Café 84, Lower Bristol Road, Bath

A snapshot of Lower Bristol Road, Bath, at 7.21pm on Thursday 20 November 2025: haphazard buses and hefty trucks. Foolhardy Deliveroo drivers and kamikaze cyclists. A group of exhausted tourists struggling with a broken wheelie bin (sorry, suitcase) en route to the Holiday Inn, a group of jubilant students en route to their next round of Lageritas, an elegant elderly lady with Pomeranian under her arm en route to…I dunno; a Patrick Hamilton short story, perhaps? 

The road is slick with rain following a recent icy shower and oily rainbow-puddles are dissolving in the gutters. The bus shelter lights flicker to an ad-hoc beat that seems to be attracting the attention of a security guard silhouetted in the windows of the office block on the other side of the traffic — or perhaps he’s simply testing out his new binoculars?

To an over-imaginative writer, it’s a captivating tapestry indeed. But far more captivating — seductive, even — is the reason I’m even standing on the pavement taking it all in while I wait for my trusty playmate to park our car and join me for an investigation into Café 84, the cheerfully-lit, independently-owned Italian café/pizzeria/trattoria that I’ve driven or walked past for as long as I can remember; in fact, I might have forgotten it was there had a couple of très-foodie friends of ours not visited for supper last week and highly recommended for review purposes.

And so it came to pass that, having been greeted by a very warm welcome indeed, we took to a corner table beyond big sparkly picture windows and a shiny bar and suddenly… what Deliveroo drivers? What bus stop? And who cares about the purpose of the security guard’s binoculars?

Were the overhead lights to be turned down just a fraction in the evenings, Café 84 could easily morph from workaday coffee/breakfast/lunch pitstop to cosy, downhome, neighbourhood Italian diner, the like of which can be found dotted across suburban neighbourhoods in Italy, or New York, or central London. But in Bath, it seems, people (you, me, restaurant reviewers, ‘grammers et al) tend to tittle tattle all and only about the city centre eateries, for better or worse. 

While it’s true that you can find thoroughly decent, authentic Italian food in every corner (or, in today’s parlance, ‘quarter’) of the city centre, we don’t always want the side order of bling, arrogance and hefty prices that come as standard in many of those places; if most of us were honest about it, we’re more likely to want what you get at Café 84: freshly-made, generous portions of time-honoured Italian comfort food served with genuine warmth in a convivial, home from home environment (if, that is, your kitchen smells this good when you’re cooking at home) at prices that barely put a ripple in your bank balance.

We started with a plate of Bruschetta Pomodoro to accompany our pre-dinner cheers: a classic combination of crunchy toasted ciabatta topped with vibrant flavours (garlic, basil, garlic-basil-garlic; sweet tomatoes, sweet tomatoes, sweet tomatoes… and plenty of parmesan). On from that, meatballs: richly caramelised on the outside, succulent and satisfyingly meaty within, nestled in a deeply-umami marinara sauce bubbling beneath a satisfyingly cheesy topping. We had textbook-perfect crispy calamari with punchy, garlic garlic mayonnaise too; Yum! Or rather, delizioso? 

We could have stopped there — but of course, we didn’t. Oh, the lasagne! Robust meat sauce and silky pasta in perfectly-balanced harmony, the cheese gratifyingly stringy and the herbaceous undertones bringing aromatic harmony to proceedings. But for me, the Prawn and ‘Nduja Risotto stole the spettacolo. How does a chef add ‘nduja — Italy’s own (and to my mind, far funkier) version of chorizo, softer and spicier than the Spanish incarnation, laden with personality — to a prawn medley without allowing such bold flavours to turn the delicately sweet seafood into a texture-only irrelevance? Like this, as served in Café 84.

Okay, I may sound as though I’m over-enthusastic in my endorsement of Café 84 when in fact I could be even more over-the-top about just how good our supper was. And in case you were (rather cynically) wondering, this review is not the result of a PR invite nor an Insta collab arrangement; it’s just a review of where we went for supper down the road from our house t’other night on a recommendation from friends. 

Back outside after our dinner, back on the Lower Bristol Road. The bus shelter lights are still flickering, the Deliveroo drivers are still buzzing around, the tourists still trundle. But the elegant elderly lady with Pomeranian under her arm has, of course, long since disappeared; I like to think that, when I spotted her, she’d just left Café 84 after her usual plate of Frito Misto accompanied by a Martini Rosso — which I’m going back for, and soon. And you should go here too, and soon, for all of it and more.