A Black Heart & Bad Decisions X Big Nath's BBQ at Root: Bad decisions indeed
I was all lined up to write a sweet observational piece about ambition and the inspiring climb from market trader to cooking in one of Bristol’s best restaurants. It was not to be.
Should food writers publish bad reviews? There are many who will huff and puff and blow my proverbial house down for even asking the question. They bang their knifes and forks on the table in protest till they’re red in the face. Or they channel their emotions into an email, written through rage-tinted glasses, usually addressed to whichever man they deem to be ‘in charge’ of me. Because there must be a man in charge of me, right*?
I think my stance on the matter is fairly obvious. But food writers do vary considerably in their willingness to steam roller the efforts of chefs and restaurateurs.
Some will only condemn chain restaurants or those with a chef whose reputation is significant enough to weather the storm. Some will go to a restaurant, spend the equivalent of several limbs (it’s not a review unless you paid for it) but have a terrible experience and never utter a word, because they don’t want to inflict damage on a small business. All approaches have their merits and I could write extensively on the subject; perhaps I will at a later date.
Last week, Jay Rayner wrote a wince-inducing (though phenomenally written) blow by blow account of a terrible meal at Public House in Paris. The chef being hung, drawn and quartered on this occasion was Calum Franklin, apparently a friend of Rayner, so I can’t imagine that will have been easy to write, let alone for Franklin to read. But food journalism does not exist to butter up chefs. I can’t find the original credit for it, but as the saying goes ‘bad reviews don’t end restaurants, bad food does’.
Jay began his review as follows:
It was a simple plan: hop on the Eurostar to Paris and go for dinner at Public House, a new and audacious restaurant in the 9th arrondissement by pie king Calum Franklin... Its mission: to bring scotch eggs, sausage rolls and the best, most golden, flaky pastry creations to the French. I could then write a sweet observational piece about the bourgeoisie of the Louboutin-shod opera district swooning over steak and ale pies, and adjusting both their corsets and their gastronomic perspective... Because if anybody could do it… it had to be Franklin. He’s a gifted chef. He’s a lovely man. He literally wrote the book on pies. Go Calum, go.
And that is exactly how I found myself approaching dinner last Sunday at Root, though I didn’t have to take the Eurostar to get there. Arguably a quick detour through Paris would have been quicker than getting there via Bristol public transport.
The plan was foolproof. Big Nath’s BBQ in collaboration with A Black Heart & Bad Decisions at Root, Wapping Wharf. Big Nath has been captivating local meat lovers with his slow cooked fare since 2021, though his operation has been almost entirely market-based until now.
A Black Heart is the side hustle of one of Popti & Beast’s butchers and the head chef of the very good catering company Kate’s Kitchen. Their pop-up at The Scrandit in late November last year was well received.
And Root. Oh Root. Comfortably in the top five restaurants in Bristol.
So I was all lined up to write a sweet observational piece about ambition and the inspiring climb from market trader to cooking in one of Bristol’s best restaurants. But dear reader, I’m afraid it was not to be.
The menu was, in fairness, bookended by delicious pastries; a chicken liver parfait sourdoughnut and banana éclair with burnt miso butterscotch. Both very enjoyable and inventive, but not quite enough to redeem the egregious middle chapters.
Whitefish taquito with minted peas was a very sad fish finger butty; a barely toasted tortilla filled with Captain Birds Eye’s finest. I love fish fingers, but everyone knows the best bit is the breadcrumbs. When you de-glove them, fail to add any seasoning and whack it in a tortilla, you can’t really expect the end result to be exhilarating.
The next course, hispi, was an astute yin-yang of burnt (no, not charred, burnt) on one side and completely raw on the other. It was served on a bed of oddly granular black sesame tahini, which had come out a perfect shade of grey in some sort of pathetic fallacy. The crisp chickpeas were nice though.
But it was the near-inedible picanha steak where things really started to fall apart. Or not, which was rather the problem. Silence descended as the bowls (bowls!) were brought out and people started to attempt to eat the beautifully rare beef. Then came the howls of frustration.
It was absolutely fruitless trying to cut the meat into edible chunks, so I gave up and lifted my head to find myself in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Everywhere you looked, people were furiously taking the beef into their hands to try and rip it apart, tearing into it with teeth-bared, eyes bulging and cheeks blushing.
A bit of theatre with your dinner. Very entertaining. What more do you want? A steak knife, that’s what. The table next to us had remained enough of their humanity to ask for one, but were declined. There are no steak knives at Root. It’s a vegetable restaurant.
Edward Scissorhands would have struggled to cut that picanha.
The most astounding thing about this horror show is that I know, for a fact, that Big Nath can cook incredible beef and does so on a regular basis. But for some reason on this occasion, the decision was made to opt for seared steak rather than slow-cooked, which is where Nath has historically excelled.
A saving grace was given in the form of beef fat potatoes - Jenga blocks of hash-brown-esque savoury marvel. The kind of potato that makes you quite happy to burn the top layer of tastebuds off your tongue because you can’t shovel them in quick enough.
The icing on the éclair was the post from one of the more infamous guests a few tedious hours later on Instagram.
‘Best supper club I’ve been to in a long time’.
You couldn’t write it. Except I have, and now will inevitably face a cacophony of internet hate.
It’s okay - I’ve got my Eurostar ticket booked to Paris where I shall wait for this all to blow over. Should food writers publish bad reviews? Probably not.
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
*Please address emails to my agent, PXandTarts
Read next: