The best things we ate in 2024

Because everybody loves a round up

A quick reminder that if there’s a food lover in your life that you’ve forgotten to get a present for - a year’s subscription to The Bristol Sauce is the perfect gift. Buy it here.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas. I hope it’s filled with great food!

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As the end of the year draws near, one cannot move for food-based round ups. Best restaurants, best dishes, openings and closings. It’s a time of reflection and there is nothing better to reflect on than eating. And so I asked Sauce writers and friends for the best thing they ate this year in Bristol. Please add your own favourite dish in the comments!

Caitlin Johnson-Bowring, Sauce writer

For me it has to be the porterhouse steak from Cow and Sow, cooked rare with a beefy blue cheese sauce. It had the contrast of the two different cuts, and I got to choose my own joint from the fridge which made it extra fun. Paired with a glass of red it made for a divine experience!

Xanthe Clay, food writer

At Chez Candice, you can buy the treacle tart of dreams drenched in cream from a horse box on an urban farm hard by the M32. It’s crumbly, sticky and - magically - not too sweet: everything you could wish for. There’s excellent coffee too, and a single main course: beef kofte with sheep’s yoghurt and burnt onion soubise bread the day I was there - a vegetarian version is available. Eat it at a picnic table by the poly tunnel or round the table in the yurt. Bonkers, brilliant and utterly Bristol.

Read The Bristol Sauce review of Chez Candice

Jan Ostle, chef and co-owner at Wilsons

My dish of the year came from our new Chandos Road neighbours, Dongnae. Raw aged beef sirloin with pine nuts and Korean pear, served with sheets of nori.

Read The Bristol Sauce review of Dongnae

Jason Jay Pridham, Sauce writer

Cashew curd, creamy and tart. Linseed cooked crisp, tasting a touch of toast. A bunch of beets, candy sweet. Some roasted and soft, the rest are crunchy and sitting aloft. A celebratory sum of sentences, dedicated to beetroot. From the Biotē Gatherings pop-up at The Scrandit.

Ishita DasGupta, food writer

I’m figuring you may already have some Bristol stalwarts on your list, so I’m going to go for this: Ping-Pang Soup from Suyuan Bistro on Gloucester Road. It’s a Chinese style breakfast soup, served with a piece of fried dough stick. The soup has a chicken based broth with tomato and shredded greens and hits of garlic and coriander stalks, plus wobbly bits of minced prawn. Everything here is freshly cooked - so if you have time for a leisurely breakfast/brunch, this is a great place to go.

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Josh Dickinson, co-owner of The Scrandit

It’s got to be the smoked chicken leg, Khmer x Alabama white sauce, burnt lime grilled roti, lemongrass oil from Barang. Could eat again and again and again. However, I might never get the chance! Smokey and succulent chicken leg, texture from chicken skin and crispy onions, creaminess from Khmer x Alabama white sauce (perfectly spiced) and acidity from burnt lime. All mopped up with a warm, flakey and fragrant roti. The flavours felt new and exciting. Haven’t had anything like it before.

Read The Bristol Sauce review of Barang

PXandTarts, international man of mystery

I've yet to experience Chez Candice in the warmth (to be fair, it is in Bristol) but Candice's hearty, homely cooking is a perfect fit for its frosty surroundings of Boiling Wells Farm in winter, surrounded by a small number of cows that may or may not make their way into the dishes at some point. My favourite dish of the year, though, was beefless. Surprisingly enough, it was a tart. More specifically, a hefty slab of treacle tart, big enough to share, grudgingly, and sticky, chewy and crunchy in all the right places. A dribble of cream was the sort-of-icing on the tart.

Dan Vaux Nobes aka Essex Eating, food writer

I can’t remember what the best thing was that I ate in Bristol this year, however the dessert I just had for lunch at Wilsons today, consisting of a layered parsnip mousse, apple sorbet & burnt cream was definitely a contender.

Read The Bristol Sauce review of Wilsons

Tallulah Small, restaurant manager at COR

I reckon my dish of the year was a smoked mushroom tartar at Root at their wine pairing evening after a trade tasting. It was a complete umami bomb, packed full of flavour. The texture of the finely diced, smoky mushrooms mixed in with the salty yolk made it perfectly silky, but with just enough bite, complemented by the wafer thin cracker.

Seldon Curry, chef at Seaside Boarding House and Sauce writer

The best Bristol thing I ate this year was a delicious and hyper-local squash and pumpkin seed tart at the newly reopened Pony Chew Valley. It was light but decadent, fresh but not denying you anything.

Issy Cox, chef and founder of Cin Cin Catering

For me it was most probably the mash up between Bokman and Barang back in the summer. Everything was wicked but the stand out for me was the seabass crudo, Tuk Trey Koh Kong, heritage radish and pickled cherries! A beautiful blend of flavours and not bad on the eyes either.

Meg Houghton-Gilmour, Founder & Editor of The Bristol Sauce

It’s the sheep fat toasted doughnut from Other, and we’re running rapidly out of space in this post, so you’ll just have to read the review.

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