Previous editions of this blog will show how when I am on holiday in the West Country, I like to board the train for Bristol and lunch at one of the city’s Michelin listed/starred restaurants. I would rather like to go to one of the profusion of well-thought of restaurants in the more southerly part of Gloucestershire, not - you understand - South Gloucestershire which is certainly part of the West Country region rather than the West Midlands, perhaps to Stroud or Cirencester, but using public transport as I do the journeys are too complicated or too long and my dog, left in my Weston super Mare hotel would be abandoned for far too long. So the destination is Bristol, just 20 minutes by train from Weston though journeying to one of the city’s suburbs can take much longer.
I chose, this time, to visit Michelin-starred Wilson's (one of two starred restaurants in Bristol) in the quite distant suburb of Redland but the hourly train from Weston was a direct one and in all it was a journey of about fifty minutes from one station to the other. I arrived an hour early to ensure a timely presentation of myself at the restaurant and this gave me chance to explore Redland itself which was everything I might have expected it to be. If ever a place oozed middle class affluence this was it. Extravagant, large, sometimes quirky three storey Victorian houses which would not have been out of place in Edgbaston were everywhere you looked - admittedly many of them were probably houses in multiple occupation with young people, students, offspring of the well-heeled socialist middle class, the heirs to Blair - and a carefully scruffy high street which declaimed its role as the centre of a Bristol Bohemia, home to a vast nest of hipsters, with more micro-coffee shops, small independent restaurants, an artisan bread shop (belonging to Wilson’s) and other independent businesses not necessarily selling anything useful. The people looked like I would have expected - scruffy bearded men and thin, dowdy women all dressed organically as though they were throwbacks to the Bronze Age.
Wilson’s itself is run by its Chef Patron, Jan Ostle, on an intense ethical basis, the ethics covering all sorts of aspects of running a food establishment. The ethical approach, on which I will not enlarge, fits in nicely with the suburb in which the restaurant is located and I am sure the locals eat there with unworried consciences. In practical terms, the result of all these ethics is that the restaurant uses only vegetables and fruit obtained from its own farm run by Mary Ostle, Jan Ostle’s partner, in the nearby village of Barrow Gurney and menus are put together on the basis of what is available from the farm. Meat, fish and other elements of the menu are obtained from close suppliers who share the Ostles’ ethics and while Michelin was awarding green stars, Wilson’s was the recipient of one.
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| Jan Ostle,Chef Patron |
I had booked an early lunch. The restaurant was almost empty when I arrived but as lunch proceeded, served in good time by the enthusiastic and helpful front-of-house staff, more and more diners piled in, many in their hipster uniforms, presumably mostly denizens of the neighbourhood. After taking my seat I was given a short explanation of the way the restaurant is run particularly on how much of the food originates at the Ostles’s farm.
There was choice of a five or seven course tasting menu and, if one wished, a wine flight or even a non-alcoholic drink flight which seemed to me to be pushing the idea a bit too far but, I noted, something that quite a number of these Bronze Age diners were choosing to indulge themselves in. The menu was only written on a blackboard at the other end of the restaurant which meant I could not read it without going and scrutinising it immediately next to a pair at a table who were already eating and who, I am sure, would have loved me towering over them squinting at the blackboard while they nibbled at their amuses gueules and quaffed their kombucha. For Heaven’s Sake, restaurateurs, if you are going to itemise your menu on a blackboard and on nothing else at least make it accessible to all diners without causing any awkwardness.
In all events, I chose the seven course menu; I was particularly lured by the red mullet for some reason, and besides, if you’re somewhere special and may never have the opportunity to return, it’s a pity not to try everything that is on offer though I drew the line at the non-alcohol drink flight and opted to start with a local, somewhat pleasurable Bristol gin.
Soup seemed like a good idea to start off an autumn menu, especially a creamy squash soup enlivened with lemon verbena and fermented squash and fish. It was a good idea but it would have been an even better one if it had been hot rather than lukewarm.
After the soup came the amuses gueules. These were rather good - there was a remarkably delicious liver parfait with a crunchy texture and a sweetness derived from beetroot powder alongside a wafer of trout tartare with trout roe. In addition there was an excellent homemade taramasalata and some very fresh inhouse baked sourdough with homemade butter.
The red mullet which had made me choose the seven course menu came next. This was a small square of the nicely cooked white fish which had just the right texture. Unfortunately I was not really aware of the flavour of the mullet because there was such a lot else going on in the dish.There was yet another foamy, creamy sauce with musqée de Provence squash and a welcome chilli spiciness which lingered on the front of my tongue. There was chard which added little more than colour to at least make it a pretty dish I very much enjoyed the flavours - it was very tasty - but the fish had been rendered irrelevant by the extra work performed on this dish and that, alas, was vaguely disastrous.
The main fish course wbich was part of the five course menu was an impressively sized piece of dry aged Chalkstream trout which was well prepared and accompanied by celeriac, the flavour of which was indiscernible, of sweetly pickled celeriac, and a Florence onion broth which was also sweet. The broth was very enjoyable but I thought there was too much sweetness being offered up to the trout and to which the fish was not anywhere near being accepting of.
The course of fallow deer, cooked exquisitely, returned a sane simplicity to the meal. The gorgeous, almost dreamlike, perfectly tender venison was served with a slice of moreish offal sausage as well as the excellent smoky flavour of charred cabbage, beetroot and a beetroot purée. A very admirable dish.
But time was moving on. The intermediate course of farm herbs (chervil, a strong and welcome hit of tarragon) and dill icecream with soft Italian meringue was a delight which I wished to savour for the rest of the day but the dessert itself was less satisfactory being a rather confused mixture of all sorts of elements bringing in ‘yesterday’s bread’, the crispiness of buckwheat and the flavours of thyme and apple cider vinegar. Oh for a simple and perfectly produced crisp and fresh tarte citron or an autumn apple tarte tatin. I like a restaurant that employs a pastry chef to produce … pastry.
And so back to Weston, walking once more through the green and leafy streets of Redland to the railway station, observing the green and leafy residents of the place. The restaurant had rendered up some fine food with many enjoyable flavours but had shown a regrettable tendency to overdo things so that the principle elements of one or two dishes were almost an irrelevance.
29 October 2026
Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛
The mean streets of well-heeled Bohemia -
Redland high street -
A pre-lunch latte at the cosy Ruby Jeans cafe where the colour of the cake matched the decor -
More cafes and independent dining establishments -
Wilson’s’ bakery shop -
Interesting domestic architecture -
