Prince Of Wales Bishopston — Restaurant in Bristol

Bristol Sunday Roast review at The Prince of Wales on Gloucester Road

"My slow cooked belly of pork was a revelation. The thick strip of meat representing a faultless example of consummately cooked, melt-in-the-mouth perfection and topped with a salty, crusty layer of heavenly, crunchy crackling."

Food is served Monday to Saturday from 12pm to 8.30pm with an extensive selection of lunch, dinner, light bites, mains, sides and dessert options.

My visit on a rather grey and rainy Sunday afternoon, however, was to sample one of their much-trumpeted roast dinners, which costs £10 for the roast and £4 each for starters and desserts, or £12.50 for two courses.

My slow cooked belly of pork was a revelation. The thick strip of meat representing a faultless example of consummately cooked, melt-in-the-mouth perfection and topped with a salty, crusty layer of heavenly, crunchy crackling. My dining partner in crime went for the topside of beef, which was still slightly pink as she liked it so it retained its fullest, juiciest, most potent beefy flavour.

Both roasts were served with Maple roasted carrots and parsnips, kale and savoy, braised leeks, red cabbage, roasts potatoes - all cooked to text book, impeccable magnificence - and topped with a gargantuan Yorkshire pudding which was a first-class combo of adequately moist and perfectly puffy.

We managed to crowbar down a dessert of apple pie with custard and carrot cake with vanilla frosting, both of which were top notch, and finally built up sufficient energy to bloatedly, rather inelegantly galumph our way out of the building.

Pub manager Toby Summerell-Youde may have only taken over The Prince of Wales just over a month ago but he's clearly a man who knows what he's doing to keep the PoW fan base and city's food and drink collective happy. It's very much business as usual for a pub that has plenty of character and charm and Toby has no intention of changing a well-established and very successful formula. Business is very good and long may it continue; Toby's an affable, hardworking chap who was mucking in pulling the pints and serving the food to tables of hungry punters, and he deserves to do well.

He's also surrounded himself with excellent, efficient staff in the form of Charlotte Milton and exemplary head chef Adam Gregory, who uses food from local suppliers and free range and organic produce where possible, including the Gloucester Road butcher Murray's. With them at hand to keep the pub's well-lubricated wheels of industry turning The Prince of Wales triumphantly carries the torch as one of the best, much-loved, most fiercely independent...

We booked a table for the england rugby match this evening, went in yesterday and spoke to a young lady who took my mums name and number. We arrive at the time we booked and who I’m assuming is the manager this evening says he doesn’t have us down.He says she obviously hasn’t passed it along to us so we don’t have a table for you, I can give you one until 6. My mum turns to me and says I told you I didn’t think she was writing it down formally she wasn’t very professional a bit dopey. Then he turned around and said no I’m not serving you at all you have to leave immediately and then proceeded to walk around the bar telling everyone working to never serve us. This is very disappointing as this is our local pub and come here regularly normally with great service. We were upset that we had booked a table and then arrived and told that they had no table for us so obviously we had a reaction. This has ruined our evening that we had planned and we will not...

A pub which unfortunately doesn't live up to it's potential at all. On one hand it appears to try to be hip and cool by the way it's painted and it's decorated quite well inside but the bar itself has a very stuffy feel to it and the draft beer is always just drab, despite them being a free house. I appreciate that quit a lot of people like Gem but they only ever have Bath Ales, Otter and something else which is highly traditional - Ashley Down is the most adventurous I've seen and this kind of selection is just totally out of touch with what Bristol loves at the moment. Perhaps they want to appeal to the explicitly anti-hipster only which I could understand but it isn't really the location for that.

It's redeeming factor is the beer garden, which is large, sheltered an heated if necessary which has a good ambiance but still, would be a lot better if it was full of people...