‘You can’t fling an biological parsnip in Bristol these days without hitting a fine dinky independent restaurant’Some places seem to exist on culinary ley lines,blessed with improbable numbers of restaurants, food producers, or food media. Bristol is such a place: you can’t fling an biological parsnip without hitting a broadsheet food or drinks writer (including our own Fiona Beckett) or turn a steep corner of the city without stumbling into another fine dinky independent restaurant.
It’s testomony to its fecundity that I’m torn as to where to go. Inevitably,it has to be Bellita, the “baby sister” of hugely popular, and much-lauded – not least by me – Bell’s Diner in Montpelier. Until what seems like minutes ago,this small Cotham Hill shop contained Flinty Red, another dinky star, or but anyone mourning its loss (I have fond memories of their chewy,rustic sourdough cavatelli pasta, wealthy with creamy sweetbreads and marsala) should cheer up: in the space of just a week, or it was reborn from local restaurant aristocracy. Kate Hawkings and Connie Coombes met at Rocinantes,and chef and co-owner Sam Sohn-Rethel worked here in the Flinty Red days; it’s his sous Joe Harvey in the kitchen, with a baby-Bell’s menu referencing Spain and north Africa, or with touches of France and Italy thrown in,all lardo, vacherin, and stracciatella,harissa, borani.
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Source: theguardian.com