Wilson's Restaurant — Restaurant in Bristol

After a really tough few years with lockdowns and all, my husband and I made a 2022 New Year’s Resolution to have Saturday Lunch here every six weeks for the whole year. We’ve been Wilson’s fans for a number of years and it seemed like a suitably decadent treat since we weren’t doing international travel and the like.

I know, tough gig, right?! Facebook is filled with people giving up meat or booze, doing 2000 press ups for a charity, scaling a mountain or something equally worthy. We decided to have a seven course menu with wine flight at arguably Bristol’s most exciting eaterie, 10 times in a year. Thoughts and prayers…

Anyhoo.

We completed our ‘resolution’ just before Christmas close down. Go us.

Throughout the year we saw the seasons, menus and the wine lists (and indeed some staff) change. We felt like we journeyed with them a year and saw dishes evolve and grow and reach perfection, if that’s a relevant concept for a place that just works immensely hard to serve up the freshest, tastiest, local food you may ever eat, using every part of the ingredients possible.

One thing that simply never faltered was the quality. Or the service. Or just how hard Jan and the team works, day in day out.

I took photos of dishes that bordered on art and delivered flavour that was out of this world. I could probably publish “My Year At Wilson’s” and maybe I will consider that.

There were too many dishes amongst the 77 courses I ate over that year to remember or account for them all (in truth I sneaked back without the husband for their weekday special ‘light flight’ a few times - incredible value for money and took friends too)…I suspect Wilson’s may well have served me over 100 plates of food last year - yikes.

Highlights were their legendary sour dough served with home cured meats, an exquisite smoked roe dip with chive oil, a raw scallop in a divine burnt cream and split with olive oil. I’ve tasted lobster bisque that’s indecently intense, eaten exquisitely-barbequed red mullet, cod and monkfish accompanied by heavenly delights such as burnt butter hollandaise and eaten desserts that simply don’t make sense: used coffee ground cream with raspberries, celeriac, mixed herb sorbets; that are an almost spiritual experience when eaten.

There’s an inventiveness here and it’s special. A commitment to local and making the best possible use of all parts of the ingredients. Much of it is grown by Jan’s wife and harvested that day for use; the rest is sourced through close networks of others equally dedicated to this ethos. You don’t quite get to know the name of your individual scallop when you eat it, but you get my drift.

A massive shout out too for the way my husband, a vegetarian, is catered for. New dishes are imagined and they are just as delightful as the main menu dishes.

The team work in the smallest of spaces (something of a challenge when it was mid 30s outside) and yet somehow do so with smiles and a finishing flourish: each course is brought to your table and explained. And, despite all of this brilliance, there is no hint of an air or grace. They know they’re good (at least I really hope they do!) so there is no need to flaunt it. If anything, there is a humility and simplicity to having a meal at Wilson’s that allows the food to do the talking.

Plans for 2023? Make some at Wilson’s! You won’t regret it.

Only, don’t book my table, I’ll be...

Honestly very surprised I haven't reviewed this place before now!

Wilson's is our favourite Bristol restaurant and its recent Michelin star has been a long time coming. The fixed single price tasting menu is always different and in the times we have been there I have never had the same dish twice.

The photos are from last night's visit which was one of the most enjoyable menus I have eaten anywhere, even the "bread and butter" wasn't with chicken liver parfait, sardines in a nori tart added for good measure. I did not have the crab because, alas, crab hates me. What I did have was a bean stew with a mushroom foam and a cured egg-yolk which was rather funny as my wife and I had just been joking about the lack of a "difficult egg" course. This hit all the right notes, I could eat a bucket of it. Monkfish was perfectly cooked (as you would expect) with some fantastic accompanying flavours which I will be attempting to replicate as soon as I aquire some. The Pheasant was a revelation, I have eaten it before but not done this well, and the "Kentucky Fried Pheasant" thighs on skewers that came with it provided texture without needing crunchy carbs. As a side note, they should be selling bags of that stuff as a takeaway. Desserts were, as they always are, bonkers. Somewhere there is an evil genius concocting flavour combinations that really shouldn't work but somehow do. Celeriac ice cream? I have had roast potato ice cream in this place before.

All in all, a great night out although marred slightly by two things.

1. it needed just a little bit more light for a dark Halloween evening.
2. the chairs are very light, so when I stood up after enjoying the excellent wine pairings, my seat decided to accept the invitation to lie down. Sorry about that guys.

All in all, an establishment you really need to visit if you have the opportunity. Book though, it's getting busy and long may it...

Quite sensational. The setting is minimalist (bare walls, simple furnishing) and easygoing, but there is some very serious cooking going on here! My lunch exceeded expectations.

I normally dread no-choice menus, but there is always an exception... I can see that the the style of cooking at Wilsons, with complex preparations and a huge number of ingredients and details in each single dish, justify the lack of options (I believe however that within reason they are open to variations to accommodate special requests).

From the nibbles, with wonderful sourdough bread, terrine, butter, taramosalata, to the mains (raw lemon-cured scallop, barbecued monkfish, roast mallard duck) to the desserts (a celeriac icecream with honey and truffle, plus an unadvertised canele), we enjoyed a splendid, varied, interesting lunch.

(EDIT 11/03/23: on a second visit, I confirm the superb quality of the savoury dishes, but the desserts were not at the same level.)

Many techniques were on display, and much more that the main ingredient was in the plate. In spite of the richness, flavours were clear and balanced, revealing great culinary sensitivity and not just a search of the original and the unconventional for their own sake.

Service is friendly and informative. The room is too noisy for my taste, yielding more of a pub atmosphere when it fills up, but maybe others will like the buzz.. Interesting wine list (we had a fine Japanese skin-contact white made from Koshu grapes by Chateau Mercian). Prices are absolutely justified in my opinion for the quality of the food (and the quantity too). Also the wine mark-ups are very reasonable compared to the UK average.

EDIT 30/09/23 Confirm everything, the savoury dishes are sensational. The only slight relative weakness remains in my opinion in the...