Woodstock Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: Limited but positive feedback, including from a London-based reporter, on this revamped former branch of Lloyds in Totterdown, which opened in 2021 and relaunched in spring 2023 with a menu based around open-fire cooking.

“Top-quality steak, well cooked to order on BBQ-style griddles” draws an enthusiastic crowd to locally based Sam Elliott’s “very popular” flagship, which has branches in Cardiff and Birmingham. There’s a “buzzy atmosphere” (although it can veer into downright “noisy with the wooden floors”, so it’s “not a place for a quiet meal”). A spin-off all-day cafe/restaurant, Prime by Pasture, opened in Bristol in summer 2025.

“It’s not a fish restaurant, but we had the best sole of the year there. Plus that crab... we don’t even like shellfish, normally, but mmmm that crab…” – this neighbourhood bar-restaurant on the corner of Stokes Croft and Montpelier is modest in size (33 covers, including 4 at the window bar), but “absolutely brilliant” for its local fan club – “amazingly friendly, and packed even at lunch”. The menu is short but changes regularly.

This “fun and quirky” Stokes Croft three-year-old from the team behind Clifton’s Nutmeg – chef Saravanan Nambirajan and restaurateur Raja Munuswamy – specialises in the Tamil cooking of southern India and Sri Lanka ‘with a modern twist’, washed down by rum and arrack-based cocktails. Top Menu Tip – the signature ‘share and tear’ dosa made with 48-hour fermented rice.

2023 Review: “Some of the most exciting food I have eaten in ages” has made this two-year-old Korean with a “short but tasty menu” a big hit in Bristol and beyond. Chef Duncan Roberts, who has worked for Joel Robuchon in Paris, and his wife Kyu Jeong Jeon moved to Stokes Croft from South Korea, and their fans include Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Top Tip – tongdak – whole chicken stuffed with sticky rice and grilled over charcoal.

“Amazed more people aren’t raving about this place…” – Jamie Randall and Olivia Barry have run this conventional-seeming but ambitious venue in Queen’s Quay for nearly 10 years now. It perennially inspires quite limited feedback in our annual diners’ poll, but such as there is says its 12-course tasting menu for £80 per person is “very reasonably priced, creatively presented and very good”.

This “reliable” venue from the “good-quality chain” serves “generous portions of traditional Italian food in a stylish ambience” – one of Bristol’s busiest restaurants for 30 years, it was Carlo Distefano’s first outside Birmingham as he set about creating what is now a global group, with an increasing presence in the Middle East.

A characterful city-centre building backdrops this “very relaxed” (and trendy) wine bar and osteria – regarded as “one of the best restaurants in Bristol” nowadays. Cosmo Sterck (of London luminaries Brawn and St John) turns out “fantastic Italian food” from a “small menu with great ingredients and lots of nice sharing starters”, while his wife Lily looks after the wines, which are of the organic and biodynamic kind. Kudos for the “bargain set lunch” (two courses £24 per person, three courses £27 per person) – “the price of a main course in many less impressive establishments”.

2022 Review: In the unusual and attractive setting of a former river-police station, “this long-established dockside restaurant still continues to offer value and quality, despite the change in ownership a few years ago (to Youngs)”, although nowadays in a much less foodie vein than in its heyday over 20 years ago. As of a 2018 refit, diners can opt for the Pontoon Bar, a popular brunch/lunch haunt, while upstairs “pre-theatre meals are also popular”.

“Bustling tapas restaurant” with “really good (and surprisingly cheap) fish/seafood plates”, set in an old shipping container on Wapping Wharf, overlooking Bristol harbour. Part of Kieran & Imogen Waites Season + Taste group, along with Bravas, Cargo Contina and Condesa.

“Imagine a fine dining tasting menu with an imaginative wine flight explained by a knowledgeable waitress, then realise you are sitting among a pile of cargo ship containers…sort of weird but it works” – the surprising formula at this 14-seater in Bristol’s Cargo development, helmed by ex-L’Ortolan chef Elliott Lidstone and wife Tess. It received real raves this year, with fans proclaiming Elliott’s “brilliant and well-balanced” food that’s “superb value for money” too, whether you go for the £59 per person tasting menu or the à la carte.