It would be an understatement to say that Mediterranean European food predominates in Bristol’s dining scene. You will have an abundance of options in what is sometimes referred to as the UK’s culinary capital if you’re wanting tapas, gyros, Provence or Portuguese cuisine.
However, the real gem of the area is its Italian cuisine, which has drawn River Cafe alums, Neapolitan retirees, and elite diners from Bristol to try the local eateries. The outcomes are astounding and varied, yet while looking for the best Italian food in Bristol, you may find yourself overcome by the paradox of choice, much like when you’re in the grocery store and overwhelmed by the sheer number of brands available.
We can assist you with that. To bring you the greatest Italian restaurants in Bristol, we’ve taken on the enviable duty of dining all around the city, sorting the real deal from the fake, the refined white from the durum wheat, and the fior di latte from the imitation stuff.
Ripiena pasta
Perfect for stuffing oneself with filled pasta…
You can feel a little 00’d out sometimes in Bristol because the city is full of semi-casual modern Italian restaurants providing every kind of tagliatelle, cavatelli, rigatoni, and the works. So let’s eat some stuffed spaghetti before we’ve got enough. This is Pasta Ripiena’s speciality, its main attraction, its ultimate dish, and perfection has definitely been achieved through practice.
This pasta dish, which is as adorable as a button tortellini packed with zesty ricotta and mint and topped with lamb ragu of all things (along with a much-needed chimichurri to cut through), is a good example of how to elevate pasta to a whole new level. It has a tonne of highly seasoned bounce and vitality.
Tastes even stronger and brasher when paired with clams, the hat-shaped, salt cod-filled cappelletti provides a plethora of saline maritime aromas that are here subtly tamed with fresh clips of sweet datterini tomatoes.
As a member of the Bianchis restaurant company, which also owns our second entry (and, until recently, the much-loved Pasta Loco), this place offers a set lunch menu that is incredibly affordable at just £25 for three meals. This has to be one of the greatest value dinners in the city, especially considering that bottles of house wine only cost £22. Just try not to pay attention to a helpless William Sitwell sobbing in the corner.
Sonny Retailers
Excellent British cuisine perfect for fidgeting, from a former employee of River Cafe…
The Lockdown Pizza Company was originally intended to be a lockdown delivery-only pizza business. Pegs Quinn, a former employee of the River Cafe, and Mary Glynn, husband and wife team, launched Sonny Stores, a family-run restaurant in Bristol. And what delicious pizzas those were.
Fortunately, Quinn and Glynn continued to cook even though the UK was placed under lockdown and the drawbridge was down. Instead, Sonny Stores—a “Britalian” eatery with a restless soul—was established as a result of their ambitious gaze widening.
Despite the building’s small size, Quinn and his excellent team provide a truly exceptional dining experience, featuring meals that are created on-site. Clam acqua pazza, a Neopolitan dish consisting of clams swimming in a broth heavily flavoured with white wine and chilli, is a menu staple and rightfully so; it’s a spicy, salty treat. The best part is that it comes pre-soaked into a toasted sourdough slice underneath, making it the perfect scarpetta.
During a recent visit, a full grilled dover sole with broad beans and artichokes prepared in the sott’olio style caught our eye. The fish was semi-preserved in premium olive oil, yet it retained its vibrant flavour. Everything is finished off beautifully with a dressing of minced anchovies and rosemary. Pappardelle with pork in a milk sauce is one of the pasta dishes that is perfectly texturally balanced.
Turning back to Sonny Store’s beginnings (since time is a flat circle, of all), the eatery hasn’t completely given up on pizza; in fact, you would be foolish to order anything other than the signature pizzetta if it’s available. Amazing on their own, they also work incredibly well as a dredge vessel for all those braising fluids drenched in olive oil. Heavenly!
Casa
Perfect for scrumptious Italian cuisine in opulent settings…
If the name Casa, the recently opened restaurant on the harbour, didn’t naturally mean “home,” it might be “Go big or go home.” “Go big at home” might be a better motto because nothing at Casa isn’t overdone—not even the food, the ingredients, or the music.
Situated in the same premises as the Michelin-starred Casamia, Casa continues the legacy of one of Bristol’s most beloved restaurant groups. Casa is under the direction of chef Peter Sanchez-Iglesias, who also manages the operations of the nearby, star-rated Paco Tapas.
And fill them it does. Without a doubt, this is a glitzy restaurant, yet it doesn’t compromise on flavour, soul, or content in favour of flair. The menu here is pleasantly diverse, with whole grilled fish and other prime steaks rubbing elbows with the superb antipasti, house-cured meats, and of course, pasta, in a city where many of the top Italian restaurants specialise in a single dish.
Prices at Casa are understandably high due to the stoves’ history, but that doesn’t mean a decent meal is out of reach; the restaurant recently unveiled its new lunch menu, called “Menu Del Giorno,” which offers three meals for just £30 per person.
We recently tried it, and it worked quite well. The famous focaccia came supercharged—it was crunchy, salty, and covered with high-quality olive oil. A picture-perfect puck of finely diced caponata was served alongside, appropriately agrodolce but precisely balanced. When it comes to flavour, nobody is holding back.
Even though the set always serves a daily pasta dish, on a sweltering August day, a grilled fillet of Cornish mackerel felt perfect. It was a fantastic summer dinner, arriving from the charcoal grill burnished and blistered, and served with fresh potatoes absolutely swimming in a thick emulsion of butter and chicken stock. A flawlessly crunchy cannoli completed the dish.
The Menu Del Giorno is served from Wednesday through Saturday before 6:30 p.m. and is offered both indoors and on the restaurant’s waterfront patio.
Napoli’s Taste
Perfect for simple Neapolitan street cuisine meals…
Taste of Napoli is a family-run cafe that caters to both bold and reserved palates. It is located in the Arcade shopping complex in the city centre, right across from Primark. Its delicious focaccia sandwiches, pizza slices, and an assortment of deep-fried Neapolitan street food snacks are sure to satisfy customers.
Take a seat in the cosy surroundings or place an order for takeaway. In any case, don’t pass up the assortment of genuine fritti options. The crocchè, which consists of mashed potato, gammon cubes, mozzarella, bread crumbs, and deep-fried bread, is a very filling dish.
The slabs of Roman-style pizza that line the counter are also really good. They also offer great value at just five pounds a square. Our best choice? The bufalina, served with plenty of rocket and fresh cherry tomatoes, is a healing and easily digestible dish that tastes great as an early lunch when paired with a strong and stabilising dose of espresso. They also make a variety of incredibly tasty vegan slices.
And then it was time to brave the lines at Primark to find a lime green Simpsons hoodie. As an alternative, you could eat lunch in the neighbouring Castle Park, which is a great place to relax.
Taste of Napoli is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the exception of Tuesdays.
Bianchi
Perfect for sampling Bristol’s finest trattoria experience…
We’re heading back to the Mothership at, you got it, Bianchis, and the cosy, floury embrace of the Bianchis Group from a few paragraphs ago.
Located in the centre of the free-spirited Montpelier neighbourhood and bearing the name of the family patriarch, Aldo Bianchi, this is undoubtedly a family operation, led by grandchildren Joe, Ben, and Dom at the helm.
It’s a ship built on the family recipes of Aldo and Nonna Ellen, and that sense of heritage permeates every dish on the menu, from grilled parmesan polenta topped with sun-dried tomato pesto to a plate of rigatoni with a rich, slow-cooked chicken alla Romana sauce that’s sweet with red peppers and rich with the braising juices of the bird.
The dining area, which is airy and lively and resounding with laughter and noise, is also affected by it. The dark wood furnishings and the unusually contemporary white paper tablecloths serve as its anchors. It’s a subtle but intentional detail that effectively conveys the trattoria feeling to Bristol’s suburbs.
Savour a leisurely four-course set lunch menu for £34, experience the dining room at its most laid-back on a Friday or Saturday, and feel like all is well with the world.
If, following that feast of mostly Northern Italian classics, you suddenly have the craving for pizza, Pizza Bianchi is a mile down the road and is really hitting it out of the park.
Pasta from Little Hollows
Perfect for Redland’s daily rolled fresh pasta…
Is it reasonable to presume that you are a pasta lover if you are singing from the same hymn book as IDEAL? So come on over to Little Hollows Pasta in Redland for another round of the delicious stuff.
Here, pasta is cooked fresh every morning and hungs invitingly in the window to dry. Once those strands and coils are immersed in their boiling, sea-salted baths, individuals strolling along Chandos Road are enticed to circle back on themselves.
Like the restaurant itself, the menu is small and to the point, with pasta appearing on every main course. The lead-in is a few smaller, mostly vegetable-focused plates; on a previous visit, the grilled baby broccoli dressed in a caperberry tapenade was particularly heady.
However, the actual reason we’re here (and have always been) is the pasta, and this place has some of the greatest freshly made pasta in Bristol. Not only is the lunch menu outrageously affordable (three courses for only £24), but we also discovered that the traditional Roman dish bucatini Amatriciana is among the best we’ve ever had—even in the Eternal City. High praise indeed, but well merited; the sauce’s use of Tropea onions added a smooth sweetness that perfectly balanced the guanciale’s predictable salty-sweet flavour. A plateful that will linger in the mind for a very long time. That is, until we visit the following eatery on our list.
Marmo
Perfect for a simple yet opulent Italian wine bar atmosphere…
Adjacent to Marmo, a restaurant dubbed “an absolute corker” by Jay Rayner, the culinary critic for the Observer. He was right; this laid-back, oh-so Bristolian modern Italian restaurant, which combines elements of an osteria and wine bar, is perfect.
The husband and wife combo Cosmo and Lily Sterck met at Bristol University and are positioned behind the stoves and on the floor, respectively. These kinds of pared-back, produce-focused establishments are highly regarded; Cosmo previously worked at the excellent Brawn, and Lily previously oversaw front of house at the now Michelin-starred London restaurant Luca.
This heritage is evident in the dining room of the former Guardian Assurance Building, which has lofty ceilings, an open yet austere design, big glasses of biodynamic wine and stark, unpolished dishes with just two or three components that bely the excellent cuisine that went into bringing them there.
As an accompaniment to your home Negroni, the gnocchi fritto with salame rose is practically a must-have. Or, wolf down, if you’re like us. Deep-fried in additional lard, these paradoxically pillowy and crunchy pockets of enriched dough are topped with fatty, spicy slices of cured pig. As irresistible as they seem, they appear to be hard to remove from the menu based on the tables surrounding us when we visited last month. Peasey’s Cantabrian anchovies are plated next to those gnocchi.
A tablet of breadcrumbed, deep-fried, and slowly cooked pig’s head is equally sinister when combined with plum caponata, the tart and sweet flavours skilfully slicing through the pork chops. A glass of hazy, funky Abruzzese skin contact, a blend of Trebbiano and Pergolone, provides an untamed spirit to the table to further moderate all those fatty overtones.
Taste Marmo’s dark and rich chocolate mousse to bring yourself back to earth. A few licks of sea salt on its surface provide an artistic touch. Feel satisfied and enamoured as you totter out onto the bustling Baldwin Street.
Don Giovanni’s
Perfect for a classic Italian experience near Temple Meads station…
There’s still enough to be said for the distinctly, purposefully old school kind of Italian restaurants that feel like something of a disappearing breed in the UK, even though the majority of our list of Bristol’s greatest Italian restaurants is obviously biassed towards the slicker, fancier operations in town.
The softly fading wax on the wine bottle holders, the neon signage, the blue and white checkered tablecloths, and the swoops and swooshes of reduced balsamic vinegar that adorn many of the dishes at Don Giovanni’s all embrace the gently dated feel of the restaurant.
The restaurant shines most when the food is served simply; the Sicilian polpette, which is made from a family recipe, and the “housewife’s” canneloni casalina are two of the best options. Enjoy a carafe of the very drinkable and very affordable house red wine and a tiramisu to cap off your meal. You may also indulge in a little Adriano Celentano. Heaven.
Sandy Park Eatery
Perfect for easy lunchtime sandwiches…
Sandy Park Deli, tucked away in the Brislington suburbs, embodies the very meaning of the term “hidden gem.” At the centre of the community is a family-run deli that specialises in imported Italian meats and cheeses. It is well-known for both its robust espresso, which is made with premium coffee that is regularly shipped in from Sicily, and for helping other local businesses by stocking their artisan products.
The focaccia sandwiches are also excellent; they are simple yet expertly positioned, a skill that only the Italians possess. In the IDEAL workplace, the salami, taleggio, and honey number has kind of become a staple. Long may it last!
COR
Perfect for tapas from the Mediterranean with lots of Italian flair…
Not exactly “Italian,” but before we left in a carb-coma stupor, we had to highlight the just opened COR. Hey, where is in this little area of south-west England? That’s because the group behind the popular Spanish seafood restaurant Gambas is behind this vibrant Mediterranean tapas bar, which is already receiving a lot of praise from the community. We are eager to give it a go! When we do, come return here for an update.
