Telephone: 0117 925 5577
Address: Hotel du Vin and Bistro, The Sugar House, Narrow Lewins Mead, Bristol BS1.
Dinner for two, including wine and service, around £90.
The first Hotel du Vin and Bistro I visited was the original one in Winchester, some four or five years ago, on an evening when my wife and I were mourning a great, personal tragedy. Forgive me if I don't go into detail; I may be a hack down to the ragged, bitten ends of my fingernails, but that doesn't mean I am willing to invade my own privacy. All you need know is that, by rights, we should have been in a darkened room licking our wounds that evening. Instead, we had gone out for dinner.
What stays with us is what a lovely evening we had. In our family's folklore, and every family has its own myths and legends, the Hotel du vin and Bistro in Winchester is a place that makes every thing seem a lot better. The dinning room had a rustic bohemian feel that did not seem too much the product of artifice, and the food, cooked by a chap in a bandanna who went on to be awfully big on daytime TV cookery programmes, was assured and funky.
The Winchester place felt like an unrepeatable original. The owners disagreed. First came a Hotel du Vin in Tunbridge Wells. Next came the branch in Bristol, a bigger, sturdier operation which, unlike the original where the restaurant was really the point, is as much a hotel as a bistro. A month or two back, they opened an even larger one in Birmingham.
One of the most pleasing trends of recent years has to be the spread of smart, sassy boutique hotels like these across the cities of Britain. The estimable Malmaison chain is probably the best known, but there are also new ventures in the west country from Alias Hotels, the smooth operators behind luxury family hotels like Moonfleet Manor. Similarly in Edinburgh, Jonathan Wix, the creator of the brilliant Leeds hotel, 42 The Calls, has recently helped open the Scotsman for the Regal Hotel Group. One benefit of these boutique hotels is that they are forcing the soulless multis to reconsider the whole way they go about their business.
The other benefit, and the reason for me going on about it, is that these places invariably bring to the town a new restaurant. And so to the Hotel du Vin Bristol, which is situated in an old sugar warehouse close to the centre of town. As with Winchester, they have managed that neat trick of making the new look old and lived in. There is a broad, dimly lit bar with a flagstone floor and loads of marvellously saggy old sofas. Beyond that is the bistro, which has something of the faux Parisian about it, down to the nicotine yellow shade of the paint on the walls.
As to the food, which is drawn from the modern bistro hymnal, it is more than workmanlike and in parts very good. The pricing - starters £6, main courses around £14 - is, I think, a little over-enthusiastic; they could shave off a quid or two.
To deal with the least impressive dish first, my companion ordered squid tempura with remoulade to start, which did the job, but not much else. My starter, a warm salad of smoked eel and lardons was, however, terrific. The bacon was fabulously crisp and the dressing was good and sharp, to cut through the outrageous richness of the eel. For his main course, my companion had the fillet of sea bass which came with bok-choi and what was described as aubergine caviar. It was an exceptionally generous portion of sea bass, expertly cooked, and the aubergine mush had a fine, aromatic smokiness to it.
My duck confit was exactly as I like it: perfectly crisp outside and fully rendered. It came on an equally crisp potato galette. There was also a particularly fine side salad. We had no space for pudding but the interesting list included an apple and mixed berry jelly terrine and a vanilla and praline bavarois with marinated cherries.
As to the doorstep of a list from which our choice of wine came - a ripe St-Emilion, as you ask - it is equally as good, if not better, than that at Winchester. What's more, you can go and look at all the wines, because the glass walled store is just off the bar area. Someone has clearly thought about the presentation in there and it simply enhances the experience. That's the thing about the Hotel du Vin group. They think about the details. And it makes a difference.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
