Ragu, Wapping Wharf: 'Very much worth writing to other food writers about'

One of Bristol's most instantly lauded restaurants finally gets a professional review

Hello Saucers. Many of you are new here, so I’d like to issue a very warm welcome. You’re now part of a community of the most informed eaters in Bristol. We’ll send you a review of a Bristol (or nearby) restaurant every Sunday at 5pm. Once a month, we’ll also send you a round-up of food and drink news in the area too. That’s coming this Wednesday.

There are now 997 Saucers in total and I am refreshing my screen at alarmingly regular intervals waiting anxiously to hit four digits. If you know of anyone in Bristol who also likes restaurants, please forward them our work.

Now, I know we’ve all heard about Ragù. There’s a good chance you’ve already read a review of it. But restaurants this good deserve a little dwelling on, so I hope you’ll indulge me. And thank you, as always, for being here. ~ Meg

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Ragu was originally called Luca after Mark’s son before a legal dispute with a restaurant in London. Mark has now had to have a second child, Ragu, in order to rectify the situation

Often I am acutely aware that I exist within a vast food-writing echo chamber. It’s enormous, often vacuous, utterly contradictory and self-obsessed. Us food writers, restaurant critics, journalists — we are all basically banging on about the vapid demise of the smash burger, the hot new trend in natural wine or the latest no-frills, tiny, plastic table immigrant-run caff for the benefit of, well, each other. We might as well just organise an enormous conference every year in which we can all spend hours competing for air time and get it over with. One hot take swiftly neutralised by another. It would likely be cheaper to host us in some ridiculous castle somewhere and confiscate notebooks at the door. Then everyone else could get on with their lives without worrying about what the hell pet nat is and whether they’re having enough farm with their table.

But that would really suck all the fun out of it, and food writing should be fun. To write and to read.

You know what else should be fun? Lunch.

I was, as is the way of a food writer firmly wedged in the echo chamber, reading Noble Rot recently. If you haven’t heard of it, Noble Rot is a very excellent food and wine publication based in London that often features some of food writing’s greatest hitters — Marina O’Loughlin, Felicity Cloake and Tim Hayward. The most recent edition features Keira Knightly, yes Keira Knightly, and several short essays about the joys of the long lunch. And so I was suitably reminded that lunch should be long, spent in the company of good friends and involve copious amounts of great food and wine.

I have yet to be invited to appear in the pages of Noble Rot (we can only hope) and so I shall have to write my essay about lunch in the pages of a far superior publication, The Bristol Sauce, for the indisputable benefit of all the other food writers reading. You’re welcome. Your ticket to the food writers annual hot air festival is on its way, but meanwhile, a recent lunch in the form of one of Bristol’s newest and most instantly lauded restaurants: Ragù.

Focaccia as pillowy as Giles Coren’s soft spot for Charlotte Ivers

Rob and Yas, two of Bristol’s best lunchers, insisted on a mid afternoon jaunt to Ragù because it fitted around their 18 month old’s nap times. A more adorably tyrannical criterion for a meal time I have yet to find. Chris was distraught. He hates lunch because it means no matter how good the food is, there is still the possibility that the day could take a turn for the worse and fail to end on a high. But it is hard to argue with an 18 month old, especially one that has not yet learnt to converse. Thus, at a sleepy Leo’s behest, we arrived at Ragù at 2.30pm, starving.

As Grace Dent wrote in her recent Guardian review of Ragù (yes I read that too, because of course, and it’s absolutely without doubt that she’ll read this. (Hi Grace. Hope you’re well x.)) Wapping Wharf has managed to transcend the sum of its shipping container parts and become a genuinely good destination for eating out. Quoted in one Noble Rot essay by his wife Margot, Fergus Henderson describes lunch as a ‘hook on which to hang your day’. This day, to be hung on a Ragù-shaped hook, is balmy; sun-cream has been applied even though we’re sat in the shade on the terrace overlooking the water, sparkling English bubbles going straight to hungry heads.

Mark Chapman, co-owner of Ragù and its beloved older sister COR, is from Australia, but seems pretty adept at cooking and directing any cuisine he puts his mind to. There was the best Mexican that Bristol has ever had in the form of Masa & Mezcal, and tapas joint Gambas too had its heyday with him at the helm. Ragù is a firm nod to Italy, where executive chef Vyck went on a research trip last year and evidently came back with lots of brilliant ideas such as ‘cipollotti onion, caprino fresco from Piedmont, brown butter and grape must’ and ‘fior di latte gelato with aged balsamic vinegar of Modena’. The gelato, in particular, is very much worth writing to other food writers about.

Author Philippa Perry and TV producer Kenton Allen butt heads on productivity. Perry reckons ‘the long lunch is not the enemy of productivity…. We’re giving ourselves time to have ideas’ whereas Allen states ‘Lunch, and I mean a proper two hour minimum lunch, is an elegant rebellion against the tyranny of productivity’. This lunch feels like both. Each colourful plate arrives with just enough of an interval to allow us time, over the course of several hours, to rank each of the acts at Glastonbury; a debrief which any festival-goer will know is almost as important as the festival itself.

Some would argue this is a Jewish artichoke, not a Roman one, but we didn’t do a DNA test

This elegant rebellion is eased along by the playful shatter of ‘Roman’ artichoke fritti swooped through aioli that could go tête-à-tête with that of Mark’s old stomping ground Gambas a few doors up, and a playful yet vastly elevated return to the eighties via prosciutto, perfume-y Charentais melon and the best of Sorrento tomatoes. My granny used to serve us melon and ham as a starter. She would have hated this dish, and I think that says a lot.

Granny would have said this was ‘different’ - a thinly veiled attempt at hiding disdain

Margot Henderson, chef proprietor of Rochelle Canteen in London and The Three Horseshoes in Batcombe, assures us that ‘what’s important to know is that the day is now yours. It’s impossible to go back to work after a good lunch’.

None of us have any intention of going back to work, especially not Leo who is still blissfully unaware that such a toil even exists. He’s far too preoccupied by the discovery of sharp Calabrian anchovies liberally bathed in oil. If I didn’t hate the word foodie, I’d say he’s already well on his way to becoming one, and an expert one at that.

Leo’s first anchovy earned wide-eyed approval

Instead, we spend the rest of the day in fierce debate about whether the lamb shoulder served in a pea ragu with salsa verde and pecorino could have been ameliorated with a higher fat content and having had even more fresh mint and dill thrown at it. There are few dishes that wouldn’t be improved by the above. Once that had been settled we moved on to resenting the decision to go against the grain and order comparatively flat gnudi in tomato brodo instead of the famed crab tagliolini; already the darling of Instagram feeds everywhere. But these are small, nay minute, details.

What dish wouldn’t be improved with more fat and more herbs?

Before we know it, it’s 5pm and almost time to Leo to return to the land of nod again. We manage three desserts and a good flat white between the four-and-a-half of us and reluctantly call it a day.

A future restaurant critic if ever I saw one

Sommelier and winemaker Rajat Parr notes in his essay that ‘it’s just Europe now that knows how to celebrate the most important meal of the day. It’s a lot of pressure on you guys to save it from extinction’. It’s also a lot of bloody pressure to set oneself the task of writing about a restaurant that seemingly everyone else in the whole world has already written about. Giles Coren proudly claims he doesn’t read any other food writing except for that of Charlotte Ivers, who writes for the same paper, for whom he seems to have a pillowy-focaccia-esque soft spot. Perhaps that’s the way to go. Surely he’d get FOMO from missing the conference though. I imagine he'd just spend the whole time calling everyone else cunts.*

But without wanting to toot my own trumpet, I reckon I’ve done it. Written something that all the other food writers will skim over and either agree with or write a hot-take hit piece in contradiction just for the sake of it.

Either way, it’s all gloriously inconsequential isn't it? As one of my favourite poets, Vanessa Kisuule wrote (yes I do occasionally read poetry as well. I like to wormhole my way between my echo chambers) ‘this fact will either weigh you down, or make you airborne’.

So be set free, dear reader or writer, whichever you are, and take this as a reminder to treat yourself to a ridiculously long lunch in the very near future. We should rebel against the tyranny of productivity and we should do it with some bloody good company and even better food. Lunch mustn’t become a forgotten art.

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Ragù, Unit 25, Museum St, BS1 6ZA

*sorry mum.

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