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Overview

Millenium Square Photo - Bristol, England

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While not as famous as London, as pretty as Bath or as iconic as Stonehenge, Bristol, to me, is much more enjoyable to visit. There are ruined churches, sailing ships and pirate taverns galore for the history buffs and plenty to stimulate the eyes, tastebuds and minds of anybody with more contemporary interests.Bayside Bristol’s early history is strongly connected with its role as one of England’s major trading ports. Famous Bristol mariners include explorer John Cabot, who reached America in 1497, and Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.A less romantic part of Bristol’s maritime history revolves around its participation in the slave trade. Between 169...Read More

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Bristolian Cafe

Restaurant | "The Bristolian cafe"

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My guidebook described The Bristolian Café as "the place where the Montpelier counter culture gathers for breakfast, a roll-up and a cup of tea". "Could be interesting" I thought and resolved to keep an eye out for it as I was walking around that part of town looking for graffiti and works of stencil art.When I stumbled across the Bristolian, its apple green storefront was glowing in the morning sun and about half a dozen people were sitting around enjoying drinks and a chat. I hadn’t had coffee for a couple of hours so the decision to abandon my wanderings for a little while wasn’t too difficult.As you enter, there’s a low sofa to your right, a long counter direc...Read More

My guidebook described The Bristolian Café as "the place where the Montpelier counter culture gathers for breakfast, a roll-up and a cup of tea". "Could be interesting" I thought and resolved to keep an eye out for it as I was walking around that part of town looking for graffiti and works of stencil art.

When I stumbled across the Bristolian, its apple green storefront was glowing in the morning sun and about half a dozen people were sitting around enjoying drinks and a chat. I hadn’t had coffee for a couple of hours so the decision to abandon my wanderings for a little while wasn’t too difficult.

As you enter, there’s a low sofa to your right, a long counter directly in front of you and the main part of the café is along to the left. I grabbed a newspaper and headed for the end table. After sitting for a while, I remembered I wasn’t in the Czech Republic anymore and might have to go up to the counter to order. I’d planned to just have a quick coffee, but I felt comfortable as soon as I’d walked through the door and the chocolate cake looked amazing.

"A large white coffee and a piece of this chocolate cake please". "Av a sit loov, Ah bring it t’ya"

One of the reasons that I felt comfortable right away was that the Bristolian reminded me a bit of my grandmother’s kitchen. The food preparation is done behind the counter and the smells of sausages, bacon and eggs thicken the air. The floor is covered with classic black and white checked linoleum and the laminex table with the round corners and the ribbed chrome trim around the edge was straight from the 1970’s.

The Bob Dylan album playing in the background kept up the same theme and when the coffee and cake came out they were on pleasantly unfashionable and mismatched china. The coffee was quite good without being spectacular, and the cake was solid old school artery hardening concoction of butter, sugar and cocoa. Just what the doctor ordered (you to stay away from).

I was reading the newspaper for quite a while, but didn’t feel at any time that the staff were eager for me to move on and free up the table. The shelf of well-used books, games, and kids toys suggest that lingering in the Bristolian is a pretty common activity.

The Bristolian reminded me a little of an old fashioned corner milk bar; the type that was in every neighbourhood back in the days before supermarkets discovered 24 hour trading. The milk bars that I remember were a bit of a focal point for a neighbourhood, a meeting place as well as somewhere to stock up on milk, bread and treats for the kids, and it seemed like the Bristolian was playing the same role in this neighbourhood.

Call in there if you get the chance, and meet the Bristolian aunt or grandmother you didn’t know you had.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on February 7, 2008

Bristolian Cafe
2 Picton Street
Bristol, England BS6 5QA
+44 117 942 2233

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Mud Dock

Restaurant | "Mud Dock Cafe"

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The Mud Dock café was one of the places I was most looking forward to visiting in Bristol. The combined cafe and bicycle store occupy a brick warehouse near the swing bridge behind the Arnolfini. The bike store is on the ground floor and the café up above, with a large multi-level terrace offering views over the floating harbour. Entrance to the café is via the external staircase that leads up to the wooden deck.Inside the sliding-glass door you’ll find yourself in a large open space of exposed brick and wood. A huge circular window frames a view of St Mary’s slender church tower and early on a Decembe...Read More

The Mud Dock café was one of the places I was most looking forward to visiting in Bristol.

The combined cafe and bicycle store occupy a brick warehouse near the swing bridge behind the Arnolfini. The bike store is on the ground floor and the café up above, with a large multi-level terrace offering views over the floating harbour. Entrance to the café is via the external staircase that leads up to the wooden deck.

Inside the sliding-glass door you’ll find yourself in a large open space of exposed brick and wood. A huge circular window frames a view of St Mary’s slender church tower and early on a December afternoon the sunshine was streaming through the big windows to the south and bouncing a beautiful golden light off the polished floorboards. I could see how the mud dock cafe could be so popular.

When I went to the counter to order I asked for a white coffee and a piece of pecan pie. "Sorry Sir, we’re out of the pecan". That bothered me for two reasons; I really like pecan pie and there wasn’t much else that took my fancy, so that was reason one. The second thing was that I really don’t like being called ‘sir’ Probably the barman meant no offense, but I certainly don’t look or behave like a ‘Sir’, and sometimes when I’m addressed that way it feels so formal that’s it’s almost mocking. It’s perhaps more about the tone than the substance but I think it’s unnecessarily and coldly formal and it bothers me.

Anyway, I wasn’t really there to make friends, so I asked about the Apple ‘latisse’ and was shown a small piece of strudel with diagonal cuts along the top. For 3 pounds. That’s about six dollars. "I’d just like the coffee please."

The coffee was quite good, and sitting down to drink it gave me a good chance to notice some things that I’d missed when I’d entered, like the cycles hanging from the rafters as decorations and the way that the newly constructed parts of the café (bar and bathrooms) had been skillfully blended in with the old. I also had a look through the menu and discovered that I could have ordered pastas, like the penne with aubergine, lemon and basil, for about 12 pounds, or Lamb rump on bean cassoulet with a herb crust and rosemary jus for 16.95. The meals sounded good, but were a little rich for my budget, and that’s even before the compulsory 10% service charge, which the menu stated would be added to all meals.

My impression of the café is that it would once have been a wonderful place, a fun, informal and innovative mix of bike store and café that unfortunately started to believe its own publicity and popularity and forgot how it became popular in the first place.

While there’s a lot to like about the Mud Dock café and I’m glad that I went, one visit was enough thank you very much, Sirs and Madams.

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Member Rating 3 out of 5 on February 7, 2008

Mud Dock
40 The Grove
Bristol, England BS1 4RB
+44 117 934 9734

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Fair Cup (A)

Restaurant | "A Fair Cup"

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One of my first questions in any place is always "where’s the best coffee in town?" and when I asked my sister-in-law, who lives in Bristol, she started to tell me about a place called "A Fair Cup ", which is a caravan that parks down on the pedestrian strip in central Bristol. When my brother and sister-in-law lived in Corn Street, Simone would call in every morning as she walked to work, and became such a good customer that they renamed one of their coffees "Flat White, in honour of our antipodean friends". I was a bit skeptical about the best coffee in town coming from a caravan, but it had been a long time since I’d been able to ask for "a f...Read More

One of my first questions in any place is always "where’s the best coffee in town?" and when I asked my sister-in-law, who lives in Bristol, she started to tell me about a place called "A Fair Cup ", which is a caravan that parks down on the pedestrian strip in central Bristol.

When my brother and sister-in-law lived in Corn Street, Simone would call in every morning as she walked to work, and became such a good customer that they renamed one of their coffees "Flat White, in honour of our antipodean friends". I was a bit skeptical about the best coffee in town coming from a caravan, but it had been a long time since I’d been able to ask for "a flat white, thanks mate" and couldn’t resist the opportunity.

When I got to "the centre" as Bristol’s’ recently redeveloped pedestrian area is called, the van was easy to spot. Above the fountains, behind the sails monument and watched over by the statue of Edmund Burke, was a silver van with six or seven round tables spread around in front of it. I marched straight up to the sign that said "Coffee with a conscience", ordered and settled down at the nearest table with my first flat white in ages.

Now, there’s nothing terribly special about a flat white; it’s kind of like a frothless cappuccino, an overly-milky macchiato or a not-milky-enough latte. It’s just one of those everyday things that you take for granted while you’re at home and don’t realize that you miss until you unexpectedly find it in an unlikely place.

Anyway the coffee was good, and at 1.65 the price was right. I also had a croissant for 85p and on a later visit tried one of the excellent muffins for 2 pounds. In addition to coffee, a fair cup also serves a variety of tea, hot chocolate and Whole-Earth soft drinks.

As you may have picked up from the name the ideals of fair trade are central to the way A Fair Cup does business. All coffee, tea, chocolate and sugar is fair-trade; sourced from sustainable plantations where the agricultural workers are treated fairly and paid a living wage. In addition, all coffee, tea and milk used by the business is organic, free of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, growth hormones and antibiotics.

As is often the case with businesses that’ve paused to consider their impact of their activities, A Fair Cup’s social conscience overlaps with concern for the environment and they promise that whatever Co2 emissions they can’t reduce, they will offset. The cups for take away coffee are biodegradable and the absence of patio heaters is explained by notices suggesting "do as the northern Europeans do and grab yourself a blanket". On one visit to A Fair Cup, the staff even brought me a blanket without me having to ask for it.

I don’t think I looked cold, but maybe they assumed that Australians were always cold when in England?
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on February 7, 2008

Fair Cup (A)
Central Promenade
Bristol, England

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Pieminister

Restaurant | "Pie Minister"

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Pie Minister is a great place for a quick lunch in Bristol. As the name suggests, they serve pies. If you’re not familiar with pies, they’re hamburger-sized cases of pastry with fillings of meat and/or vegetables. Served hot, pies are a simple, hearty and very popular snack in Britain and other commonwealth countries like Australia and South Africa. While Australians tend to like their pies with lashings of tomato sauce (ketchup), British pies are usually come with gravy and mashed potato or peas, and that’s the way Pie Minister offer them at both their locations.The small Pie Minister outlet in the covered market bui...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on February 7, 2008

Pieminister
PMHQ, 24 Stokes Croft
Bristol BS1 3PR
+44 117 942 3300

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Bordeaux Quay

Restaurant

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The restaurant Bordeaux Quay is probably not the kind of place I would have gone for a meal if left to my own devices, but my brother had been working there and wanted to go in for dinner.The owners and management of Bordeaux quay are among Bristol’s’ most enthusiastic adherents to the principles of the slow food movement, which originated in Italy and suggests that food should not only taste good, it should be good for you, food producers should be treated fairly and the welfare of farm animals and the natural environment should be respected. Most obviously this translates into a preference for free range meat and ...Read More

The restaurant Bordeaux Quay is probably not the kind of place I would have gone for a meal if left to my own devices, but my brother had been working there and wanted to go in for dinner.

The owners and management of Bordeaux quay are among Bristol’s’ most enthusiastic adherents to the principles of the slow food movement, which originated in Italy and suggests that food should not only taste good, it should be good for you, food producers should be treated fairly and the welfare of farm animals and the natural environment should be respected.

Most obviously this translates into a preference for free range meat and eggs and seasonal vegetables grown organically and sourced locally, but there are also less obvious and more creative expressions. When I was in Bristol late in 2007, the owners of Bordeaux quay had commissioned the sailing ship the SS Matthew to travel across to France and return with a shipment of the new season’s wine. A romantic notion with a nod towards centuries of Bristol tradition, surely, but also an environmentally friendly solution and an effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The restaurant is housed in a restored two storey warehouse with tall windows that look out across the water towards the Arnolfini. At first glance the interior looks like just another minimalist contemporary design, but when you settle in, it’s surprisingly inviting and warm. Brendon pointed out that most of the timber, including hundreds of square metres of flooring, was reclaimed or recycled. On closer inspection there were lots of clever touches like solid wooden butchers’ cutting blocks used as coffee tables, furniture constructed from reclaimed timbers and an interesting arrangement of ink-stamped wine cases hanging above the bar.

By now, I was starting to think that perhaps Bordeaux Quay was my kind of place. And then the food came. I’d ordered the least expensive thing on the menu, the mackerel with winter greens (for 10 Pounds), and it was absolutely delicious. I never found out precisely what winter greens were, but I gather that it’s something like nettles or wild growing spinach. In any case, it and a squeeze of lemon complemented the fish beautifully and thinking about it now is making me hungry. My brother chose the venison pie which he said was excellent and Simone had rabbit in wine sauce (both around 13 Pounds),

Bordeaux Quay itself (the actual quay) is named for the ships that would pull in loaded with French wine. The barrels would be unloaded at the dockside and then rolled along the maze of tunnels under Bristol and end up as far away as the cellars of Avery’s the wine merchants, which is up on the hill above Bristol cathedral. So that the heavy barrels could be rolled downhill, the floor of the tunnels were cut at a slight decline, and the buildings at the other end used winches to haul goods up from the cellars, which could be three or four floors deep.

With not just a theoretic preference for sail power over diesel, but the commitment to put that preference into action, the existence of mysterious tunnels, clever use of reclaimed timber, a demonstrable respect for the environment, and top notch food, it turned out that Bordeaux Quay was my kind of place after all.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on February 7, 2008

Bordeaux Quay
V-Shed Canons Way
Bristol, England BS1 5UH
+44 (117) 9431200

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Arnolfini

Attraction | "The Arnolfini"

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The Arnolfini is Bristol’s contemporary art museum. Not only is it an important focus of contemporary cultural life in Bristol, its location overlooking the water at the head of Narrow quay makes it a prominent symbol of the waterfront regeneration that has transformed Bristol over the last few years.The beautifully restored old warehouse that houses the Arnolfini sits at the head of a piece of land that almost juts out into Bristol’s floating harbour. A statue of ocean explorer John Cabot looks out across the water at the point and two very different bridges approach the Arnolfini from either side. ...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on February 7, 2008

Arnolfini
16 Narrow Quay
Bristol, England BS1 4QA
+44 (117) 917-2300

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Red Lodge

Attraction | "The Red Lodge"

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The Red Lodge is a merchant’s house dating from the late 1500’s. Having passed through the hands of many owners and twice serving as a school, it’s now open to the public as a museum-quality display of historic furniture and architecture.The lodge is on Park Row, which is an extension of Queens Road that curves around behind the Wills tower at the top of Park Street. The exterior is unremarkable but steeping through the front door is like stepping into the England that you know from classic romantic novels or historical dramas starring Judy Dench or Cate Blanchett.We (my brother, sister-in-law and I)...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on February 7, 2008

Red Lodge
Park Row
Bristol, England BS1 5LJ
+44 117 921 1360

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Chasing Banksy

Story/Tip

Stencil clubber Photo - Bristol, England

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Banksy is possibly the world’s most famous graffiti artist. He’s been variously described as an "elusive art terrorist", "shadowy", "a streetwise scourge of the establishment" and has painted and stencilled across several continents, most famously on the Palestinian side of the Jerusalem wall. His work has also hung, albeit briefly, in some of the major galleries of the world, including the Tate, the Louvre and the New York Metropolitan. While Banksy’s identity remains a secret and he rarely gives interviews, it is certain that he’s from Bristol. While his work is gradually...Read More

Banksy is possibly the world’s most famous graffiti artist. He’s been variously described as an "elusive art terrorist", "shadowy", "a streetwise scourge of the establishment" and has painted and stencilled across several continents, most famously on the Palestinian side of the Jerusalem wall. His work has also hung, albeit briefly, in some of the major galleries of the world, including the Tate, the Louvre and the New York Metropolitan.

While Banksy’s identity remains a secret and he rarely gives interviews, it is certain that he’s from Bristol. While his work is gradually disappearing from the city’s streets and lanes, some of the larger paintings have become prominent and popular local landmarks.

Up on Stokes Croft, the Mild, Mild West mural; a teddy bear aiming a Molotov cocktail at riot police, faces one of the main roads as it approaches central Bristol, and tells the story of heavy handed police treatment of the soft and cuddly Bristol dance music subculture that nurtured artists like Massive Attack, Roni Size and Portishead.

A more recent mural faces the bottom of busy Park Street as it approaches College Green and the Bristol cathedral. Five or six metres above ground level, a fully-clothed and angry man peers out the window while his semi clad wife tries to calm him and her as yet unseen lover dangles by his fingertips from the window sill. If you’re anything like me, you’re first reactions will be "ha, that’s funny", quickly followed by "how the heck did he get up there?"

Another Banksy stencil that has survived in the centre is on the side of the Thekla, which is an old German warship that’s now used as an entertainment venue and is moored just upstream from the Arnolfini and the Mud dock café on the floating harbour. From the other side of the river you can see Banksy’s grim reaper rowing along in a canoe

Finding more Banksy stencils will require a bit of walking and the area around the teddy bear mural, just north of the centre up to Picton Street, is a good place to start. Not only will you spot Banksy works like the statue of liberty dancing the can-can and holding an assault rifle, there’s also plenty of other good graffiti in the neighbourhood.

Some of the other graffiti is obviously just as political as some of Banksy’s work, but there are lots of styles and some of the pubs and nightclubs have invited graffiti artists to decorate their buildings. The result is a colourful and vibrant neighbourhood that’s a delight to walk around, especially if your wanderings mean that you end up near the Bristolian café on Picton Street and you have time to pop in there for a cuppa.

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Bristol Journals

Orright me Babber?