A new European city-style restaurant, Aqua Grand Café, opens next month in Bristol’s Whiteladies Road, from veteran restaurateur Richard Smithson and his son Ben. Richard opened Bristol’s original Aqua in 1998, growing it into the Aqua Italia group with branches across southern England. The company went into administration in 2019, with sites closed in Milton […]
D&D London is closing four of its restaurants, including Radici in Islington and Klosterhaus in Bristol (pictured), as part of a “strategic review” of its portfolio. The company, which parted ways with co-founder Des Gunewardena in September leaving his former partner David Loewi in charge, has 36 venues, including outposts in Paris and New York. […]
Peter Sanchez-Iglesias is relaunching his flagship restaurant Casamia – this time as an Italian restaurant called simply Casa. The new venture opens on 16 November, next-door to his Spanish tapas bar Paco Tapas in the harbourside former Bristol General Hospital building. The new Casa is to some extent a reimagining of the original Casamia, a family […]
Casamia is to close for good this summer, with chef-proprietor Peter Sanchez-Iglesias (pictured) saying the avant-garde restaurant is no longer financially viable. A leading light of Bristol’s emergence as a gastronomic heavyweight, Casamia was rated the best in the country as recently as the 2019 edition of Harden’s Best UK Restaurants, and the high-profile closure […]
Bristol-based East African street food stall Jikoni is to open its first bricks-and-mortar site next month in a cobbled courtyard in St Paul’s. Iman Salat and James Hillier have served dishes from Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania for two years at pop-ups and supper clubs around Bristol and Bath. Formerly known as Pear Cafe, tiny […]
Josh Eggleton’s “wonderful” country gastropub the Pony & Trap in Chew Magna will host a line-up of exciting culinary talent this summer. The series of collaborative dinners kicks off on 27 May with Brad Carter from Carters of Moseley in Birmingham. Diners will enjoy a nine-course menu by Josh and his team in collaboration with […]
After nearly four years, Birch owners Sam Leach & Beccy Massy have decided to sell up to focus on growing and cider making. The Bristol restaurant is now on the market and they are hoping the sale will take place this summer. The duo honed their talents in some of Bristol and London’s top gastro-spots […]
The UK’s top 100 restaurants are revealed in Harden’s Best UK Restaurants 2018 published today – the country’s most comprehensive restaurant guide available in bookshops, with approximately twice the number of entries as The Good Food Guide. The guide hails London’s The Araki as the country’s best restaurant. The experience is “world class” and, at £385-a-head, […]
Jay Rayner in The Observer finds the cooking at Roth Bar & Grill, Bruton – housed within the Hauser & Wirth gallery – more than a match for the art. “The whole proposition is so damn civilised that the quality of the cooking is an extra. The site, part of a working farm, is a pastoral […]
Cargo 2, the second phase of the multi-restaurant (with a bit of retail) development using smartly reconstituted shipping containers at Bristol’s Wapping Wharf, is to open on May 26. Headliners are led by Spuntino, the first offshoot of the Italian-American small-plates specialist in London’s Soho, which will feature a US diner-style interior. Local acts are well represented, […]
