The Guardian
Grace Dent hailed what might well be her “favourite new restaurant of 2025” – “a cool, minimal, romantic ode to Italian cooking that’s housed in a repurposed shipping container on Wapping Wharf in waterside Bristol”, from Mark and Karen Chapman, who opened Cor in Bedminster three years ago.
Ragù caters to a “youngish, knowing audience who are well aware that Britain’s current Italian dining culture was shaped by the River Café, Angela Hartnett and Giorgio Locatelli”, and it offers “to my mind some of the most skilful cooking anywhere in Britain right now”.
Grace singled out three dishes for special praise: a “humble-sounding crespelle in tomato brodo” that included “the greatest, richest, most drinkable-by-the-bucket tomato brodo I’ve ever tasted… What are they doing to tomatoes in that tiny kitchen?” Even better was Ashton Court venison, “cooked rare but as soft as butter, and served on pungent gorgonzola with bone marrow butter.” And for dessert, chocolate budino with sour cherries – “a thick, almost-too-much truffle-type cake with huge, boozy cherries and crumbed amaretti biscuits. It’s like an Italian take on the St Emilion au chocolat, or perhaps the French stole it from the Italians in the first place.”
Grace Dent - 2025-06-15Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles hailed a lunch that “doesn’t put a foot wrong” at a new Italian restaurant on Wapping Wharf – a two-storey block of restaurants in repurposed shipping containers where he has never had a bad meal.
Mark and Karen Chapman, of Cor in Bedminster, present a menu with “no faff or fuss, just cooking that captures the pared-back purity of proper Italian food”.
The highlight for Tom was a dish of melon with prosciutto and tomatoes in which “every ingredient is immaculate, and all it takes is a sprinkle of salt and still more grassy, peppery olive oil, to create a dish of pure summertime succour. Classic, but beautifully done.” His meal ended on a high note with a “peach and basil sorbet that’s River Cafe good”.
Tom Parker Bowles - 2025-08-10
