[Company Logo Image] 

Home Committee Jobs Description Members Events Photo Album Sponsorship Feedback Search

Restaurants
                                                                                                                                 

 

Useful Links Banks Travel E-Market Restaurants

 

[Under Construction]

 Home
Up
Italian Restaurants
Mexican Restaurants
Indian Restaurants
English Restaurants
Chinese Restaurants

Bristol has more restaurants per capita than London. There's no denying it, we love eating out. Whilst there are still plenty of restaurants that I've to visit, here are the highlights:

Juniper
A lovely restaurant on Cotham Brow that serves food without any theme other than it is simply delicious. The portions are neither generous nor meagre. The food is high on taste and fresh ingredients, used in inventive combinations. The menu is always changing, so I can't recommend. It's all good. Simply divine. Cost without drink, about £15/head for two courses.

Glasnost
If this gem wasn't hidden away in Totterdown, it would have a waiting list longer than the current 1-2 week one. Booking is absolutely necessary. You'll be rewarded by a cosy atmosphere and good, hearty food with huge amounts of veggies to share. Main courses are better than the fairly good starters. Around £18/head for two courses. They have a mailing list (for their monthly menu) and offer 10% off on certain days if you return.

A Cozinhas
Friendly Portugese family affair in Kingsdown. Fantastic atmosphere. Visit it for the house speciality - a spectacular cauldron of seafood and meat for two. Enough said. Around £18/head for two courses.

The Balti Hut
Reliably good Indian restaurant in the vault of a town house off the top of Park Street. Very friendly service. Starters, main course and tips always manage to skim under £10. Will usually have a table for two available, but book if there are more.

Anthem
A warren of little rooms on St Michael's Hill. A 'feel-good' eaterie serving good food with plenty of choice for the discerning vegetarian. Around £15/head

Las Iguanas
Very unpredictable depending on the cook and staff, but when it's good it's really good. Go weekday to avoid the Whiteladies Road crush. And check out the early-evening deals (£5 for one course, £6 for two, £7 for three). Duck fajitas are great and unusual.

Renatos
I don't know about the restaurant (also on King Street), but the taverna opposite does the best garlic bread I have ever eaten and serves until it closes (around 2pm). Closed August. Around £2.50 for a 10" garlic bread.

Aqua
Not particularly exciting food, but generous proportions and reasonable quality. The starters are particularly good. This restaurant gets points for catering for all tastes, making it good for 'work dos'. Around £12/head if you order before 7pm from a selected menu. Service is very reluctant. Wheelchair accessible.

La Tasca

La Tasca is a blend of everything good about Spain – taking the best of Spanish style, cuisine and hospitality to give you and your party a real taste of Spain. Above all, La Tasca is about Tapas.

Here at La Tasca in the heart of Bristol, we have seating for 270 on two floors, with a buffet menu and exclusive use of a fully serviced bar.

Groups: Stag and Hen groups welcome. We can normally accommodate any size of party from 8-80, subject to availability – we will do our best to accommodate you.

Prices: Party menu from £13.50 per person. No deposit required on booking.

Rules of Engagement: Have fun, but respect the other diners in the restaurant. No strippers allowed. Some restrictions on fancy dress – call to confirmation

Markwicks yum yum yum yum yum
Yum yum! Every meal we've had here has been absolutely fantastic. It might cost you a little bit more than its rivals (although sticking to the set-menu will help), but the expense is well worth it in our opinion.

Harveys yum yum yum yum yum
Absolutely amazing food, service & interior. Faultless. A fantastic foodie experience. Unfortunately a special offer like the last one (which brought the price down from astronomical levels to a very reasonable 30 pounds per head) is the only way we'd consider going there again.

Sukoshi yum yum yum yum
At last, GOOD sushi in Bristol! (Sorry, Budokan, you lose a star). Sukoshi's big and chunky pieces are far superior to Budokan's (which appear to have been picked up from a Tesco or M&S chill cabinet). Unfortunately, like Budokan, there still isn't all that much variety on offer. We had a couple of mixed plates of sushi and one of tempura, plus miso soup and green tea for 12 pounds each (once some confusion over our bill was worked out); excellent food and excellent value. Sukoshi also describes itself as a champagne bar. If you can afford it. The decor, with water trickling down the wall and behind the bar, is quite entertaining too (although you have to wonder whether it'll go green and slimy after a while).

Wagamamma yum yum yum yum  The restaurant Budokan cloned finally arrives in Bristol, and very good it is too: delicious soups, tasty fried rice/noodle dishes, and a selection of interesting starters. The main courses are cheaper than Budokan, although maybe the portions aren't as big. A great place for a quick feed.

Sawadee Thai Restaurant yum yum yum yum
This new restaurant follows the pan-Asian formula pioneered by Teohs, with the menu featuring Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Laosean, Vietnamese, Korean, Singaporean, Indonesian and Burmese dishes for a flat rate of £5.99. What's more, the food is even better than Teohs (although we'll have to wait and see whether it stays that way; new Asian places seem to have a habit of going downhill after a few months).

Ying's Thai Takeaway yum yum yum
An ordinary looking takeaway on Gloucester Road, but with plenty of seating, really good food (especially the green curry), and friendly service. Many of the dishes are available in a vegetarian form. (However, our vegie friend thought his dish was rather too oily, perhaps due to the fried tofu.) It's also a BYO (with Bottom's Up not far away), and the staff are at your table with glasses and bottle openers instantly. Excellent value-for-money.

Teohs yum yum yum
A sort of budget Budokan (but without the fancy lighting or sushi). The menu has a Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian & "Specialist" column, each with six items (and each with the same price of £4.95). We thought the noodle dishes (Pad Thai Noodle, Yakisoba, Chicken with Fried Rice Vermicelli, Singapore Curry Laksa) were all absolutely outstanding and the equal of anything Budokan offers. On the other hand the Gado Gado was rather uninspiring. While there are no explict vegetarian items, just about any of the chicken based dishes (which is most of them, as there is no beef or pork on offer here) can substitute tofu instead, and our vegetarian friends are as enthusiastic about this place as we are. Now operates a "sittings" system at weekends, and booking would be advisable most days of the week. They also do takeaways.

Red Snapper yum yum yum
Mainly fishy menu served in a minimalist but stylish setting. Yummy food, pretty presentation, tasty sauces. Rather expensive and not much good for veggies (ie only one choice for starters and main course).

Heatherleys yum yum yum
Unpretentious little eating place with nicely presented food in a cosy setting (similar in scale to Red Snapper). Pleasant but unexceptional.

Cathay Rendezvous yum yum yum
To us, all Chinese restaurants seem to serve up pretty much identical food, so it's hard to say why this one is our favourite in Bristol (or at least it was until Tatyans appeared). It used to have a window looking into the kitchen, but this was covered up on our last visit.

Mandarin yum yum yum
The usual Chinese fodder (which is exactly what you're in the mood for after a couple of cocktails in Bar Humbug) whose best point is that the set menu (the 'B' one anyway) actually contains stuff you want to eat: namely crispy duck (and lots of it!), sweet and sour pork, chicken and black bean sauce, crispy beef, the usual boring veg and some rice. A seriously large quantity of food for £16 a head!

Blue Goose yum yum yum
Not a place to go if you have a huge appetite! The food is good enough, but the fact is that there just isn't that much of it; an impression amplified by the huge plates the pretty but insubstantial portions are served on. Still, it's definitely a bit slicker than, say, Hullabaloo's, although much of the food still has that "here's a slice of something we made earlier" quality. Note that it's invariably a participant in the Evening Post or Venue's two-for-one cheap eats deals, so it's worth waiting for one of those to come round again.

Budokan yum yum
A similar formula to Wagamama: fast oriental noodles. You'll probably be in and out in 40 minutes: this isn't somewhere to build an evening out around. The main courses seem to be rather more expensive than Wagamama, but we thought the portions were bigger and the food a bit more interesting too. Before 7pm there is a cheap "Rapid Refuel" option which at first glance looks good value, but actually the portions are so small you'd probably need to eat two of them before your stomach noticed. Unfortunately the standard of service in Budokan seems to have slipped somewhat, with overworked waitresses making it clear that your requests are a huge inconvenience. There are now two Budokan's in Bristol; we haven't visited the one in Clifton for years, but when we did it was pretty much identical to the one behind the Colston Hall.

Thai Palace yum
Thai food. Portions a little on the small size, nothing special. Perhaps us being virtually the only customers in the large basement dining area didn't help our impression.

Boston Tea Party yum
 This Park Street cafe started doing food last year, but since it's normally rather smoky inside it didn't strike us as a particularly appealing place to eat. However, it was recently included in the Evening Post's usual yearly cheap-eats deal, so we thought we'd give it a try. Unusually, what we were offered there was apparently the full-on standard menu, rather than a cut down one such as many restaurants offer those taking advantage of their Evening Post tokens; The Boston Tea Party are certainly to be applauded for this. However, having said that, the menu didn't actually offer a great deal of choice (two starters, one of which was soup, three main courses, one of which was vegetarian, but numerous deserts from the collection of cakes in the Cafe). The dining area was pleasant enough (and not smoky at all, as we had feared) but perhaps rather dimly lit, and the service was friendly and pleasant. The main strength of the food here appears to be quantity; portions were certainly on the generous side (the leftovers from a neighboring table's cheese platter desert would have restocked our fridge for a month). The downside was that it just wasn't very inspiring. The deserts were definitely the highlight of the meal (and you can just go in the cafe for those anyway). At seven pounds a head (plus wine) for three courses we considered our meal to be very good value. However, for sixteen pounds (the usual rate), we'd have been extremely disappointed.


I mourn for 'The New Mayflower' - Bristol's best Chinese that was destroyed in a fire recently. Trying to fill the gap, there is the expensive Dynasty that at least serves Dim Sum.

Don't even darken the step of Hullaballoos. Uninventive menu and poor-quality food.

Meanwhile - I'll continue the search!

 

Home Committee Jobs Description Members Events Photo Album Sponsorship Feedback Search

Please direct any comments, suggestions, pictures (Chinese Society Related) and general enquires concerning the Bristol University Chinese Society Website to our resident: Webmaster.

© Bristol University Chinese Society