Another New York mainstay for me at this point, from all the way back in 2019. I cannot resist the lure of the Buvette waffle sandwich, so much so that a) I am eating this all together too close to lunchtime for my own good, and b) I am dragging Alasdair along to really the only place this holiday where he really cannot have anything to eat. I am willing to burn that much goodwill for it. Two beautifully crisp but fluffy waffles, sandwiching bacon, gruyere, a fried egg, and maple syrup. An absolute smorgasboard of flavour profiles that mingle beautifully. I am and remain obsessed. Maybe one day I’ll come back and actually be sat at a table rather than the bar, but it’s all fun.
One of the great pleasures in life is having friends in places you like to go on holiday. I get to catch up with Alex and Shuyang, and also enjoyably get to introduce them to Alasdair and vice versa. We end up at Spicy Moon, not far from their apartment in the East Village, a veggie/vegan Chinese joint. Still pretty full from the earlier bagel, we go for the lunch deal, with some fried vegetable dumplings, in a luminous green wrapper, and the vegetable ramen which is absolutely unnecessarily stuffed with noodles. Like, too many noodles. It’s delicious, laden with tofu, bean sprouts, and other veg. I devour the broth, even if I simply cannot approach finishing the rest. We make a move and go see the changes Alex and Shuyand have made to their apartment, making the most of our brief overlap.
You can’t go to New York and not get a bagel. Surely. I have long been thinking about the bagel Alex picked up for me on my last visit a couple of years ago, and there’s a Brooklyn Bagel Company outpost not far from the hotel, so we head over for a quite sizeable breakfast - for as much as I’ve been reminisicing about that previous bagel, I’d forgotten just how substantial they are. I go for a pretty much classic - smoked salmon and a scallion cream cheese, with some capers and red onion, on an everything bagel, lightly toasted. It is perfect, and I will later pretty much not eat lunch. Alasdair finds they have a tofu-based vegan cream cheese, so gets to enjoy that on a blueberry bagel, and we both have an orange juice which really does hit the spot.
After a 7 hour flight and navigating our way from JFK to our midtown Manhattan hotel, we need a bite to eat - mostly to keep us up to a normal hour to avoid horrendous jet lag. Alasdair has found Planta Queen, a very short walk from the hotel, which is an all-vegan Japanese restaurant (a general New York/American theme: restaurants tend to be all or nothing on this, either fully plant-based or with minimal adjustments possible, as opposed to the UK’s pretty consistent multiple options in any restaurant). It is also Maki Monday (a decidedlt different concept to Maccies Mondays at work in the old days), with $9 maki rolls all round. I go for the Hawaiian, with pineapple and avocado, served with a mango aioli. I think I prefer Alasdair’s torched and pressed avocado rolls with a miso truffle glaze. The bao slider of crispy fake chicken is pretty good, but the star of the show is the 1000 layer crispy potato, with sour cream and caviar (take the quotation marks around the above as read). Both too full and too tired for a dessert, we take our leave to finally crash.
Once again, I enter the fine dining stylings of BA’s premium economy offering. I’m not going to do the same conceit as last time. Sparkling wine to start, many other alcoholic drinks as we go. A perfectly acceptable ricotta mezzaluna dish, with a perfectly acceptable salad to start, and an actually quite nice passionfruit panna cotta for dessert which really does feel like you’re eating a tropical Solero. A chicken pastry thing for a pre-landing snack which does the job. It’s just nice to have actual cutlery, to be honest.
A nice opportunity to catch up with Zac at St Nick’s market on a Friday lunchtime. With all the available options, we’re feeling a big box of meat. Low And Slow it is, once we’ve snaked through the always impressive queue. I have my classic order - the pork pitmaster fries, loaded with pulled pork, cheese (early in the process such that it is not a topping and suitably starts to melt under the heat and weight of everything else), pickles, crispy onions, and a dual drizzling of the house barbecue sauce and their pickleback mayo. There’s even a superfluous chopped herb smattering just to make sure you’re feeling at least something green has entered your system in the process. It’s delicious and too much and at least three days’s worth of your recommended sodium intake, but it hits the spot.
Frankie’s, once a brief pop-up in Kask Kitchen last year, is now semi-permanently established in the space, running two weeks of every month (with the other two being reserved for other pop-ups and events). This is music to my chicken-and-waffle loving ears, having been to that initial pop-up and been salivating over the prospect of ever having it again ever since. This is a trip long in the planning with Tom, trying to co-ordinate our availability with Frankie’s itself, but here we finally are. It is sheer indulgence in comfort food form, filling a gap that genuinely I don’t think anywhere in Bristol is doing right now. The menu is straightforward - four variants on chicken and waffles, and a few sides. In this instance, Tom and I are not looking for variety, and go for the maple syrup variant each. No regrets: a smooth, uncrystalline waffle topped with three generous pieces of fried chicken, the meat juicy and tender but maintaining its coating perfectly. A rich maple syrup is cut through with chilli jam and a heavenly bacon butter that implores you to spread it evenly such that every bite has some, but yet also to concentrate it on a single bite such that you might fully experience its depth of flavour. We completely needlessly pair this with the frickles and the parm million layer potato, drenched in marinara sauce, pesto, and parmesan - needless but necessary nonetheless. For dessert, the zeppole, fluffy Italian donuts served with, in our case, one portion of strawberries, raspberries, whipped cream, and Italian meringue, and one portion of whipped marscapone, coffee syrup, and caramel, making a glorious tiramisu-esque concoction. My body absolutely crashed about 90 minutes later, but it was so worth it.
It is a bank holiday weekend - no, better, the Easter bank holiday weekend, an extra day on top of it all - and Alasdair has had a very important week of having a major job interview, and that is something to be celebrated and rewarded. And what better celebration and reward than good food? We’ve yet to pay a visit to Pasta Ripiena this year, and their lunch deal is insanely cheap for what you’re getting. Three courses, £26, let’s do this. Alasdair has his own specially prepared vegan menu, and I am slumming it with the normies. A beef crudo bruschetta sets the tone, beautifully seasoned with a hint of horseradish, the parmesan shavings doubling down on the umami rather than trying to counteract it. For my main, a casoncelli of venison with a peppercorn sauce, with some dried and pickled porcini mushrooms setting it off nicely. I barely have the self-discipline to wait for the inevitable slice of focaccia being offered up for sauce mopping, but I try. For dessert, a mint panna cotta with confit of rhubarb - elegant and simple, necessary after all of the above. And then, for some reason, an espresso martini on Good Friday - it’s what he would have wanted.
We have an embarrassingly small budget for a team meal at work, but the beauty of being a manager is that we’re double counted - I get to take my team out for a meal, and in turn I get to be taken out by my manager for a meal. The system works. So the CDI leadership team heads out to the pub that is a four minute walk from the office, to sample the £12.79 lunch set menu. It is exactly what you could expect. It’s fine. It’s fried. It absolutely goes through me. Beer battered mushrooms to start; beer battered halloumi to follow; and a thankfully un-beer-battered apple pie with custard for dessert. It’s all adequate, but it’s a nice catch-up with everyone, and it was a couple of hours not at my desk. That’s a win for a Tuesday.
Making the most of being near London, as I do, I’m able to fit in a quick lunch with Andy before my train back to Bristol. With the constraints of “being done by 2.30” and “next to either Kings Cross or Paddington”, Andy goes on the hunt and finds us Hoppers, which he’s been to once before. It’s a flying visit, so I don’t get to fully sample the menu, but dive straight in with a black pork curry and a titular egg hopper. They are not particularly up front about the spice level, and that’s not a problem per se, but oh boy did it hit me when I wasn’t expecting it. Lovely! But unexpected. The pork was beautifull tender, and the curry itself still flavourful betwixt the heat. A thicker curry than is maybe scoopable by a light pancake, but that’s my problem I suppose, at the end of the day. We have enough time, amidst an always lovely catch up, to have a Watalappam pudding, a caramel-y, coconut-y, bread-and-butter pudding-y concoction, with a candied nut and coconut cream.
One of my favourite London secrets is Carousel, a wine bar nestled away on Charlotte Street which upstairs is its own thing, but downstairs acts as the host for weekly guest chef residencies from across the world. It’s a favourite of Milly’s and mine, and an ideal fallback for when we can’t think of anywhere else we’d like to go when catching up. This time: Andy and Tiff from The Catbird Seat, a 20-course tasting menu gaff in Nashville, TN, presenting a cut-down version of their menu with a mere 7 courses. It’s phenomenal from the off, with a selection of snacks including a walnut cookie (that looks like a walnut!) filled with chicken liver paté and a blackcurrent jam that from the first bite tells you what you’re getting tonight: in good ol’ US of A fashion, this meal is going to be in your face. There is no room for subtlety here, you are getting big, bold, punchy flavours. But what saves this from getting tired is that there is variety in just how each course is punching you. The smokiness of the bacalaito, the wonderfully dense salt cod fritters; the citrus of the blood orange granita topping the oysters; the hot sauce cutting through the foie gras and cheese tart; the umami of the pork loin balanced by the richness of the whey sauce and roe; the creaminess but lightness of the Pimms and rhubarb sorbet. The treat of Carousel is that it’s all being plated in front of you at a giant kitchen island, and that Andy and Tiff are coming around and having a chat with you. They are genuinely interested in how you are finding it and happy to talk about what’s going on behind the scenes. Throw in a wine pairing for me and some soft drinks for a recuperating Milly, and this is the ideal backdrop for a good old catch up - and hopefully for many more in the future.
Dad, for some reason, suggests grabbing a pizza when I get back from Bristol because, and I quote, “Mum will be out doing ballet” and that is reason enough. Zio’s is a comparatively new (by Harpenden standards) pizza place on the corner of Station Road, and I recall having had it as a takeaway some time ago when returning home. We dine in, with a beer and a pizza, nothing fancy. I have a pizza with buffalo mozeralla, which is certainly well-apportioned, toppings-wise, but to the shame of its structual integrity. The problem with adding buffalo mozerella is that it doesn’t melt at the same rate and therefore adds moisture and unevenly distributed heft. The dough itself (in the Neapolitan style) is a bit yeasty, a bit bland. It’s not a bad pizza, by any means (is there any such thing?), but I’ve had more fulfilling ones.
The day after the work social, we have our own little Thunderball team meal - the sun is out, the skies are blue, it is all together too warm. We originally intend on going to Squeezed, as is the consensus amongst the group, but that is unexpectedly closed. We pivot, as all good agile scrum teams do in the face of adversity, to Salt & Malt for some classic Friday fish and chips. The 7 person order is complex and inevitably takes a couple of corrections to get everything right, but in the end we are sat by the harbour and all enjoying ourselves. A large cod and chips for me, with some tartare sauce and some mayo, and it’s just a lovely time. I feel like I’ve had better chips from them before, but no complaints. We head off for a stroll and an ice cream, in the knowledge that work is paying in both time and money. Cheers, HCOCTO.
It is time for our long-awaited first big work social of 2025, and it is to Flight Club we return for the first time in a few years. I remember it as being really good fun last time (the origin story of the baby guinness becoming the HPE house drink), and it is moreso than I recall. Admittedly, by the time the food comes out, I have already knocked back a glass of white and two salted caramel espresso martinis, so, you know, factor that into my judgement. The food is not quite a matter of quantity over quality, but my god there is a lot of the former. It just keeps coming out! Platter after platter of bruschetta, and falafel & hummus, and pork belly, and cauliflower tempura. Then the pizzas! All of which are fine, even according to my correctly snobbish Italian team mate. The desserts of macarons and brownies are a tad underwhelming, but none of us are particularly mindful at this point. I move onto the water quite early, as it is still a Thursday, but even before my second drink I committed a semi-major faux pas, so here we are. Would it be a work social without that?
I have successfully project managed getting us in and out of the IKEA storefront getting the things we went in for, and very little extra, in under 45 minutes, with minimal scope creep. This is rewarded by getting lunch pretty much the moment the IKEA café switches away from breakfast. What else could I have but the meatballs, complete with mash, gravy, peas, and lingonberry jam. Plus, y’know, some garlic bread. And some Daim cake. And some whipped cream. That all comes in under a tenner and is all actually quite good. I feel nostalgic for my one holiday to Stockholm having the real deal of the meatballs, and for the Mallorcan holidays where Daim cake was in ready supply, and isn’t that the sign of good food? Just ask Proust.
Look. Listen. I have no problem with vegan food. I order it, I eat it, I even cook it. But this was… disappointing. Nestled away on East Street and picked to meet our friend Jenny and honorary nephew Coby over lunch, VX is a proudly vegan café with vegan fast food. I went for the breakfast burrito, which nominally had some sausage in it, but I barely reached the point it was buried in there because the beans and the cheese was so offputting that I was really pushing through. The chips were oddly seasoned and the mayo - which, given we have pretty much nailed vegan mayo as a species at this point, shouldn’t have been the problem - was adding a weird tinge to the whole thing. Stick to Oowee Vegan for your vegan fast food needs; I know I will.
I try not to eat just before doing a gig, and as such am always thrilled when a) a venue does food and b) I am on early enough that the kitchen hasn’t closed by the time I’m off. Both conditions are satisfied at The Greenbank, getting to gig with Alasdair and Jordan Brookes. I go for a classic margherita pizza, and it is fine. The cheese is more elastic than flavourful, and it’s still a bit molten, but I enjoy it in the post-gig buzz regardless.
It’s our second anniversary! We choose to celebrate at Bulrush, a long favourite of mine and a new experience for Alasdair, and I think the first time we’ve gone together to a Michelin starred restaurant in Bristol. It is a pure delight from the off. As with all good elevated dining, there are the most complicated snacks you’ve ever seen in your life, and when the first thing you eat is a savoury carrot XO donut, I mean my god. An eight course tasting menu, spanning asparagus, plaice, and a beautiful scallop. The “main” course, as it were, is one of my favourite things you get at places like Bulrush - one key ingredient prepared five or six different ways. In this case, venison, done as steak, sausage, tartare, and more. Served with a black pudding danish no less! I overindulge and go for the optional cheese course, served with a PX-infused date chutney and some honeycomb, and by the penultimate bite of my petit fours madeline, I am stuffed. The non-alcoholic drinks pairing is a treat alongside this, with highlights being the rosé cordial and the non-alcoholic espresso martini, which Alasdair describes as being effectively a Michelin star milkshake. As if that’s a bad thing. An absolute treat.
A hectic Saturday morning in town and I am absolutely knackered, and I think in the moment that the answer is food. The harbourisde market is in full force (if slightly relocated due to the renovations on the fountains) and I capitulate to Gurt Wings. I eschew my usual (loaded tater tots) for just some chicken tenders, which are much bigger than I anticipate. I am defeated easily and early. They’re fine, but it’s all too much.
Eating at OPPO for the first time this year. I don’t care to get into the argument whether Detroit pizza is really pizza - at the end of the day, it’s dough and it’s cheese and it’s some kind of sauce, and why can’t we all just get along? I do like the Barrelhouse’s magic mushroom one, which has no tomato and is suitably doused in balasamic glaze, which I pair with a slice of the classic pepperoni, with a garlic and dill mayo. I do miss when they used to have the Tuesday deal, not least with the inconsistent but always appreciated act discount, but we move.
I am having a stressful time at work and Alasdair spots the Instagram story from Tess that there’s Friday evening availability. What a lovely way to end the week at my favourite restaurant in Bristol, maybe the world (and, I suppose I should add, my favourite person). It’s the kitchen table menu, of course it is. One of the many things I love about BOX-E is, having been an uncountable number of times, getting to taste the subtle differences that Elliot applies to his favourite bases. It wouldn’t be BOX-E without some hake, but seeing exactly how he’s done it this time (berlotti beans, salsa verde, and a lovely bit of pickled fennel) is the treat. I indulge in the wine pairings (it’s Friday after all) and it is a wonderful evening of de-stressing.
Our friend Hugh, bored in the absence of Emily being in Andover, texts to see if we fancy the pub. We do! But, dilemma - we have been napping, rather than making dinner. So to Hen & Chicken we go, where we will be able to both go to the pub and eat some food. I go for what I had at Christmas, the parpadelle with venison ragu, and it is once again quite nice. I also go for the brownie, which is very “gastropub brownie”, for better or worse. In other words, I am reminded that I can do better myself, but the price I pay for not having to do so is this.
We bravely set out as early as possible on a Saturday morning (around 11am) to Stokes Croft so I can buy myself a new guitar - suffice to say, this is not a common occurence. But if we’re going up all that way, we might as well make a morning of it and get breakfast somewhere. There are many options, but we are gamblers and decide to see what happens if we chance our arm at The Crafty Egg, known for its interminable brunch queues. Luckily, as we are just two of us, we skip past the large (and now pissed off) large group of presumed students who have been clearly waiting some time. I am going hard today - straight into a massive chocolate milkshake and a “Meaty Poutine”. They do, bless them, try to garnish it with a few chives and miscellaneous green stems, but that’s very much trying to make the essay longer by changing the margins. Sausage, bacon, cheese, fried eggs, and a homemade brown sauce get thrown together into a skillet with some roast potatoes, with a side dish of just gravy. It’s all a lot, and I do not finish because I can feel my arteries close in on themselves. The potatoes aren’t quite cooked enough, which makes it a bit tough to get through, but the condiments of the sauce and the gravy are wonderful.
A last minute cancellation of OPPO means 1) Alasdair and I have a new spare evening, 2) we need something to eat because we would have eaten at The Barrelhouse, and 3) I’m on the wrong bus. All of this can be remedied, though, by going to Lucky Strike! Clever us. Lucky Strike was, if I recall correctly, originally a cocktail bar which then did a joint pop-up with the folks from Tomo No Ramen - a good start. At some point earlier this year, that collaboration ended (amicably, by all accounts) but they continued serving ramen. It seems an identical menu to when we went under the Tomo regime. Who am I to argue. This time, though, I go for the chicken katsu and fair play they’re nailing it. The sauce is the perfect thickness and spiciness, the breading on the chicken falls off in just the right way. A bit overloaded on the pickles, but that’s by the by. I’m a tad less impressed by the chocolate mousse for dessert, served with a blood organge compote and sesame tuile, but I have very high standards for that. A perfectly pleasant change in plans.
I have had a varying relationship with Six By Nico over the last seven years. Back in Edinburgh in 2018, in only its second outpost (before it had lowered itself below Hadrian’s Wall), I was enthralled. The concept was simple - a themed six course tasting menu, changing every six weeks. And for a mere £28! I mused that if they’d open one in Bristol, I would probably go every six weeks just to check out each theme. Well, many, many other outposts later, they have finally reached Bristol. In the meantime, I have been a few times in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and London, and the Grace Dent review for The Guardian (“the Pizza Express of fine dining”) lives rent free in my head. I now treat it as an experience rather than a meal. Inevitably, for the Bristol opening, they are doing The Chippie, which I have now had simply too many times, because it’s their go-to when opening a new one or they’ve just run out of ideas. It’s interesting that it has changed subtly over the years, but not by much. It’s, yes, very much the Fisher Price version of haute cuisine - you cannot move for espumas and foams and gels. It’s, as a result, fine. The food prep exists on a conveyor belt in a way that is trying to ape the precision and reproducibility of Michelin star cooking but ends up closer to a McDonald’s assembly line. They’re not convincingly on top of Alasdair being vegan with the snacks, which is concerning to begin with but settles once the first courses come out. The thing is this - I don’t know how well Six By Nico can survive Bristol. The price is no longer £28, it’s £44. They’re now much bigger on the up-selling, with more snacks, add-ons, optional courses, cocktail pairings, etc. If I add in the cheese course for £9, that gets you to seven courses for £53. For 2 pounds more, I can go to BOX-E, arguably one of the best restaurants in Bristol, and have the same courses but immeasurably better, more interesting, and made with love and personal care. The same is true for any number of other places. All in, with the snacks, extra course, and the cocktail pairing (fair play, surprisingly strong), you’re knocking over a hundred quid. Will I be back at Six By Nico? Sure, why not. The mood might strike some time. But 24 year old Sam’s vision of collecting every theme like they’re Pokemon feels a very long time ago indeed.
One of the places where I absolutely know my go-to order and I have no intention of changing it. A trip to the pub with Matt whilst Alasdair is away to catch up on our respective work troubles, whilst we enjoy admittedly over-priced 2/3rds (or, I do, as Matt is driving) and for me, the loaded chicken fries with gravy. The things are drowning in it, and I love it. The chips are sufficiently crisp by themselves that they are not overly soggy-ed by the gravy; they are generous with the chicken, meaning a plentiful ratio; the gravy is hot enough to melt the cheese; and the spring onions on top genuinely do add a little something, a crunch, rather than just being garnish. Long may this continue.
A celebratory sending off breakfast for Clo as she embarks on her indefinite travels around South America and wherever else she finds herself. I tell myself on the way in that I’m not having anything big. This is a lie - I end up with the full English. It’s actually quite a good one, in the pecking order of things. Black pudding is present; tomatoes are not. The bacon is proper streaky bacon stuff; the sausages are actually meaty. I could have done with a few more beans, but the hash browns are top notch. It’s a good, solid breakfast, and there’s nowt wrong with that.
My friend Ruth is briefly back in Bristol and is taken with exploring North Street more now I’m down here, so Alasdair and I invite her out to Cor for the evening. Alasdair spots the person who hired him for his communications job in healthcare working as a waitress, and so the tone for the evening is set. As Cor has a strong vegan menu, and as it’s a small plates/tapas place, it’s up to Ruth and I to share. I guide us through some Cor classics (the lemon cannelini beans with caviar, the potatoes with café Paris butter) and try some new options (the crisp celeriac with polenta mash, a stunning savoury goats cheese canele), before being too full to really eat much beyond the dark chocolate truffles for dessert. Lovely to have such a place a 2 minute walk from the house.
We’re doing the Watershed’s seasonal Valentine’s Day pub quiz tonight, so I’m here a little early to grab a quick bite to eat. I am not feeling a burger, I have been metaphorically burnt by the fish and chips too often, and I’m more hungry than just some chips. I try, for the first time, the penne puttanesca here, which is perfectly adequate. I do think it’s obscene to charge £1.90 for cheese as an add-on, though. I do really like the Watershed - I used to describe it as my favourite place in Bristol - and the food is normally anywhere from good to slightly better than good, and I’m aware that’s damning with faint praise but here we are.
On the gold-paved streets of London for Stage/Fright, we return to BAO Soho, this time knowing it is sensible to have a reservation in advance. Somehow, though, this doesn’t really improve our experience. We’re still left queueing behind people who are trying to walk in; once we’re in, we’re forgotten about for a good 15 minutes without even water. I know it’s not normally that bad, we’ve been before, but it’s a shame. To some degree, I’m repeating my order from last time, finding a range of the bao buns and some of their other small plates. The food, distinct from the service, is very good, and it does almost make up for it. The baos themselves are, as you’d hope from the name, the highlight - a confit pork and a beef short rib both really hit the spot, the fried chicken a bit let down by the (presumably) less traditional sesame bun but still delicious. The pig blood cake with egg yolk is delightfully difficult to eat as it disintegrates, and the sweet potato fries with plum ketchup are deceptively moreish. Honestly, though, the highlight is the pineapple float, with a salt crystal laden Yakult foam. That’s the thing that stayed with me most from our first visit, and I’m vindicated in having it again.
We seem to basically rotate between Pazzo, BOX-E, and Bianchi’s for major days like New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day. This time, it’s Pazzo’s turn to host us and my god have they put together a set menu that is simply banger after banger after banger. A classic Bianchi’s Group aranchini as the snack, with wild garlic and pecorino. From there, the taleggio rarebit, so beautfiully rich but cut through by the shallots. The piece de resistance is the spaghetti alfredo with a guanciale and garlic chicken Kyiv (which, fair play for putting this much garlic on a Valentines menu), but let us not underappreciate the innovation of the tiramichoux for dessert, draped in a coffee caramel sauce. We are seated within earshot of the bar, and Dom is getting his hands dirty, so across the room we call for drink recommendations, and end up with a custom cocktail for Alasdair - god bless that man. Round it off with an espresso martini and some truffles, and what a valentine’s night.
A quick bit of sustenance during the Lupe pub quiz - I go for the chicken karaage loaded waffle fries. They are fine! The chicken is mouth-roof-cuttingly hot, and the waffle fries then collapse a little under the weight of it all, but it does the job well enough.
A warm refuge from the cold after wandering around the Bristol Light Festival. Some old favourites (fried chicken with a beautiful soy and honey glaze, katsu sauce-d fried which looked initially stingy on the sauce but soon revealed a deep well underneath the surface), and this time trying the Korean corn dogs, doused in chipotle mayo and a sweet ketchup. The doriyaki, with a green tea filling and cherry couli, hit the spot for dessert nicely.
Grabbing a quick bite after walking Alasdair over to a gig on Wapping Wharf, I have to pick and instinct takes me to Pigsty for the first time in just over five years. I figure I can get in and out in 20 minutes, a theory which is confirmed when I enter to find I am literally the only customer at 7.30 on a Thursday night. Oh boy. The Proper Cow burger lives up to its name - the bacon is a tad much and too crispy (from someone who really does prefer it crispy), but the duelling chimi mayo and chipotle honey ketchup call it a hard-fought draw, the patty itself is rich and deep, and the fries are nicely seasoned.
We braved Cribbs on a Saturday in January and true to that experience, we had a Burger King in the food court. Where 20 years ago I might have told you that Burger King was superior to McDonald’s, that has long since passed - the burgers are practically atomic, the chips few and far between, and this time when I chose to splurge beyond a basic combo meal, they couldn’t even correctly give me onion rings. Ah well.
A quick bite to eat before Alasdair’s preview as part of the (don’t rant, Sam, don’t rant) Bristol Comedy Festival. I do like a banh mi; I’m not an expert, but I don’t think fried chicken is necessarily the most traditional filling - but still. It’s good stuff. It’s well-adorned with veg and chilis, but it’s over-stuffed and the bread is a little too tough, or at least insufficiently brittle, to avoid the filling going everywhere upon bite. The fries a good, if a little overly paprika’d.
I was doing so well, but I was so hungry as I returned from the Watershed that temptation overtook me. The Mucker remains one of the best burgers in Bristol (and, believe me, I’ve checked). It’s the bacon and caper aioli that does it, so much so that I get extra on the side for the ancho fries. The lemonade always hits the spot - the classic for me, although it was a treat to overhear multiple people question what echinacea lemonade is. I remember when these burgers were impossibly wet to eat; how they managed to reduce that whilst keeping it as delicious is a scientific feat of our age.
Grabbing a quick bite to eat after the train up to Birmingham. I note they’re now selling the MOTH cocktails, but alas, Dry January. I have my normal order - the Shackmeister, a perfectly unhealthy cheeseburger with a very nice, creamy, tangy sauce and crispy shallots; the crinkle-cut fries; and a lemonade, a little less nice than usual. Equally, the burger a little overdone on the edges. But, did the job and hit the spot and I’d prefer it to a McDonald’s any day.
A suitably cheap set menu for a section lunch at work. I play it safe with what I assume Bella Italia can not go too wrong doing - garlic doughballs to start, a chicken milanese for the main, a brownie for dessert. They are all the Fisher Price versions of those things - recognisable enough for a child to point to, but uninspiring.
Not the platonic ideal of my standard order of a house burger (today, a slightly over-toasted bun and under-chees-ed patty), but it’s always something of a treat to kick back on the sofa with this before a film. The chips are surprisingly good, or at least hit some specific spot. The construction of the burger appears to be different every time, so it’s nice to add a frisson of chance into the mix.
Gone are the heady early days of the long queues to get in here - it’s not too late in the day and it’s comparatively quiet. Killing time between being in town and Nosferatu at the Watershed, we figure that Tonkotsu’s boast of the importance of the 42 second ramen means we should be in and out quickly. Less so than you’d hope, but here we are. It’s still up there for me (although not the best in Bristol), with a delightfully creamy base, and an extra egg for ol’ me. Chicken karaage on the side is beautifully done likewise. We don’t have time for an ice cream sando, but next time, next time.
Maddie is trying to fit in as many social engagements as possible before leaving for Seattle, and I am delighted to abet. We go for lunch with Alasdair at Oowee, all of two minutes down the road, which is dangerous when there’s an £8.95 lunch deal and the frequency with which I work from home these days. I try not to make it a Friday regular. Today, though, I eschew the lunch deal and splash out on a Big Cheese - a patty and baconaisse-spread bun practically glued together by a mix of American and Swiss cheese (forever chasing that high of the original Moor Burger, Please from Burger Theory), with some Marmite waffle fries on the side. It is all too much, and absolutely cannot become habit.
I enjoy a café trip on New Year’s Day to walk off the hangover. This used to be Flour House as a staple, but now I live quite far from there, it doesn’t quite seem worth it. We strolled down North Street to take in the options and settled on Tin Can. And so 2025 begins with their house baked beans on toast, with added hash browns and sausage. I object - genuinely - to paying £3.50 extra for a single, solitary sausage, and it genuinely is not worth it. The sourdough toast retains just about enough bite post-bean-slathering, and it’s nicely topped off by the herb oil. This won’t - I hope - be the best thing I eat in 2025, but it’s a suitable start before an abandoned walk round the park.