Where Bristol foodies eat

Bristol has more than its fair share of cookery writers (including yours truly) so who better to ask where to eat in the city - and what to order? (Well, local chefs, maybe, but I’ll come on to that …)

Needless to say there’s a fair amount of consensus with Bell’s Diner and Bravas, particular favourites but also some unexpected gems you may not have heard of even if you’re a local.

XANTHE CLAY - Daily Telegraph food writer and author of several cookery books including Recipes to Know by Heart

Bravas - tiny and always packed, Bravas serves delicious Spanish tapas in an authentically buzzing atmosphere, plus great Iberian wines. I have lost far too many evenings here.

Lido - Chef Freddy Bird makes good use of the two wood fired ovens at this converted outdoor swimming pool. I love the light airy room - the best summer spot in Bristol but still warm and welcoming in winter - and I love the Mediterranean-rim food too, cleverly spiced and with big flavours, but not overwhelming the individual ingredients.

St Werburgh’s City Farm Café - A whacky hobbit house of a building that’s great for a lunch with small kids. The food here is honest and rustic, with a menu where home fermented vegetables with tostadas sits alongside homemade fish fingers. There’s a great playground, a deck to sit on in warm weather, and the farm animals to visit. If you are wondering why the pigsty is empty, though, look no further than the cafe’s delicious pork fajitas.

Sky Kong Kong is one of those off the wall restaurants that Bristol does so much better than London. It's in a dingy row of shops above an underpass - more like the set of an episode of Taggart than a foodie destination. There's a single refectory table, and decorations are limited to Wizzy’s copper pans and stacks of hand made Korean plates. Lunchtime there is a single dish on offer for around £6-£7 - beef bulgogi is popular - then in the evenings there is a set menu - just arrive, sit down and await dish after dish of Korean home cooking, like Korean sushi, steamed bream and chicken in ginseng broth. Sometimes there is a pudding, sometimes not - stroll down to the late night ice cream shop on Baldwin St if you need a sugary hit to finish.

JENNY CHANDLER - cookery teacher and author of Pulse

Bell’s Diner - Love that amazing slow cooked cauliflower

Wallfish - Anything squiddy (love the tiny fried whole ones with chilli and cumin

and then I really DO love a good brunch and just adore Bakers and Co’s Huevos Rancheros etc

KATE HAWKINGS, restaurateur, wine geek, barfly, Telegraph contributor, chair of the Guild of Food Writers

Wallfish - fantastic ingredients, focusing on the best of British, singing in dishes with their roots in the traditional but still modern and fresh. I always want everything on the menu. I love the simplicity - and messiness - of crab with mayonnaise, and the steak tartare is epic. Oh, and always start with pork crackling. Keith Floyd would be proud to have his restaurant now in such good hands, and still true to his ethos of brilliant food with no airs and graces.

Mayflower - best Chinese by miles, despite insalubrious setting. Best to go in a group and share a load of food - weekend dim sum is always a hoot, or late at night when you’ll find many of Bristol’s chefs kicking back after work. Don’t miss roast pork belly with crispy noodles, chilli salt baby squid and turnip paste with xo sauce.

Hart’s Bakery - I’ve known Laura Hart since she first arrived in Bristol and came to bake for Barny Haughton at Rocinanates. It’s fantastic to see her emerge as one of Bristol’s true food heroes - she’s really set the bar high and her bakery is always a joy to visit. As well as making the best bread in Bristol, her cakes are amazing but, because I have a savoury palate, I always go for her sausage rolls or pasties. Definitely worth leaving a little bit of extra time to visit before getting on a train at Temple Meads - everything’s available to take away and knocks spots off anything available at the station.

DAN VAUX-NOBES aka blogger Essex Eating and author of 101 BBQ and Grill Recipes

Bell's Diner - My favourite. Fantastic cooking. Regularly changing menu and a really atmospheric dining room. I always have the salt cod croquettes with aioli and there is nearly always a cracking little salad with ewes curd on the menu.

Wallfish - you'll find me there every Sunday morning without fail. In my opinion, their full English is the best breakfast in Bristol. I also eat there for lunch and dinner. The chocolate mousse and salted caramel dessert is a favourite.

Flour & Ash - Luckily it's near where I live in Redland and their pizza cooked in a wood fired oven is absolutely superb. I particularly like their sourdough pizza topped with Ox cheek ragu.

GENEVIEVE TAYLOR, food stylist and author of seven cookbooks including, most recently, How to Eat Outside

I eat out so rarely (pesky kids, expensive babysitters, too much cooking to do for my own books) but 3 places I really love, if very infrequently, are Bravas (best tapas I’ve eaten outside of Spain, brilliantly cold beer, great sherry), Birch (only been once but it was great, love the small menu and genuine seasonality) and Bell's Diner - frankly a Bristol institution that I’ve been going to for nearly 20 years and the new incarnation is the best yet. I love them all for their informality and unpretentiousness, not a whiff of ‘fayne dining’ in sight.

ELLY CURSHEN, cafe-owner (of the Pear Café), In Style food columnist, instagrammer (@ellypear), currently writing her first cookbook Fast Days and Feast Days

Bell's obvs - I go there all the time

Full Court Press for coffee

Matina in St Nicks for the best freshly made naan wraps I've ever tasted

Katie and Kim for brunch I always get whatever eggs and greens option is on that day - it varies but is always amazing. Usually served with whatever savoury scone thing they've made and some kind of delicious sauce. I'm happy to eat whatever I'm given there. It's always delicious

and Bakers and Co - their brunches are always spot on

MARK TAYLOR, Food editor Bristol Evening Post (so he probably eats out more than any of us)

Wallfish - rabbit and lobster pie

Bell's - salt cod frittters, aioli

Birch - custard tart

CLAIRE THOMSON, chef, Guardian contributor and author of The 5 o’clock Apron

Flour and Ash for great pizza, a well sourced and inexpensive wine list and lovely service - great with the kids - very low key and at the end of our road. Try the the blackcurrant sorbet for an intense fruity burst.

Bell's Diner Love Sam’s cooking and also Kate’s [Kate Hawkings] wine list. The vibe is a nice balance between low fly and happy energetic - I mostly bump into someone I know during the evening. The cauliflower cooked with yogurt is always nice and is a dish I also cook at home for the kids.

Chilli Daddies - went with my Sichuanese step-mum and she gave it the thumbs up. Level 3 for chilli for Matt and I and level 1 for the kids. We all love the cold noodle salads

ANDREA LEEMAN, chef, author of ‘A Taste of …’ series including, most recently, A Taste of Gloucestershire

We used to eat out a lot but my partner-in-crime has a hearing problem and restaurants of the sort we both enjoy are inevitably buzzy and noisy. We tend to eat locally these days; Oz on the Triangle in Clifton, The Spiny Lobster on Blackboy Hill and Fishers in Clifton Village. Oz is run by a delightful Turkish couple and focuses mostly on meze dishes. My husband devours platefuls of their cacik, Turkish for tzatziki whilst I go for the smoked aubergine, the squid and their feather-light homemade pasta; they have good Turkish wines and you can round off the meal with proper Turkish coffee.

The Spiny Lobster is a stylish and comfortable premises in French Brasserie style. The fish is fresh from Devon and Cornwall and you can wave at the chefs as they cook your meal; the kitchen is part of the dining area. As a fish lover, there is little on their menu that I would want to resist and whole fresh crab is top favourite. Spiny Lobster has a fish shop attached so most of my fish purchases come from there; they have good shell fish, samphire when in season and watch out for things brought in by Alan, one of their suppliers and also a forager. He will hightail it to Scotland for Morel mushrooms or pop into the shop with a bag of smoked prawns.

Once upon a time I ran restaurants in London and Fishers restaurant in Princess Victoria Street, Clifton reminds me of those days. The staff are bright and cheerful, the menu is mainly fish, simply cooked and nicely served at candlelit tables. I'd say their haddock-and-chips with mushy peas are the best in town!

And mine? Well, like my colleagues I'm a big fan of Bell's, Bravas and Wallfish but we also go regularly to Birch and I never get on a train without a sneaky visit to Hart's Bakery ...

4 good restaurants in Oxford

Oxford is a place that doesn’t have a great reputation for food but I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the restaurants we ate in last weekend.

Not having been to the city recently I asked my Twitter followers for their views and these are the ones I settled on - Sojo for a Friday night Chinese, Gee’s for brunch, a gastropub The Magdalen Arms for a slap-up Saturday night dinner and an Oxford institution, The Cherwell Boathouse for Sunday lunch. There are other options which I’ve highlighted but I was more than happy with my choices. Note, you’ll need to book as all except Gee’s were busy, though maybe they get booked in the evening too.

Sojo

6/9 Hythe Bridge Street, OX12EW
01865 202888

With its wood-panelled walls Sojo looks much more like a cool East End restaurant than a typical Chinese. When we arrived at 7.15 it was already rammed. The menu is ridiculously long so I was glad I’d consulted my Twitter followers who had recommended it about what to eat and checked out this review from the Telegraph's Matthew Norman.

Dim sum were a little gluey - and for purists it was the wrong time of day to eat them - so I’d skip those and concentrate on the home-cooked dishes which are their speciality. That said a super-crunchy salt and pepper squid is terrific, possibly the best I’ve had. But the star of the show was a massive sticky Shanghai braised sweet soy pork hock, easily enough for three, which is pulled apart like crispy duck at the table.

We ordered sides of jasmine rice and Chinese cabbage and mushrooms (particularly delicious) with it but could also have gone for the much praised green beans.

The only disappointing dishes were the lettuce cups (underseasoned, unusually for this joint with too many veg and not enough chicken) and a rather drab spicy chicken salad which arrived - presumably having been forgotten earlier - with the pork. Read Matthew’s review for other recommendations. The next table was having (I think) Ma Po Tofu which looked really good.

What I drank: I’d forgotten how tasteless Tsingtao beer is (don’t bother) but the house rosé is fine and you might even pitch into a red with the pork.

Cost £80.60 for 2 but we overordered. It could have been 25% less.

Alternatives: My Sichuan or, if you fancy a Thai, Chiang Mai Kitchen or Oli’s Thai

Magdalen Arms (see top photo)

243, Iffley Road, OX4 1SJ
01865 243159

This warm, welcoming gastropub was recommended to me more often than anywhere else and I could see why. It has one of those menus where everything seems tempting - you really need a large group to do it justice.

The table next door was feasting on a slow-cooked lamb shoulder with gratin dauphinoise and picked red cabbage “for four or five to share” Other dishes such as ‘two way mallard with faggots, mashed potato and savoy cabbage” (sold out to the anguish of one customer who arrived later than we did) were for two.

I went for the daily special of rabbit with chorizo, chickpeas and aioli (above), a hearty plateful that would have been welcome on a cold winter’s night while my daughter had a perfectly cooked bavette steak with blue cheese butter that she was wisely discouraged from having medium-rare.

She also had rabbit for a starter in the form of rillettes - a good use of leftovers I suspect - while I had the best twice baked cheese soufflé I’ve ever eaten made from the local Oxford Blue - light as air and served with a nicely contrasting crisp pear and walnut salad.

Only the desserts - an autumn fruit crumble that looked as if it had been topped with cornflakes and a perfectly decent though not wildly exciting pear and almond tart failed to reach the heights of the starters and main courses. The wine list, while not in the Cherwell Boathouse league (below) is interesting with plenty of options by the glass. I had a glass of Marques de Reinosa white rioja and a Vinho de Palestra Douro red, both well priced at £4.35 and £5.20 respectively.

As the evening wore on it got more crowded and noisier and with a young, studenty crowd It wouldn’t be the place for a romantic evening but it’s perfect, as I say, for a group of friends.

NB It's slightly out of the centre. Unless you’re feeling energetic you may need a taxi.

Dinner for 2 with 1 soft drink and 2 glasses of wine and 2 teas £77.79

Other options: Jacob’s Inn, Turl Street Kitchen

Gee’s

61 Banbury Road, OX2 6PE
01865 553540

We could have stayed in our hotel (The Old Bank) for breakfast on Saturday but decided to walk over to its sister restaurant Gee’s for brunch a mile or so away. It’s housed in a pretty conservatory with plenty of squishy banquettes to loll on. And they serve you properly squeezed orange juice ‘with bits’ before you’ve even got round to looking at the menu.

Eggs benedict seemed the order of the day (Oxford seems to have a thing about it) and as it’s my favourite brunch dish I don’t know why I didn’t order it instead of going for a full English breakfast pizzeta which was clever but not nearly as satisfying. (My daughter wisely did, hence the photo.)

We then ordered a banana bread and mascarpone we didn’t really need and didn’t manage to finish. It would have been better served warm as I half expected. Still, a lovely place to have breakfast and you can then walk back to the city centre to work it off which will make you feel virtuous.

£42.19 for 2.

Other brunch options: Oxfork

The Cherwell Boathouse

Bardwell Road, OX2 6ST.
01865 552746

I was a bit hesitant about going to The Cherwell Boathouse as it’s been going for ever but recent reports suggested standards hadn’t slipped. Sunday lunch on a sunny late September day was probably a good plan enabling us to sit in the window watching the punters (people punting, not our fellow customers).

The food isn’t amazing but it’s generous and good enough. In fact my daughter who isn’t half as picky as I am thought it was terrific. We both had roasts - in her case roast lamb, in mine (slightly soggy) pork belly with apple sauce and loads of veg including some decent roast potatoes then shared a sticky toffee pudding which was brilliant - light and not too sweet.

Starters (heritage tomatoes and mozzarella with a crisp-fried slice of pancetta in her case, a rather overworked salade nicoise with seared tuna and soft boiled quails’ eggs in mine) weren’t wonderful but frankly I didn’t mind. For the point of the place is not the food but the view and the wine - one of the best, most reasonably priced lists in the country.

Being the only one drinking I didn’t do it justice having a glass of Gusbourne brut to start with and a glass of authentic old-fashioned Beaujolais from Domaine A. Michaud. I should probably have gone for a half bottle or, even better a full one and taken the rest home.

Cost: £80.26 for 2 but would have been easy to spend a lot more than this on wine.

Note: also out of the centre but taxis are comparatively cheap.

Other options: The Old Parsonage