Lunchtime Pizza at The Elephant

Last week I had a long overdue meet up with my Auntie Sue we decided to have a catch up lunch and The Elephant on St Nicholas Street was decided on. The Elephant has gone through a number of reincarnations since I first moved to Bristol currently it is a wood bedecked light and airy bar open for lunch and dinner.  It was extremely quiet when we went in so once we were handed our menus we went to sit down and ponder them. They pride themselves on using local produce, their menu is fairly small they have focused mainly on pizzas but they also do a burger with customisable toppings and a sandwich or two. I decided to go for the demi pepperoni pizza with salad. 

The base was a lovely texture nice and fluffy but also light, the flavour of the base was also really good. The best bit for me was how creamy the mozzarella tasted with the saltiness of the pepperoni it worked beautifully and was rather moreish. The pepperoni itself was thickly cut and full of flavour, this is definitely a pizza I want in my life again. It was nice to have a smaller portion for lunch as I think I would have been wiped out by a full size one this was just right and rather surprisingly good.

A short and sweet post on the delicious pizzas at The Elephant, head on down for a little bargain for £6 it is worth it. plus the barman was really friendly and helpful. To check out what other toppings The Elephant  have to offer check out their website.

A Surprise Lunch at Turtle Bay

The other Friday just before 12 I had my uninspiring rice lunch sitting next to me I was contemplating when to take it upstairs to accompany my current read when in swept in our head of division announcing he was taking us all to lunch.  There was a brief interlude while people decided whether to opt for for 4500 Miles from Delhi or Turtle Bay, luckily for the blog the latter was voted the winner.  When Turtle Bay first opened I heard a lot of varying opinions on it some good, some bad and some middling, I was curious, although my Caribbean food aficionado Becky had said that it was quite nice but not authentic, although i hadn't expected it to be really. Caribbean food can be scorchingly hot and as Rich always says, there is no way a chain restaurant would risk that level of spice in their dishes and have people send it back.

So with all that in mind when I walked in I was particularly impressed with the decor, bright, fun and quite the injection of sunshine into this stereotypical January day. I did wonder whether our large party of 20 would be able to just pop down without booking but we arrived pretty early and within about 5 minutes we were ordering drinks and heading to our seats. 

Rum Punch Cocktail

The menu has some Caribbean staples that you would expect like plantain, jerk chicken and scotch bonnets but a lot of items had a twist on it bringing in a few American barbecue favourites. We were all feeling pretty hungry by this point so Sharon and I decided to share a couple of starters the lamb patty and the jerk pit prawns, whilst I chose the street burger for my main.  A number of people had mentioned the cocktails that Turtle Bay did were pretty good and a few people on our table participated but the rum punch cocktail kept wafting over such strong rum fumes that it did put me off a little, but I loved the metal tins they were served in.

Jerk Pit Prawns

Jerk Pit Prawns up

Lamb Patty

The food arrived promptly and I tucked into the lamb patty first, this was nice and spicy and had a lovely comforting texture, and was sad when I had to swap dishes. The jerk pit prawns however were a massive disappointment the sauce you can see in the photos is just oil and smoky, read acrid, tasting oil at that. Plus the prawns were overcooked and tasted of nothing so all that was left was oil soaked flatbread at the bottom of the plate meant to moping up non-existent juice.

Street Burger

When my main arrived I was pleasantly surprised, for £6.95 this was a generous portion and the smell was a delicious one. The burger came with some caramelised onions and pulled pork on top, the pork was nice and juicy and added some smokiness to the burger. The onions were good but I could have done without the whole cloves resting in among them, luckily I spotted them before I bit down to experience the numbness that biting down on a whole clove can bring. The slaw also for me was a little bitter but I am fairly picky with coleslaw so it could have just been me. On the whole I was pretty impressed with the burger, really lovely flavour and nice and meaty plus the spiced fries were nice and crunchy.

one of the bright murals

So on the whole a bit of a mixed bag from Turtle Bay, if someone wanted to go here I would join them but I personally wouldn't be in a mad rush to return but there were some nice points.  For a fun atmosphere and a good value lunch it isn't bad at all but for proper Caribbean food Rice n Tings is a great choice. To find out more about Turtle Bay visit their website.

Post Christmas Treat at Bocabar

Firstly Happy New Year to you all, hope you had a lovely Christmas. The first blog of 2014 is upon us! In the vain hope to prolong the Christmas celebrations a last minute pizza date at Bocabar with Kym was arranged after work on Friday, it wasn't twelfth night after all so surely it still counts as festive celebrating right? Anyway I hadn't been to Bocabar for over two years so a visit was woefully overdue it was embarrassingly late really if I think about how often I used to frequent this place, that's moving areas for you. Bocabar is situated down at Paintworks and those are some lucky devils working there having this place for a local. 

Bocabar is a pretty large space, being a former warehouse and all, and is bedecked in fairy lights and soft leather sofas are strewn about the place for the loungers and tables for more upright nibbling.  They offer more than just pizzas, with lunch offers and mezze to snack on during the day and roasts on Sundays.  As it was a Friday we decided it was a wine day so ordered a bottle of Malbec and tried to narrow down the huge number of pizzas on their menu, luckily Kym had written a shortlist. The good thing about the pizzas at Bocabar is that there is an enormous amount of choice and the ingredients they use are really good quality you can taste it throughout.  In the end we decided to go for the Fazenda Chic and the Wild Cogumelo. 

Wild Cogumelo in all it's glory

Fazenda Chic

Fazenda Chic upclose

Wild Cogumelo

The Wild Cogumelo was a feast of mushrooms; chestnut, portabello and field plus soft goat's cheese, pine nuts, watercress and truffle oil.  What the Fazenda Chic offered up was ham, tomatoes, Exmouth blue cheese and also crowned with watercress.  These were some big pizzas very thin base, which I really like, the main quibble I had was that the pizzas themselves didn't seem that hot but in our case it meant we could eat it quicker. 

The flavours on both were really great it was refreshing to try some new pizza topping combos and I think that the veggie Wild Cogumelo was my favourite as it was such a great combo of flavours and texture with the pine nuts and watercress. The Fazenda Chic, the tomatoes were a bit crunchy but blue cheese, if you are a fan (and I am a big fan), is one of my new favourite pizza toppings, it may not be traditional but boy is it delicious.

The gripes I had with with Bocabar pizzas were minute and I really recommend them, I just think at nearly £14 for most of the pizzas, and it is pizza we're talking about, they are a tad expensive for a regular afterwork treat but I am looking forward to returning when I am next paid. To check out what else Bocabar has to offer visit their website.