatDrink24/7 guide, Bristol’s only independent guide to the best places to eat and drink across our city.
EatDrink24/7 will be distributed from Friday across Bristol
These are Alex’s top-five Bristol favourites:
is needed now More than ever
Fed
Inside Fed’s larger cafe on Gloucester Road – photo: Martin Booth
“Like a well-trained Beagle sniffing out airport narcotics, Fed have a fine-tuned ability to find flavour and incorporate it in everything they do. It flows through their production with ease, from their tormentingly good toasties to the tiers of tiramisu cake. Their attention to detail is razor sharp and they don’t let so much as a salad leaf slip through the net at their cafes on Gloucester Road, off Cotham Hill and Fishponds Road. It’s intoxicatingly excellent and I’m addicted.”
Cotto
Cotto took over what was previously La Sorella – photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour
“Cotto is a simple concept: Wine by the glass and unfussy plates using simple ingredients. Yet this means that there’s nowhere to hide inside the stripped back and relaxed eatery on St Stephen’s Street by the well accomplished Bianchis Group. And accomplished it is as every dish shows how good ingredients and smart cookery can make a plate of food sing, no matter how humble. All this is paired with wine at model temperature and personable service. There are simply no boxes left unticked.”
Anna Cake Couture
A box of cookies from Anna Cake Couture makes Alex Hayes “uncontrollably happy” – photo: Anna Cake Couture
“I ask myself if the cookies by Anna in Clifton Village weren’t cookies, what would they be? They’d be juggernauts on acid; a haymaker punch swung to a Pantera riff. They are colossal, two finger thick wedges of absolute baked perfection and it makes me uncontrollably happy to see four of them muscling shoulder to shoulder in those clean white boxes.”
El Colmado
El Colmado has moved only a few hundred yards up Gloucester Road from its original premises – photo: Hope Talbot
“Food, void of good service, can leave a strange taste in the mouth. They should be of paramount importance, and nothing exemplifies this more than El Colmado on Gloucester Road. Not only is David’s store a well brimming with outstanding and carefully selected produce, but his knowledge and warmth of service shine as hard as the Catalonian sun.”
Fat Rice
Fat Rice serve Malaysian comfort food at street food markets and pop-ups – photo: Fat Rice
“If you are happy to be queuing in a torrential downpour waiting for that sensationally spiced pork from Fat Rice to be ladled over the, well, fat rice, then you know you’re on to a good thing. Delicious food. I’d happily wade through a river to get to it.”
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Read next:
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