We headed to Cabot Circus to have a celebration meal. The place that was chosen was the Coal Kitchen.
Though it took me a while to work it out, the last time I had been to Coal, was over ten years ago, in January 2013, when it was called Coal Bar and Grill and I had a burger.
It is now called the Coal Kitchen. We had booked, but were still given a choice of tables. They have quite an extensive menu, but also a set menu. I went with the set menu and started with the chicken tacos.
This was followed by the Steak Frites from the set menu.
A 5oz minute steak served pink, garlic butter, with skin on fries.
The steak was cooked well and was pink. The garlic butter was quite strong, but complemented the steak. The fries were nice and crispy.
I finished the meal off with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and an espresso. The ice cream was nice, the coffee, not so much.
We headed to Cabot Circus to have a celebration meal. The place that was chosen was the Coal Kitchen.
Though it took me a while to work it out, the last time I had been to Coal, was over ten years ago, in January 2013, when it was called Coal Bar and Grill and I had a burger.
It is now called the Coal Kitchen. We had booked, but were still given a choice of tables. They have quite an extensive menu, but also a set menu. I went with the set menu and started with the chicken tacos.
This description from the set menu shows what it was supposed to be, two soft tacos, marinated chicken, lettuce, tomato, pickled chilli and harrisa yoghurt.
However not sure where the tomato, chilli and yoghurt went, I certainly didn’t have any on my tacos.
As a result they were a little dry, but I did still quite enjoy them.
Obviously they took the menu away after we ordered, so didn’t realise until I was posting a photograph of my food to the Instagram and copying the description, that I realised three components of the dish were missing. If I had known I would have probably asked about it.
Checking the Coal Chicken Instagram feed they actually had a photograph of the dish from the (new) set menu.
Well mine certainly did not look like that!
I do find it frustrating when restaurants (usually) chains, don’t follow the recipe for their dishes, resulting in this kind of experience. Had a similar experience with a hotel in Salford.
The real result is that it puts me off going back to the restaurant again. It had been ten years since I last went to Coal, it might be sometime before I head there again for something to eat.
So there I was in Cabot Circus in Bristol in the early evening, anticipating a visit to the cinema, but doing some shopping before the film.
I noticed that people were going into Krispy Kreme being given a glazed doughnut from the conveyer belt and walking out. So I went in and I got a free doughnut from Krispy Kreme. They appeared to be giving away their excess stock.
In the past I haven’t thought highly of the Krispy Kreme doughnuts, they’re okay, but nothing special. However who am I to say no to a free doughnut.
Actually this one was still warm and very fresh. It was rather nice, quite enjoyed it.
We visit Wagamama quite a bit compared to other places, however we have never been to the branch at Cabot Circus. It was a bank holiday and the place was busy and we had to queue (as you can’t book tables at Wagamama).
We were kept informed about the wait, I think partly to put people off, but we continued to wait. Eventually we were shown to a table and we looked over the menu.
I did consider having the shu’s ‘shiok’ chicken which when I went to Wagamama in Manchester was off the menu. I also thought about the spicy miso mackerel kokoro bowl. In the end I decided I would have a katsu curry. I chose the vegan yasai katsu curry. This was aromatic katsu curry sauce, vegetables in crispy panko breadcrumbs, sticky white rice, side salad, japanese pickles.
The vegetables were aubergine, sweet potato and butternut squash. I did think that usually I would have gone with the chicken katsu, but I what I wanted from the dish was the curry sauce, the rice and the texture of the crispy panko. The chicken wasn’t necessary and I liked the idea of different vegetables.
I did enjoy the dish, though I wasn’t enamoured with the curry sauce, maybe I should have gone with the hot spicy version. The panko vegetables were very nice, I liked the crunch and you could taste the vegetables.
To accompany the curry I had a Singha beer, which was nice and fresh. I would have preferred the beer to be colder though.
As for the service, I was less than impressed. I know at Wagamama the food arrives when it is ready, so dishes won’t be served together. Normally I am alright with this, but this time the first two dishes arrived quite quickly, the other two took much longer to be served. By the time the final dish arrived, we had nearly finished our food. We ordered some more drinks, and they spent a lot of time on the bar, before they were brought to the table. There appeared to be a fair few staff. I think part of the issue was they were being inundated with online takeaway orders which was swamping the kitchen.
Last November went out in the evening to Cabot Circus, with a plan to do some shopping and have some pizza at Pizza Express.
I had tried to book a table online at Pizza Express, but the system was saying no availability. So when we arrived at Cabot Circus, I went in person to book a table.
We then went off and did some shopping.
We went to Pizza Express early, but they had a table. We sat down and looked over the menu. For a starter we ordered gluten free dough balls.
For my main course I went with the Mushroom & Truffle Romana Pizza.
Mushroom lovers, this one’s for you. Mixed mushrooms, béchamel, mozzarella, Gran Milano cheese, garlic, rosemary, a generous splash of truffle oil, parsley and a double pinch of black pepper come together in an indulgent vegetarian delight on a Romana base.
Took their time to bring us our main courses. We think our order actually got lost and had to be done again.
When my pizza (finally) arrived, it looked great.
I did enjoy the pizza, the white base was tasty and there was a lot of mushrooms on the pizza. I enjoyed the truffle oil. I think if I was making this for myself I would use a variety of mushrooms for flavour and texture.
I did enjoy the pizza, I think the service could have been better though.
At the beginning of May we went out for a birthday meal. Having had a nice meal at Zizzi in April we decided to visit them again. We once more sat outside, the weather was better in May than it was in April.
We had booked our table and though we had to wait for a while, well we had arrived early, but we were then shown to our table. I looked over the menu, and thought about what I would have.
I am never sure if I like the concept of the calzone or not. I have ordered them over the years, sometimes they have been great and other times not so much. This time I decided that I would go down the calzone route. There were a couple of choices on the menu, but I went for the Calzone Pollo Spinaci. This was a calzone stuffed with roasted chicken, speck, spinach & mushrooms, in a creamy mozzarella & Bechamel sauce, topped with coppa ham.
The food took a little time to arrive, but I was quite impressed with the presentation and size of the calzone.
I am not so sure this was a pizza, with the creamy filling it felt a bit large a really large pasty, but made with bread rather than pastry. Having said that, I did like the filling. I quite like mushrooms and spinach, and the creamy sauce was really nice.
The coppa ham on top seemed to be an afterthought, and it didn’t add too much to the dish in my opinion, but it did make the calzone look nicer.
One of our regular haunts, Zizzi at Cabot Circus has been closed for refurbishment. I got an e-mail this morning that they have finished their refurbishment and have re-opened.
When I was in Bristol last week I looked in and the main difference was the addition of booths and changes in furniture. The layout wasn’t too different.
We will probably now visit again in 2022, once restrictions have eased.
It was September and we had spent the day in Bristol and having missed lunch we went to Zizzi in Cabot Circus, one of our regular haunts as they do a really nice gluten free pizza.
Though the place looked empty, they initially said that they were full (well all the tables were reserved). However as we arrived in mid-afternoon, if we were there for just an hour then we could have a table. We only wanted a main course, so decided that was okay.
I am guessing that though there were plenty of free tables, the challenge was more of a staffing issue than a seating problem.
We looked over the menu and I did quite fancy a pizza. I wasn’t sure what kind of pizza I wanted and there were a fair few choices.
In the end I chose the simple Rustica Margherita.
Sometimes I quite like simplistic dishes. In this case I really enjoyed the pizza, it was cooked well, the base was nice, crispy with some doughy parts. The tomato sauce was nice as was the mozzarella.
The service was efficient and we all enjoyed our food.
I have been reflecting on some meals I had out over the last few years which never made it to the blog. Sometimes I just run out of time to write up a review and sometimes I forget to write up the meal.
We went for lunch at Zizzi in Cabot Circus back in August 2019.
Though I have pizza most times I visit Zizzi, on this visit, not being overtly hungry I went with pasta. I had the Ravioli di Capra. Goat’s cheese & spinach-flecked ravioli with a tomato sauce, super green pesto & pine nuts.
Delicious but not a huge dish, so finished quite quickly.
With the easing of lockdown restrictions, restaurants from the 12th April were allowed to open for outside eating only. To be honest I wasn’t that excited about this, however with my birthday on the 13th we made the decision to go out to eat to celebrate. Last year on my birthday we were in the full lockdown and there was very little we could go and do, so had a lovely celebration at home and we had a fish supper with stir fry. So this year we were thinking could we do something different and could we go out to eat.
We booked a table at Zizzi at Cabot Circus in Bristol. This is “outside” but is in many ways under some kind of cover as well. So if it did rain, it shouldn’t have too much of a negative impact on the experience. We did wrap up warm though.
We had a warm if slightly confused welcome from the manager and we were shown to our table.
The paper disposable menus provided a wide choice, but I did quite fancy pizza so I went with the Rustica Primavera which has goat’s cheese, artichokes, spinach, fire-roasted peppers, olives, mozzarella, sunblush tomatoes & super green pesto.
It looked great when it arrived.
I really liked the freshness of the spinach, rocket and fresh pesto on the pizza. Though I like goat’s cheese, I actually think that I might prefer this pizza without it. The dough base was nice, and as it was stretched some areas were thin and cripsy, whilst other parts of the pizza were thick and doughy. I liked the olives and artichokes along with the tomatoes and peppers.
