The Red Church — Restaurant in Bristol

Editing my review after returning last week. My experience had been so bad the first time I was reluctant to go back even though it was a long time ago.

Thankfully I had a great experience with exceptional and attentive service right from the moment we came through the door from the chilly night. Thanks so much to our waiter he made all the difference.

Food was good and tasty but not quite up to 5 starts due to the white based pizza I had being very dry instead of creamy.

Original review below for context!

I was really looking forward to trying this place after hearing good reviews from friends but had a complete shambles of an evening. Service, though polite and friendly was pretty non existent. We had to ask to order drinks, to order food, for the bill, to pay etc. We were not offered more drinks once throughout the meal so made do with water after we all finished our first round. After been given the menus we and making our food selection at the point of ordering we were told there were no pizzas, it was 8pm and we had to pre book our table so they would have known how many covers there were that night. When questioned covid was to blame (pretty sure pizza base ingredients could be bought from Aldi across the road at a push). Burgers (meat and vegan) were ordered instead which were dry and tasteless. Just a patty with some melted cheese and a bit of limp salad. No relish or anything to justify the £13 cost. The fries were fine. The dessert menu was requested and when it arrived I specifically asked "are you sure you have everything on here?" I was assured yes. When we came to order, no what we wanted actually wasn't available. I assume the manager came over to apologise and blame covid. But there wasn't really much of an apology for any of or. Asked if we would like anything else we declined. Then two minutes later she was back to say oh yes actually what you want is available! When we finally got around to paying the bill to top everything off we were short changed! Won't be heading back soon when Church Road has much better options available. Thank goodness I had great company...

Really great pizza and venue with potential, but 2 major issues:

I was sat upstairs on their mezzanine floor with a low ceiling, and we were sitting in smoke from the pizza oven the whole meal. My clothes/hair smell of smoke, and I have been ill and poisoned from breathing this in. I woke up in the early morning feeling awful and it's taken the whole day to feel okay, totally outside of normal health for me. If you go, don't sit upstairs breathing in soot.

Secondly, the music was far too loud, resulting in us shouting across at each other during the meal. This is despite the speakers being on the other side of the room from where we were sitting. Just a bizarre and off-putting choice.

Lastly a small one, but it's so dark and dimly lit, we had to use phone torches to read the menu, which one of the waiting staff looked embarrassed about when they saw.

It's a shame because this is local to me, staff were mostly friendly, and the pizza was genuinely some of my favourite style, really nice dough with medium thickness, nice tomato sauce, and a good range of topping choices. Also I really like that you pay during ordering at the bar, because then you can just leave when finished without any bill faff. But I'm unlikely to book a table downstairs and go back anytime soon due to the music volume.

Accessibility: probably not, there's steps from the street up to the doors, and the alternative door is quite narrow Dietaries: several veggie and at least one vegan pizza choice I saw. I think they would do custom orders as were happy to modify one...

2nd review -

The last couple of times the food’s been a bit disappointing. The pizzas are good but It feels like this is their main focus now and the rest of the food just doesn’t deliver. A bit pricey for what it is. I got the hake and the portion was really small. Maybe should go for pizzas only from now on. Disappointed as it started off really well as a good place for food in the area. Also not the best experience with reservation. We walked in without reservation and and it look ed like they had loads of available tables but the FOH turned us away- we then walked out and reserved a table via their website and 10min later we had a table to sit on. Strange policy.

Really cozy atmosphere and AMAZING Food! I was so pleasantly surprised by that place. I had the beef shin with polenta - again I cannot stress enough how good the food was. Rich flavour, so well complimented. Also big portion. My partner had the pasta ( can’t remember exactly what it was) and it was amazing too. I had great experience. The only downside is that I really wanted to say to the waitress how good the food was, but they never asked. ;) quick service, friendly staff. Compliments to the chef ! Really looking forward to going there again. I wish them all the best, because I think they deserve it. Well done! Again -...