I’m not normally one for Sunday lunches in the middle of summer, to be honest. But when a restaurant’s Sunday lunch menu also offers lighter options in addition to the traditional roasted meats with all the trimmings, I’m more than willing to make an exception.
Last weekend, we headed to The Jetty – the restaurant at the Bristol Harbour Hotel – to sample their three course Sunday lunch menu. And we weren’t disappointed.
It’s a beautiful restaurant, for a start: lots of cool blues and giant multicoloured hanging fish that give a nod to the seafood focus on their menu. The bar is pretty impressively stocked, and you can just about see the kitchen on its left hand side.
As well as the regular tables, there’s more secluded seating in the form of tables flanked by two giant sofa-style seats, their high backs giving you a private booth feel while still enjoying unimpeded views of what’s going on elsewhere in the restaurant.
Lunch service on Sundays is from 12pm to 4pm…and it’s amazing value for money. In a fine dining style restaurant, £15.95 for two courses or £19.95 for three courses sounded too good to be true…but did it live up to expectations?
The menu was very different to that listed on their website: as well as a whole host of pre-meal nibbles to choose from, there was a selection of six starters, four pasta dishes that could be enjoyed either as a starter or as a main, and three different roast meats. But that wasn’t all: a choice of three classic mains give you those non-roast options should you fancy something a little different.
Our meal began with complimentary bread and butter…and while we weren’t entirely convinced by the slightly naff, retro presentation, the bread was warm and chewy and perfectly tasty – although the butter could have done with a little longer out of the fridge as it was rock solid.
We both opted for cheesy starters. For Chris, the twice baked cheese soufflé, served as an island in a sea of rich, creamy cheese sauce. The soufflé itself was light and airy with a melt-in-the-mouth consistency, nicely aerated without that excessive egginess that some soufflés offer. He loved the crisp, cheesy crust on the top too – this really was a decadent dish.
Cheese was the order of the day for me too…if I see truffle mac n cheese on the menu, I can’t pass it by. Available as either a starter or a main, you could smell the truffles as soon as it arrived – and the flavour was definitely there too, with specks of black truffle dotted throughout the sauce. Topped with a mound of grilled cheese, the pasta was perfectly cooked and the sauce thick and rich, although maybe a little too oily.
Not fancying a traditional roast, it was the stone bass I chose for my main…another beautifully presented dish consisting of a fillet of stone bass with a delicate flavour, a good amount of seasoning, and skin that could have been a touch crispier considering it had been pan seared. It sat on a mound of ribbons of tender leek and chunky bacon pieces in a rich and creamy sauce, and was accompanied by a mini fish pie in its own tiny pan, which kept it lovely and warm. The light and fluffy mash was perfectly piped on top, giving way to a fantastic herby sauce packed with baby seafood, more leeks and peas, with the added surprise of two juicy, meaty prawns hiding at the bottom.
To accompany my main, I also ordered a side of mixed greens (mangetout, green beans, leaves and courgette) which still had a good bite to them – and we shared a dish of zucchini fries, with an incredibly light and delicate batter. Delicious.
Chris went for a traditional roast…well, a roast – it was anything but traditional! His pork dish consisted of both roast fillet and roasted belly – both were beautifully cooked, the belly nice and salty, the fillet more melt-in-the-mouth, and both with a good, rich flavour. The long strands of crackling were, unlike places that serve big slabs of the stuff, easy to cut through too.
The pork came served with a black pudding bonbon that was so soft you could spread it with a knife, along with a chunk of poached apple, with a cracking flavour and texture. The jus was rich and tasty but he’d have liked more of it, while the potatoes were well seasoned, but under-crisped. Veg-wise, the roast came with a little pan of cauliflower cheese, the cauli still with a good bite to it, and a pile of matchstick carrots and parsnips.
Deciding to be decadent and order dessert too, it was the lemon tart that caught Chris’ eye: the pastry to filling ratio pretty good, the base buttery and crumbly and easy to cut. The smooth filling had plenty of citrus flavour and was nicely caramelised on top, but he’d have preferred it to be a little more tart.
And for me, the “chocolate and pistachio” – a chocolate tart with pistachio and raspberries, served with pistachio ice cream. The base of the tart was interesting – a blend of chopped pistachios and a rich chocolate crumb, while the topping was an incredibly decadent chocolate ganache – it really was rich! It needed the fresh raspberries and the ice cream to cut through it, but I enjoyed it – the one thing I never understand, though, is tiny portions on massive plates…
At £19.95 for three courses, Sunday lunch at The Jetty is undeniably a bit of a steal: it’s a beautiful environment in which to eat, the service is fantastic, and the food’s pretty impressive too. It’s somewhere we’ll definitely be heading back to when we have weekend guests in the future.
Please note: our meal was received free of charge, but this in no way impacted on our opinion. We were not obliged to write a positive review, and the venue did not see this review before it was put up on the site.