Everybody loves a good critical savaging. My colleague over at the Observer, Jay Rayner, has written books and stage shows about the delicious shiver of schadenfreude that accompanies the hatchet job. And it’s true: give a place a kicking, and the delighted squeals of “Ouch!” pile up on social media, the web hits go bananas and everyone’s happy. (Apart, of course, from the poor saps who had the temerity to serve the curdled creme brulee to the restaurant critic.)
So I’m sorry to be the Pollyanna girlie delivering another rave. I’m sorry that this tiny neighbourhood restaurant presses every single one of the right buttons, doesn’t miss a single beat, fails signally to treat me appallingly, and sends me out into the night beaming from ear to ear like a great, Somerset apple brandy-soaked eejit.
It’s the classic Mom’n’Pop, if Mom’n’Pop were cool kids Sam Leach and Beccy Massey. After running supper clubs in Bristol, they took to some of London’s finest restaurants to bone up, Leach training also as both butcher and baker (and what a thing of joy his bread is: crisp-crusted and springy, served with the sunniest, yellowest home-churned butter). Now, after doing the place up themselves, they have a permanent home back in Bristol, in a former offie in Southville. That you can now get “pork, chicken offal and damson pie” on Raleigh Road would seem to cement the area’s reputation as “Lower Clifton”: the pie is like something from Les Halles in Lyon, a slice of finely crusted almost-pâté, stiff with fine meat, framed by the dark, sweet fruit and served with a tangle of nicely pugnacious rémoulade. “Enough to feed a Somerset sheep farmer, too,” sighs the pal.
Birch is a plain little place: big windows, Formica-topped tables and white walls offering little distraction from what’s on the plate. There are flowers from the couple’s chunk of land that also supplies much of their produce. I think there might be a shelf somewhere. But that’s it. What warmth there is radiates from Massey, a huge welcome accompanied by a recommendation for something whipsmart from their wine list: on our visit, an additive-free syrah from Gilles Azzoni in the Ardèche at £3 a glass. Yep, £3.
The food is, simply, a joy. The place has already been colonised by regulars unable to believe their luck. And rightly so: I’d give my eye teeth to have this as my local. Our meal starts with winkles to wiggle out of inky shells and dab into mellow, scarlet cabbage vinegar, and finishes with a dense chestnut and chocolate tart of architectural perfection.
There isn’t a single hiccup along the way, even in such incidentals as buttery, super-short cheese straws. Leeks are softened into pale green chiffon and draped over wild sea bass dotted with meaty little brown shrimp. There’s cauliflower – these days, there’s always cauliflower – fired into an extreme, toasted nuttiness that’s heightened with almond butter and nibs, and scattered with silky, salted pollock. More of that homemade butter is put to extraordinary use in my main of roe haunch: bathing some just-crunchy cabbage, enriching a pool of turnip puree and crisping a square of pressed, mandolined potato that oozes outlandish yellow when you cut into it. That potato. What. A. Thing.
The cooking bears the hallmarks of some of Leach’s previous gigs at St John and 40 Maltby Street in London – the adherence to fine, often home-grown produce, served so it sings happily of itself – but it’s done with a feel for sheer eating pleasure that’s occasionally lacking in his more unflexible chums.
Is this all too much loveliness for you? Scratching my head really hard for something to whinge about, all I can manage is that the venison – as beautiful a piece of meat as you’ll come across: fat, rosy barrels with a dark, sticky crust – could have done with longer hanging, but that’s the sort of observation that should see me wheeled off with port and smoking jacket to forever moulder in the dustier removes of the Club for Anal-Retentive Fossils, Mayfair.
Bristol’s food scene is one of the best in the UK, but even in a city so blessed, Birch stands out. Leach and Massey clearly love what they’re doing, throw themselves into it with every fibre of their beings, and seem determined to share the love with us. What an absolute bummer, eh?
• Birch 47 Raleigh Road, Southville, Bristol, 01179 028 326. Open dinner only, Weds-Sat, 6-10pm. About £30 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 8/10
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