At its peak in 2018, Bristol had five Michelin-starred restaurants. Two belonged to Peter Sanchez-Iglesias: Paco Tapas and Casamia. There was Wilks on Chandos Road, Bulrush a little further down the hill and The Pony and Trap just outside the city, all of which held Michelin stars.
There was a portfolio of delightful little bistros in the form of Bell’s Diner, Birch, Adelina Yard and Wallfish. Wapping Wharf had been open a year, home to the likes of Root, Box-E and Gambas, and was starting to gain traction. Our corner of the West Country was known as a dining destination, arguably one of the best - if not the best - in the country outside London.
And then the bubble burst. Within eighteen months, a flurry of Bristol’s best had closed their doors or changed hands, citing personal reasons, landlord woes, financial troubles. Birch was the first to go in the summer of 2018, and by the time Covid was threatening the closure of all restaurants, Wallfish, Bell’s and No Man’s Grace had all followed suit.
Covid finished what the market had started. Between 2020 and 2025, four of Bristol’s Michelin-starred establishments either closed, lost their stars or changed to the point Michelin no longer recognised them.
So what happened? While we may never know for certain, we can speculate. Many of the above restaurants were serving a similar, modern European small-plates menu, often with ingredients sourced from the same suppliers. Copy and paste does not make for an entertaining dining scene. There wasn’t enough differentiation for a city of 470,000. Bristol diners will go out, but they don’t want near-identical menus three nights a week.
We also mistook positive press for structural resilience. Jay Rayner’s February 2018 video for the Guild of Fine Food praised Bristol as one of the best food scenes outside London. At the time, the city was also a frequent destination for national critics - far more so than it is today.
We were punching above our weight - something you can only do for so long without a true destination restaurant. Casamia came closest, gunning for two stars that never materialised. Perhaps, as a city, we were quietly relying on a national draw that never arrived.
And so, when it came to restaurants, Bristol emerged from the pandemic almost a different city entirely.
But charred ground creates fertile land. The shoots that emerged in the early 2020s are now maturing — particularly on Chandos Road, now undoubtedly the city’s Michelin hotspot. Wilsons holds a star, Little Hollows a Bib Gourmand, and Dongnae is an “inspector’s favorite (SIC)”.
But Dongnae is not packed out as it should be, especially at lunchtime when they have a ridiculously good value lunch menu for just £24 a head. Most operators will tell you demand remains soft, and macroeconomic headwinds aren’t helping.
The Scrandit on Bristol’s steep and historic Christmas Steps launched in 2021. It’s a veritable cabinet of curiosities pub with a revolving door of pop-up kitchens, and it acts as an incubator for new talent. The Scrandit is pop-up first; it’s not like Carousel or any other wine bar that occasionally has a guest chef in. At this little spot, pop-ups are baked into the DNA - there’s a different chef in the kitchen every weekend and without them there is no business.
The Scrandit has played host to chefs cooking from countries otherwise poorly represented in Bristol and indeed the UK; Filipino, Greek-Cypriot and Cambodian to name but three. The last of those in particular shows just how significant The Scrandit - and this incubator culture in Bristol - is for the wider UK dining scene. Barang’s Tom Geoffrey ran many of his early pop-ups at The Scrandit and is now wowing Londoners with his residence above The Globe at Borough Market, with the likes of David Ellis, Joel Golby and Marina O’Loughlin all calling for a permanent incarnation in national reviews.
Where The Scrandit leads the charge others in the city, such as Interlude Coffee’s ‘Picky Bits’, are following suit, creating safe spaces for chefs looking to test ideas, build a following and start generating some revenue.
But if Bristol wants to become a world-class dining scene — something I do feel is within reach — we need to stop the copy-and-paste approach, which is still rife, and focus on supporting start-ups and boosting diversity. Restaurant groups need to stop opening near identical concepts a mere 20-minute walk away from their other sites.
We’re great at casual, owner-run bistros, but we also need to attract a destination restaurant. Pete Sanchez-Iglesias has stated his desire to reopen Casamia, and Bristol would be his first choice of location, providing he could find the right site. But then there’s the catch-22 situation of having to sustain a really high-end restaurant before it becomes a national destination. We can’t all be Bonheur by Matt Abé, which debuted in the Michelin Guide with two stars last month.
As for demand, journalism plays a vital role in getting bums on seats. It’s our job as journalists to connect local people with great independent restaurants; to try and turn them away from the lure of Pizza Express vouchers and Wagamama mass marketing into somewhere that’s truly grassroots. But media attention is often a sugar rush. A rave review might fill a dining room for a month; it doesn’t guarantee sustainability. It’s our job to shine a consistent light on the great stuff going on in our cities, and tell people that they really are worth travelling for.
And not just the Michelin-fodder either; Bristol has a wealth of amazing Chinese restaurants for example owing to our large population of Chinese students. Sri Lankan and Middle Eastern are also very well represented but in sites that are unlikely to make it onto any kind of London-based list’s radar. Bristol may not have one particular destination restaurant yet, but we’ve got a whole host well worth a significant detour.
The last crash hurt — chefs lost businesses, staff lost jobs and the city lost confidence. But it also stripped away complacency. The new Bristol feels less beige, more experimental and, crucially, more collaborative. If we can resist the temptation to replicate what worked once before, if we can support the incubators as fiercely as the Michelin hopefuls, and if we build restaurants designed for longevity rather than accolades, then the next chapter will see Bristol reclaim its spot on the world stage.
Meg Houghton-Gilmour is the founder and editor of The Bristol Sauce