Yes, it’s been a long time coming! And yes, it’s still very much a work in progress, so there’ll be lots of tweaking to digest as the days, weeks and months roll along. But I firmly uphold the opinion that diamonds in the rough have much more value than even the most highly-polished fakes… so here I am, in my ramshackle, unpolished state.
It’s my aim to use this website to promote all that’s good about Bath’s independent food scene at a time when our hospitality industry need it the most, free of the kind of ‘advertorial’ and ‘sponsored’ commercial copy that increasingly dominates food-related sites, and instead laden with honest, genuine reviews, news and opinions about the food scene in the city I know and love. Coming soon: a brand new review of much-loved fave rave The Scallop Shell, a Moorfields revisit, fresh takes on both Yak Yeti Yak and Chez Dominique, a catch up on all the exciting pipeline plans from The Grapes/Budō Bā’s imminent unveiling on Argyle Street and my thoughts on the brand new branch of Pieminister (Westgate Street). Phew!
But where does the ‘… and Beyond’ part of the new name fit in to that remit? Well, have words, have thoughts, have opinions – will travel! Liverpool (my second home) is a regular pit-stop, and I’m eagerly anticipating making reservations to finally meet superchef Porky Askew at his fabulous Art School, plus dinners at both Antonio’s in Knowsley Village and Lu Ban in the not-too-distant future. Who knows where else my travels may take me? You will, when I get there!
For now, thank you for reading my very first PP post. Got something to say? Tweet me @ThePigGuide (ah, I couldn’t let the name go completely, could I?) or drop me a line; after all, I’m all yours!
Pulteney Bridge was completed in 1774. The former Empire Hotel in Orange Grove was built in 1901. The Bath branch of Browns, also on Orange Grove, made a home for itself in the city’s former cop shop almost 30 years ago. The restaurant now known as Solina Pasta on Grand Parade used to be Frampton’s Bar and Kitchen, and before that a tapas restaurant, and before that a short-lived French brasserie affair.
All this and more (who remembers Marmaris? Gosh, I used to love that place!) I know about Orange Grove/Newmarket Row/Grand Parade (Bath’s “Weir Quarter”? Probably!) without consulting Google, or ChatGPT, or a bot who knows less than I do. But I can’t remember a time when Joya Italian Steakhouse wasn’t on the corner of the Newmarket Row/back of the Guildhall Market snicket, all warm lights and bustling Italian trattoria action beyond its pretty little windows and cool grey façade.
Joya used to be a pub called the Rummer until 2009 (there I go again) and before that it was probably, I dunno (wow! Really, Melissa?) a townhouse, or a lace shop… or a brothel? Whatever it was, it is today one of Bath’s most characterful, elegantly higgledy-piggledy independent restaurant hotspots. But I wonder if, in amongst all the brouhaha around the city’s new kids on the (restaurant) block and the ongoing battles for hippest menu supremacy, we’re guilty of taking Joya for granted?
Okay, so Joya certainly wasn’t being taken for granted at peak time on a Tuesday evening. Any space for a table for two? For sure — as long as we didn’t mind killing time for half an hour first (we didn’t mind at all — and, as it turns out, Browns does an excellent Spicy Marg).
The pace hadn’t dropped when we returned for our impromptu reservation either. The two lovely guys running the floor cheerfully juggled plates, drinks orders, big groups, little groups, card payments and all the general hustle and bustle that keeps a busy service flowing smoothly while still offering us a relaxed, “old friend” welcome… and straight away, we were definitely on sul territorio italiano in Joya’s charming dining room, the decor (chunky wooden tables; soft-shade neutral paintwork) consummating a convivial, smooth operation that fully lives up to the restaurant’s name.
On the menu, a classic antipasti/prima piatto selection gives way to pasta for all, risotto for some, decent fish, good old faithful chicken. But the Hotstone Steak Experience dominates the array: locally-sourced, well-hung steaks flash-seared on the chargrill and served alongside a searingly hot volcanic stone for you to play chef with. Choose your cut, choose your salt, choose your butter, choose your sauce; it’s the steak dinner version of an interactive DIY store.
After our thoroughly decent incarnations of Calamari and shimmering, jacketed king prawns in the garlic/white wine/chilli/parsley/butter combo that should never disappoint (and it certainly didn’t disappoint here), we went for a ribeye and a sirloin with rosemary salt, truffle/red wine and garlic butters and Béarnaise/mushroom and brandy sauces. Sides? Fries (of course), roast vegetables, creamed spinach.
Wow, those hot stones live up to their name! White heat, intense temperatures, campfire aromas, one (tiny) part terrifying, all parts drama, drama, drama. But the novelty is tethered by an intelligent USP based on innovation rather than flash in the pan (pardon the pun) faddishness. Just stop yourself thinking about what could happen if you pressed your hand onto the hotstone, or stressing about what the heat might be doing to your hairspray and you’ll be okay.
Personally, I’m happy to eat any steak vampire-style (aka blue). But who can resist a live, tabletop fidget? As it turned out, even my almost-charred nuggets of beautiful beef (mea culpa — you can’t blame the chef for any wrongdoings in this instance) tasted divine, while he declared that his hot stone “worked magic” on his ribeye. As for the creamed spinach, those sauces and even our little pot of rosemary salt: no stone (again, pardon the pun) has been left unturned when it comes to making sure that the angels have kicked the devil to the kerb in the attention to detail here.
Given the long-established pedigree of Joya’s proprietor (also in the same family: The Herd; The Real Italian Pizza Co; Casa de Tapas), it’s easy to see why this smooth operation works, works and works again, for long-term fans and fleeting Bath visitors alike.
I can’t remember a time when Joya wasn’t Joya — but I’m never going to let myself forget that it’s there.
Friday evening, and Bath’s George Street “strip” is buzzing. The pleasure-seekers are out to play in force. Uber drivers, reluctant to stray too far from the peak fare action, are idling on every available kerb, and girls in too-high heels are doing a grand job of pretending to ignore the boys in too-tight jeans. And in the midst of all the big bar/little bar action, the fast-fix/linger-long food refuelling pitstops and the general brouhaha, there sits se7en.
se7en is cool in a way that feels more downtown NoHo than uptown Bath. Beyond the chilled-out pavement terrace, there’s an instantly seductive bar with lighting bright enough to lift patrons out of a demi monde deadzone but soft enough to flatter. The aural backdrop is an elegantly modish mix of chilled-out toons; the artwork on the walls stylishly sassy.
Jewel-coloured velvet armchairs and banquettes invite you to allow yourself time to peruse the very grown-up cocktail menu or a wine list that focuses on the best examples of tried-and-trusted classics and fascinating discoveries, while a range of upmarket beers maintain an uptempo pace for bar flies. And if all that’s not enough to capture your attention from the get-go, a tantalising strip-lit corridor leads to an understatedly chic dining room that looks straight into an exciting open kitchen, beyond which there’s another urban merrymaking zone outback.
Dropping food into such an artfully vivacious yet serene environment could, in less competent hands than the proprietors at the helm here, bring the whole affair tumbling down; too many complicated menu options and the stress factor starts to kick the X-factor to the kerb; too few, and punters move along too quickly in search of solid satiation.
But the se7en team are clearly masters of the art of “we’ve got this”. They’ve ignited the flames beneath a live indoor charcoal grill/barbecue and complemented a selection of magnificent meats with a range of super-seasonal small plates packed with big promises: seared fresh fish, lively slaws, vegetables fresh from the season’s allotment catwalk. There’s whipped ricotta over here; fennel, cucumber and wasabi over there, and even a mac + cheese that you just know will arrive at your table elevated to something far removed from nursery food in the ‘Crispy’ section. Quietly, subtly and without grand fanfare, there really is something for all tastes and appetites here.
You could, for example, sit at the bar and accompany your Patience 15 cocktail (from a unique range of muddle-ups based on the Seven Deadly Sins) with a plate of Pork Puffs. Or maybe you’d care to opt for a dish of tiger prawns to make your glass of fizz feel less lonely? Perhaps, though, you’re in the mood to sit (comfortably) tight and hole up for an evening of haute excess — and okay, you know which direction we headed in.
If Miles isn’t in the Do Not Disturb chef-zone in the heat and intensity beyond the pass, catch his eye and ask him to double-up as a tour guide for your journey. He’s friendly, approachable, and as enthusiastic about his menus as his menus led me to believe he would be. He’s fluent in the language of good taste, and confident his dishes will captivate — and my goodness, his dishes captivate.
Beef Tartare: a neat tumble of glistening, tender beef, the supporting cast of creamy egg yolk, truffle mayo, briny pickles and sharp pecorino all doing their supporting cast thing in rich, punchy, deeply umami harmony. A second dish of lesser-spotted gurnard in all its sweet, delicate, super-fresh glory, meanwhile, balanced the intensity of the tartare, the lively kick and tease of pickled ginger uplifting the senses with verve and sparkle.
And then…
All hail the arrival of the showstopping sharer that is the Tomahawk steak: massive, buttery, intensely flavoursome; robust, smoky, powerfully characterful — cor! We drenched ours in kickin’ Cowboy Butters and vibrant Chimichurri and snaffled perfect fries on the side. We picked our way through a beetroot and butternut squash duo too, the earthiness of the roots luxuriated by whipped ricotta. But oh, Miles’ wild garlic gnocchi! Puffy pillows of bliss, featherlight but satisfyingly bitey and basking in the uniquely aromatic aura of the most heavenly “blink and you’ll miss it” taste of British springtime. By the time you read this review, this dish might have disappeared from Miles’ menu… but it’ll remain deeply embedded in my foodie memory bank for a very long time to come.
Fortunately, se7en isn’t as transitory as many of Miles’ super-seasonal ingredients are. It may have only opened its doors around a year ago, but it already feels mature, confident and established enough to be a dynamic, vital key player in Bath’s independent restaurant and bar scene… and cool in a way that only a place that isn’t trying desperately hard to be cool can be.
Occupying prime leafy neighbourhood position just past the Royal Crescent on the edge of Royal Victoria Park, the Marlborough Tavern effortlessly brings proper pub and upmarket contemporary bistro together in perfect harmony, an appealing blend of friendly familiarity and a fresh, smart outlook in both decor and menus giving both locals and visitors alike good reason to keep on keeping on here.
And there we were the other night, nestled into a cosy, candlelit nook table for two just on the edge (but still very much a part of) of typical Tavern Time proceedings: a birthday celebration, a family get-together, a reunion party and several other romantic twosomes all happily going about their merrymaking business without anybody impinging on anybody else’s personal space.
Calamari, from the starter array? There was no decision-making struggle there, what with the frangible little fishy fritters being one of our MT must-have choices since one of our earliest visits almost 20 years ago, and still as sprightly and appealing today — just like the pub itself. But as reliably good as the calamari is, it came up against stiff competition on this visit. If you’ve never thought that creamed mushrooms on toast could be described as sensational, prepare to have your preconceptions challenged; it’s a substantial portion, to say the least… but you’ll never want the dish to end.
For mains, soft, slow braised pork belly, satisfyingly fatty but not overwhelmingly so, served with an earthy, perfectly balanced black pudding mash, mineral-rich cavolo nero, a complex red wine and apple jus and shards of perfect crackling. I, meanwhile, swooned into my dish of super-tender chicken breast that itself swooned into a pool of creamy polenta, a nutty walnut dressing tethering the sweetness of a tumble of honey-roasted butternut squash to a deeply umami foundation.
All our dishes were cleanly confident in execution, and the pairings exceedingly well-considered; this is really, really good grown-up food that exudes the flair of a highly-skilled chef (good work Filip Tencer and team) without attempts to be flashy, or snooty, or jarringly on-trend. Service was as personable and effortlessly efficient as personable and effortlessly efficient gets throughout and prices comfortingly accessible, while the overall vibe lulled us into a “do we really have to go home when we feel so at-home here?” state of contentment.
So what’s the best way to tear yourself away from the Marlborough Tavern when you really don’t want to leave? Book again for dinner next week, of course! Which is exactly what we did. Will I go for those mushrooms again, if they’re still on the menu? Definitely; as long as somebody else orders the calamari, I know I’ll be right at home at the Tav.
Honey-coloured stone cottages, leafy courtyards, lamp-lit windows glowing in the dusk. Tranquil fields, wide-open skies, a gentle river flowing beneath an ancient bridge. Is Freshford — around 6m/10km south-east of Bath — the ultimate picture-perfect English village? That’ll be a yes, then. And, at the epicentre of village life, the historic Inn at Freshford.
As you’d expect from a hostelry that’s thrived on the same site for around 500 years, the Inn at Freshford has undergone plenty of changes of ownership down the decades. And so it came to pass that in December 2025, the pub reopened under the conscientious curatorship of William and Marianne Cartwright-Hignett of the acclaimed Iford Manor and its magical Cafe and Kitchen.
Anybody who knows anything about Iford Manor (and if you don’t, you really should) will know that heritage, community and sustainability are at the epicentre of what William and Marianne do. Their Executive Chef Matthew Briddon, meanwhile, maintains and upholds William and Marianne’s ethos and puts creativity, imagination and a clear passion for his vocation in the spotlight in every dish on his Inn at Freshford menu, while the environment itself couldn’t offer a more agreeable backdrop against which to indulge your senses in the whole Cartwright-Hignett/Briddon experience.
The Inn’s gorgeous gardens are undergoing a work-in-progress revamp in readiness for less murky days to come. But if you fancy escaping the murk before the sun joins the fun, take a trot around the pub’s interior flagstones where smart rustica meets contemporary expectations and offers a proper pub welcome to all, from dog-walkers (yeah, you say you’re taking the dog out but we all know you’re pausing for a pint or two mid-stroll) to mellow parties and reunions by way of loved-up couples and regulars for whom the lure of what’s probably the most perfect pub pork pie in history is well worth forgoing their waiting-at-home supper for.
We settled in for the long-haul from the off with a menu that led us to choose then change then choose again then go back (etc, etc) creating the most delicious dithering/bickering session. Even the Grazing section reads like a paean to seasonality, local sourcing and innovation: Cornish Scallop ‘Quavers’ with Caviar Mayo or Pickled Devilled Quail Eggs? Lamb Belly ‘French Fries’ or Iford Cider Rarebit?
Eventually, gracious (and patient!) Front of House supremo Alaina graciously (and patiently!) soothed our feverish brows and shared her advice.
If you’ve never had a plate of scallop ‘quavers’, go here and put your order in RIGHT NOW, before scallop season ends. Wafer thin but still packing that intrinsically briny punch, super-crisp but still melting on the tongue, and accompanied by a creamy mayo topped with a mahoosive dollop of caviar, I guarantee that this is the best £10 you’ll ever spend on a ‘grazing’ dish, anywhere. Lamb Belly French Fries? Get in! Crispy, juicy, deeply umami and just-the-right-amount-of-fatty, nudged hither and thither with Cheddar cheese and laminated by a teasy little aioli. As for the pork pie…
Now I mentioned earlier that indulging in what’s probably the most perfect pub pork pie in history may lead to the necessity to forgo supper proper completely — and to be honest, we could (and probably should) have stopped right there, as portions here are generous to say the least. But after I’d eschewed my initial craving for the Pie of the Moment (pie after pie might not have worked out well), the Basque-style mussels in a garlic/white wine/saffron broth/reduction laden with creamy white beans and accompanied by both Iford bread and new potatoes had my name — or rather, Matthew’s signature style — written all over them, while Mike’s slow-cooked belly pork, balanced on a huge pile of mustard mash and partnered by the richest, earthiest black pudding known to man, was the stuff that elegantly macho man-dreams are made of.
Again, we could (and probably should) have stopped right there — but we didn’t. Having agreed to choose just one dessert between us, we had an airy, featherlight Dark Chocolate Mousse that cleverly straddled the bridge between playful pudding and sophisticated dessert topped with shards of honeycomb that took these two grown-ups back to their childhood days… and whoops! A Coffee Crème Brûlée too, smooth and velvety beneath its glass-like caramelised sugar lid and accompanied by a super-short shortbread biscuit for dunking into the silky custard (yes, I am a very messy eater).
William and Marianne have worked a very special kind of magic on the Inn at Freshford; it’s as unselfconsciously unpretentious as you’d hope a proper country pub to be, while Matthew’s foodie fireworks light up classic, proper pub food with aspirational yet distinctly non-ostentatious flair.
Is the Inn at Freshford the ultimate perfect English pub? As of December 2025, that’ll be a yes.
I’m not sure which one of us arrived in Bath first: Yum Yum Thai or me.
What I am sure of, though, is that we’ve both been very happy here for around 26 years, which probably earns us both Bath institution status… and could lead to discussions about which one of us has aged best. To answer that latter question: Yum Yum Thai definitely has fewer wrinkles than I do.
We’re blessed, in Bath, with myriad Thai restaurants — and when I say blessed I really mean it, as Thai food ranks very highly on my go-to choice for food I crave, want and need on a very regular basis.
I’ve got my favourites Thai hangouts, you’ll have yours, and opinions are subject to fluctuation on a regular basis; yes? But this pristine, efficient little canteen/diner-style haven of classic Thai yum yum has hovered at the top of my Thai charts ever since I first stumbled across it in my earliest days as a wannabe ‘proper’ Bathonian, probably because, unlike me, it hasn’t changed much down the years.
There’s a bit more colour dotted hither and thither to lift and soften the restaurant’s erstwhile plain white countenance and menus are definitely more ‘sprawling’ than they used to be back in the day, with daily specials and complex specialities supplementing the classic stir fry/curry/sides format. But the overall recipe for menu success here remains pretty much the same: most dishes can be assembled around your choice of tofu, chicken, beef, prawn, pork or vegan options, and few soar past the £16.95 mark. You’ll pay a bit more for certain ‘speciality’ dishes, but my guess is they’ll be special enough to justify the hike.
Sides, however, are a bit more prosaic than than the rest of the menu might suggest: the pork and prawn dumplings are really tasty, but they’re hidden amongst an array of mostly crispy or deep-fried this and thats alongside barbecued spare ribs, chicken satay and a coupla salads. Apart from the soups that we always tend to opt for there’s little to capture your attention in this section, which comes as a surprise on a menu that, elsewhere, reads like a foodie tour of Kho Samui or Chiang Mai.
One Thai Matcha Iced Tea (think, a creamy, pistachio-laden milkshake — lovely!) and one glass of Shiraz Rose duly delivered and we were off on a whistlestop exploration that moves at a speedy pace. Service at YTT is brisk without being brusque; expect your food order to arrive in around 7 minutes max, with sides served simultaneously unless you eschew Thai tradition and strongly specify your preference for the British starter/main course format.
Knowing that, I attempted, this time around, to do the ‘British’ thing when I put my order in: “I’ll have the Tom Kah Kai followed by the Prawn Rendang, please”. But I must have been too meek about it, ‘cos both dishes still arrived at pretty much the same time, as did his (also soup — Tom Yum Kung — and Prad Kra Praw).
As it turned out — and am I surprised, given that British people still very rarely ‘know best’ when they veer away from British pub menu format? — both my vibrantly fragrant chicken and coconut broth and his hot/sour/spicy prawn variation proved to be a satisfyingly agreeable enhancement to both my rich, thick, deeply savoury Favourite Thai Curry in the World (that’ll be the Rendang, then) and his boldly aromatic, Thai/holy basil-centric stir fry, the generous heap of steamy rice that accompanied both positively yelling out to be souped up. So, don’t even attempt to ‘do British’ here; the kitchen definitely knows best.
Overall, we enjoyed a cheerful, speedy refuel in cheerful, gently buzzing surroundings, the view across Kingsmead Square and its imposing London Plane tree — fairy lit, post-sunset — always a pleasure, and the total tally for our feast hovering around the £70 mark: not bad for a city centre supper these days… and not too far removed from what it would have cost back in the days before my ‘proper’ Bathonian status application was still pending approval.
Occupying prime leafy neighbourhood position just past the Royal Crescent on the edge of Royal Victoria Park, the Marlborough Tavern effortlessly brings proper pub and upmarket contemporary bistro together in perfect harmony, an appealing blend of friendly familiarity and a fresh, smart outlook in both decor and menus giving both locals and visitors alike good reason to keep on keeping on here.
But like many hostelries in Bath whose origins date back to the 18th century, the pub has a big backstory… with its biggest shakeup to date happening in the last two decades.
In the early zeroes, the Marlborough Tavern languished in the file marked ‘neglected, tatty and unloved’. But in 2006, the then newly-formed Bath Pub Co recognised the potential beyond the Tav’s distinctly down-at-heel countenance and reinvented it for whole new generations under their enlightened curatorship.
The MT was the first pub in what became a Bath-based mini-empire for the BPC; they went on to work their magic on the Locksbrook Inn, the Moorfields and the Hare and Hounds (and Chequers too, for a decade-long stint up until 2020). But when the company sold three of their pubs to the St Austell Brewery in September 2023, BPC co-founder and commercial director Justin Sleath chose to continue to maintain MT operations and remains at the helm today.
So! Here we are. And there we were t’other night, nestled into a cosy, candlelit nook table for two just on the edge (but still very much a part of, it you get my drift) of typical Tavern Time proceedings: a birthday celebration, a family get-together, a reunion party and several other romantic twosomes all happily going about their merrymaking business without anybody impinging on anybody else’s personal space.
Calamari, from the starter array? There was no decision-making struggle there, what with the frangible little fishy fritters being one of our MT must-do choices since our very first visit and still as sprightly and appealing today, the accompanying lemon and garlic aioli as smooth and uplifting to the tastebuds as a Kiehl’s balm is to your lips. But as reliably good as the calamari is, it came up against stiff competition on this visit. If you’ve never thought that creamed mushrooms on toast could be described as sensational, prepare to have your preconceptions challenged; it’s a substantial portion, to say the least… but you’ll never want the dish to end.
For mains, soft, slow braised pork belly, satisfying fatty but not overwhelmingly so, served with an earthy, perfectly balanced black pudding mash, brassy, mineral-rich cavolo nero, a complex red wine and apple jus (kinda, gently tannic meets softly fruity) and shards of perfect crackling. I, meanwhile, swooned into my sweet, moist chicken breast that itself swooned into a pool of creamy polenta, a nutty walnut dressing tethering the sweetness of a tumble of honey-roasted butternut squash to a deeply umami foundation.
All our dishes were cleanly confident in execution, and the pairings exceedingly well-considered; this is really, really good grown-up food that exudes the flair of a highly-skilled chef (good work Filip Tencer and team) without attempts to be flashy, or snooty, or jarringly on-trend. Service was as personable and effortlessly efficient as personable and effortlessly efficient gets throughout, while the overall vibe lulled us into a “do we really have to go home when we feel so at-home here?” state of contentment.
So what’s the best way to tear yourself away from the Marlborough Tavern when you really don’t want to leave? Book again for dinner next week, of course — which is exactly what we did. Will I go for those mushrooms again, if they’re still on the menu? Definitely; as long as somebody else orders the calamari, I know I’ll be right at home — again.
It’s 7.30pm on a drizzly Friday night in January. The restaurants, bars and pubs in Bath city centre are so quiet that even a tumbleweed invasion would liven things up; the lights are on, but everybody’s at home.
Widcombe Parade, however – a 5-minute trot south-east of the bright lights, behind (and just over the river from) Bath Spa Station — tells a different story. Small plate/fab wine/cocktail hotspot The Halfpenny has got its chillaxed, date night hat on, The Ram is packed with end-of-working-week/pre-rugby revellers, Bikano’s is a bright beacon of proper curry house cosiness, the various takeaways are doing a roaring trade… and, thriving at the heart of it all, the Ring O’Bells is more of a hubbub of arrivals and departures than the nearby station. We, however, are checking in for a linger-long duration — and we couldn’t have found a better destination.
Proprietors Sarah and Paul are fairly new to the Ring’O — they only took over curatorship of one of BA2’s longest-standing watering holes in autumn of last year. But in the same way that Paul has already worked his magic (in more ways than one) at The Ale House on York Street, the couple have already re-established this popular hostelry as the proper neighbourhood pub it should be.
Warm, inviting and friendly from the get-go, the gentle buzz of live rugby on a couple of screens adds to rather than detracts from the chilled-out vibe — heck, even the large, friendly dogs dotted hither and thither underneath various tables aren’t in the slightest bit perturbed by the rise and fall of rucks, scrums and conversions so I’m definitely not going to be out of place sipping my thoroughly decent rosé in a corner, Maggie Smith style. I will eventually, however, need food if I’m to keep my Violet Crawley wits about me — and if you too need proper, hearty, really good grub to maintain your wit, look no further.
Chubby, pleasantly smoky Pigs in Blankets (they’re definitely not just for Christmas) and a massive pulled pork croquette in a pool of jus that I could easily have drank more of, through a straw. Elegantly hearty Chicken Supreme served with perfect mash. Malabar Fish Curry: a generous, pearlescent slab of hake nestled in a super-fresh, enticingly harmonious sweet/sour/punchy sauce and topped with a mahoosive chargrilled king prawn, resplendent in its shell-on glory. An intensely saucy Sticky Toffee Pudding and a decadent Chocolate Fondant, both of which defined the very definition of almost salaciously satisfying desserts. Oh, this was a Friday night dinner indeed – and one that would serve you well on any night of the week (okay, perhaps skip the puds on a school night?)
Throughout it all, I felt like I was properly out-out but without the kind of stress, pressure and high prices that being properly out-out can bring about; home-from-home with a buzz, cosy but convivial, lively but relaxing.
Whether you visit the Ring O’Bells for the food and stay for the vibe, go for the vibe and stay for the food, or simply drop by for a pint and stay for another one… chime in.
Okay, so Mike and I are more Magenta and Riff Raff than Brad and Janet and the light at the end of the route from Bear Flat to Combe Down that we’re searching for is a pop-up kitchen, not the gothic mansion home of a flamboyant Transylvanian, erm, scientist.
But then: crash, bang, wallop — we’ve bounced over a drop kerb! Now we’re flirting with the possibility of our own flat tyre to deal with, might we actually be caught up in the real life version of our own late night, double-feature picture show?
No. The tyre is fine, it’s not raining hard enough to warrant creating makeshift umbrellas out of newspapers and, in a sparkly little hut at the end of a cute little lane off one of Combe Down’s major thoroughfares, we finally reach foodie nirvana: chef Will Gillbard’s innovative pop-up Thai dining experience Raya’s Thai Thali.
One-night-only foodie events are currently more talked about in and around Bath than individual restaurants are. Collaborations between hosts and pop-up chefs from grab’n’go to full-on foodie support existing cafes, pubs and venues without the commitment of employing permanent chefs and adding to increasingly demanding overheads, while hob god maestros get to flaunt their fabulous thing at grass roots level — and Raya’s Thai Thali has a cult following at the spearhead of the revolution: food from a hob god maestro in grab’n’go format.
RTT regularly pops up in all manner of locations from suburban neighbourhood locations such as the Ex-Servicemen’s Social Club in Weston Village, Bathampton Methodist Church and Bathford Royal British Legion Club to established pop-up hosts including Picnic in the Park and the Village Cafe and Bar in Larkhall by way of pubs (the Fox and Badger in Wellow; The Scrandit in Bristol) and a regular stall at Green Park Station Market.
We popped out to pick up our RTT goodie bag from Combe Down Rugby Club where Will and his woks pop up every second Friday of the month. All is calm, all is bright at journey’s end: the moment we open our car door we’re met with a waft of intrinsically Thai aromas and there’s smiley Will himself at the epicentre of his calm foodie storm, stirring and frying and generally working his magic.
Our pre-order is waiting for us (and please note, pre-ordering is pretty much essential; on the evening we visited, RTT’s recently-unveiled new menu was already sold out) and our return journey home was, thankfully, uneventful. Our feast, however, most definitely wasn’t.
Two ‘small plates’ of Coconut Panko Crispy Chicken turned out to be not that small at all: mounds of sweet, succulent chicken thigh, still properly crispy and perfectly hot despite being transported home in covered tubs, supplemented by creamy coconut/satay sauce and invigorating pickles, sesame seeds and little flavour bursts of delicious little morsels of delicious stuff.
To follow (we kept our mains warm in the plate warmer — resourceful, yes?), complex, nutty and deeply umami chicken Massaman and a Thai Thali Bowl: a ‘little bit of everything’ including more of that Massaman, an abundance of robustly-flavoured, deeply umami Spicy Pork Krapow (also available as stand-alone option), crispy cauliflower, more of that chicken, more of that satay sauce (thank goodness, ‘cos I couldn’t get enough of it), more of those pickles and mounds of softly steamed .
This was a takeaway like no other: fresh, fragrant and flavourful, laden with intelligent balance and attention to detail, and still managing to look beautiful despite the grab’n’go format… all for less than £50 for a feast that would easily have served four normal appetites.
In the velvet darkness of the blackest night: Raya’s Thai Thali, lighting up everybody’s life.
Chef Rob Clayton has been doing his cheffy thing at his beautiful little brasserie that lights up George Street with radiant, fairy-lit fusion for 12 years. 12 years! In restaurant world — particularly in the current climate — that’s a massive landmark indeed.
Today, this cornerstone of Bath’s independent restaurant scene is wholly deserving of its local institution status — and, to celebrate that status, I recently talked to Rob for a feature published in the December issue of The Bath Magazine.
I’m fascinated by chefs and have interviewed dozens of them in my food-writing career, but talking to Rob is always an utter joy; few chefs I’ve encountered down the years are as ego-free, affable and good-natured.
“I just really, really love to cook,” he told me, several times throughout our conversation; “I like the creativity, I like the routine — I like having a job that I like to do. When you speak to people who hate going to work, or chefs who say they’re doing it for the money, that makes me really sad — I just don’t get it. Of course we all need money, but isn’t it nice when you earn that money doing something you love?”
And so our conversation rolled along as we delved into the past, analysed the present and shared a couple of predictions for the all-important future. We talked about Michelin stars, the vital importance of provenance… and Ernie! (and now you’re going to have to read the full interview just to find out who Ernie is…)
But what with The Prandial Playground majoring on Bath restaurant reviews, I believe it’s only fair to share a handful of highlights (of which there were many) of our most recent meal at one of Rob’s ‘kitchen’ tables… with extra-added flourish.
There are some experiences in life that represent pleasure, privilege and sheer joy all wrapped up in one glorious parcel — and eating at Clayton’s Kitchen is one such rare experience.
A starter dish of Pembrokeshire Little Haven Crab with a shellfish bisque sauce dotted hither and thither with all manner of oils and flavour-bombs was almost — but only almost — too beautiful to disturb with my fork, while a second starter of pan-roasted scallops — loads of ‘em, each and every one as voluptuous and juicy as a scallop can get — came resting on a sweet, nutty Jerusalem artichoke puree laminated with lemon oil and crunched up with apple and toasted hazelnuts, resulting in what could’ve been a perfect stand-alone lunch dish in its own right.
Following on in style… it takes a super-inspired chef indeed to lift roasted Cotswold chicken breast on cep risotto out of the beige/brown doldrums to spectacularly variegated heights, while perfectly complementing his gloriously fresh catch of the day (in this instance, a huge, fat sea bass) with pickled fennel, sauteed almonds, lobster sauce and toasted fregola can only be described as inspired.
On we went, waltzing through the heaven on a plate that is Rob’s Caramel Chocolate Mousse with salted caramel ice cream, poached pears and candied almonds while we made plans to return for more.
Like legions of Clayton’s Kitchen fans from “Lady so-and-so to groups of lovely, polite bikers in their leather jackets” (it’s all in the full interview, kids!) we will indeed be returning again and again… not least of all because the restaurant’s 25th anniversary, just over 12 years from now, will be a spectacular event; I already look forward to raising a glass to Clayton’s Kitchen with Ernie.
For him, it was Hawkwind in 1988. For me, the Chippendales, 1993. But by 2006, we (and our eclectic tastes) combined to create perfect harmony: Sparks, September 2006.
The memories came flooding back as we took to a table adjacent to the very same historic, sandstone steps that we once stood on while queuing for tickets for the box office at Bristol’s former Colston Hall, surrounded by Bristol Byzantine Victoriana in all its imposing glory… that nobody took much notice of, back then.
Today, the Colston Street frontage of the original venue has been restored to prominence with columns and a glass front in the original entrance space, where the gleaming, spacious all-day brasserie Colonnade compliments the vibrant live music hub that is the Bristol Beacon, the restaurant taking its name from the full-length, 7-column portico that now seamlessly slides into the Beacon’s impressive grand design.
A couple of nights ago, the legendary D.A.M Trilogy were playing at the Bristol Beacon for one night only (as Bowie himself did back in 1973, when he brought Ziggy to the west country). Now that our days of scoffing a pre-gig bag of chips from the Rendezvous on Denmark Street on a bench in the nearest bus stop are long since over, we made a very grown-up pre-theatre restaurant reservation to honour the occasion — and the Thin White Duke himself would most definitely have approved of our choice.
Refined wow-factor impact scales full contemporary heights at Colonnade. Gleaming glass; scrubbed-up, honey-coloured stone; panoramic interior vistas; bold lighting; marble-effect flooring; proud potted palms: it’s an exhilarating space indeed, further enriched by Head Chef Noah Chasteau’s own brand of foodie flamboyance.
Chasteau joined the Colonnade kitchen team as a Chef de Partie when the restaurant opened in January 2024 — and it’s easy to see why he so swiftly worked his way up the ranks: his menus reflect a clear passion for sustainability and ethical sourcing alongside the kind of creative genius and innovative flair that chefs with decades more experience might struggle to showcase.
But here’s the rub, for me: Noah’s menu is a Small Plates affair, a format that I’ve developed a deep-rooted aversion to for all manner of reasons, one of my main bugbears being that, when I go out to eat, I want to trust the chef to determine the pace and synthesis of my dinner rather than being left to create my own expensive mistakes. Colonnade’s fascinating array of dishes, though (circa 14-16 on the evening we visited) coupled with self-assured but still politely unobtrusive recommendations from our waiter allowed me to kick my scepticisms to the kerb, where they remained ignored and unattended for (almost) the rest of the evening.
When are chips not just chips? When they’re Pommes Anna chips: layer upon layer of thinly-sliced confit potatoes pressed into neat ingots of deep-fried indulgence, super-buttery beneath their super-crisp jackets topped with a parmesan snow storm and a smattering of truffle somewhere in the mix, and accompanied by a little pot (two pots, actually — we just couldn’t hold back) of ambrosial aioli. If Chasteau’s chips are definitely not just chips, his cabbage isn’t just cabbage either: it’s confited, and drizzled, and nudged hither and thither with all manner of enticing enhancements, while colourful carrots are served on a silky butterbean purée enlivened by sweetly smoky hot maple and uplifted by subtly briney preserved lemon — not just carrots, okay?
We had pork, too: neat slices of creamy belly complete with perfect crackling served flanked by a complex, intense burnt apple purée and red cabbage that told a pleasantly fruity backstory of its own. And oh, the lamb shoulder! The softest, sweetest, most robustly-flavoured incarnation I’ve ever encountered, the inherent richness of the meat intelligently offset by vibrant mint salsa verde and a carrot purée that grounded an exquisitely balanced little dish that, being so intensely-flavoured, would have been too big in large plate format but proved to be a flavour-bomb superstar of our mini mix’n’match selection.
The only slightly dissatisfying — and still, only very slightly dissatisfying — plate of our chosen array was the Salmon Tartare. Okay, so it came served in two almost ethereally frangible filo cases topped with shimmering jewels of trout caviar resulting in a tasty bite experience indeed, but £10 for what was ostensibly a couple of canapés didn’t quite hit the small plate metamorphosis peaks that the rest of our supper so gracefully ascended, briefly rekindling to my gripes about small plates.
But ah, so what? It’s not often you go to a gig and the support act proves to be as memorably impactful as the headline superstars. Dinner at Colonnade: a fantastic voyage indeed.
The Prandial Playground, Bath and Beyond... 