Sauce #103 | A Hot Bath
Lamb & Smoked Harissa Koftas | Cheat's BBQ Brisket | Good Beans, Tomatoes & Halibut | Asparagus & Chanterelle Risotto
This is last week’s Sunday Sauce. This week’s will come, well, later this week.
We sugared off and shimmied down to Bath over the bank holiday weekend.
We being myself, Thom and Nora. Rosie went almost as far from Bath - and if I were being hilarious, from a bath - as it’s possible to be, namely Inverness. Ours was a long drive. You know it’s going to be a struggle when you’re yawning before you’ve reached the main road.
We stopped at the first available service station (Wetherby, if you were wondering), where I foolishly purchased an egg sandwich for breakfast. Bread makes me sleepy. The coffee helped but it was a big push to the next stop, not helped by the kids insisting I couldn’t listen to a podcast because it drowned out the audio from whatever guff they were watching on their devices.
I drove on in silence, playing round after round of golf in my head - my preferred method of staying alert in the car.
At Donington Park I bought a large bag of sweets, another coffee, and, for the first time since university, a can of Red Bull. It occurred to me to start an argument with the kids in the hope that this would also keep me going, though with that came the risk of distraction.
We did finally reach our destination - a pub just outside of Bath - only 15 minutes behind schedule. I’d thought it would be nice to take the kids somewhere decent and so consulted the Top 50 Gastropubs list, which yielded a good looking spot called [redacted] in [redacted]. It was a salutary reminder that these lists are nonsense. As was this pub. [Redacted] purports to be the prettiest village in the UK, and perhaps it is. But as any fool knows, the better the view from the restaurant, the worse the food.
I have, I think, only sent two plates of food back in my entire life. I wasn’t about to make it three, and certainly not in front of the kids, but the crab bun I was served came close. Nora prodded at her vegetable pasta. Thom’s burger looked very good, though was inhaled before I’d had a chance to give it a nudge. Don’t trust lists.
Bath is every bit as picturesque as you might imagine, though isn’t - at least not in a heatwave - a particularly kid friendly place. A number of very good and trustworthy folk sent some recommendations on Instagram which I took the liberty of feeding into ChatGPT in order to make sense of them. The list is below. You can trust this one, even if it is robot-enhanced.
The standouts were Solina and Landrace (“very much London imports” as one friend said, but, still, excellent), the pasta at Solina being genuinely top tier and the pastries at Landrace being every bit as good as - perhaps better than - whatever chef’s kiss recommendation came in the latest dump from Topjaw.
We also enjoyed tacos at Dos Dedos. And you must do the Roman Baths. But we admitted defeat a couple of days early, the heat being just too much to bear for our northern bones.
Bath recommendations, organised by type/ChattyGeeps.
Restaurants / Food
High end / destination
Landrace — bakery downstairs, restaurant upstairs. Repeatedly recommended. Strong option for dinner after the rooftop baths.
Beckford Canteen — more formal restaurant side of the Beckford group.
Elder — modern British.
Emberwood — modern grill/live fire.
Chez Dominique — classic French.
Menu Gordon Jones — tasting menu.
Corkage — old-school wine bar feel, but good food and wine.
Root — vegetable-led small plates.
Sydney’s — modern neighbourhood restaurant.
Yak Yeti Yak — Nepalese/Tibetan.
Scallop Shell — seafood/fish and chips, consistently recommended.
More casual / lunch / easy dinners
Solina — fresh pasta, no bookings, communal tables. Frequently mentioned.
Green Street Butchers — deli/butchers doing notably good porchetta sandwiches.
Milk Deli — café/deli.
Dos Dedos — tacos, tequila, cocktails, loud/fun atmosphere.
Joya Steakhouse — steakhouse with Italian menu too. Warning that hot-stone steaks can make the room smoky.
Schwartz Bros — long-running independent burger spot.
Hideout — casual food/drinks spot.
Walcot House — restaurant/bar.
Sotto Sotto — underground Italian.
18 Green Street Wine Bar — small wine bar.
The Shed / Theeshing Barn (Bradford-on-Avon mention likely refers to The Tithe Barn area rather than a restaurant specifically).
Pubs / Wine Bars
Traditional / cosy
The Star Inn
The Old Green Tree
The Raven — pub with lots of small rooms.
The Wellington — more modern pub.
Quarryman’s Arms — worth visiting if heading out toward Warleigh / countryside.
Wine-focused
Beckford Bottle Shop — wine bar/bistro version of Beckford.
Kingsmead Street Bottle
Corkage
18 Green Street Wine Bar
Cocktails / Nightlife
The Dark Horse — underground cocktail bar, serious cocktails, dark/smoking-room atmosphere.
The Drawing Rooms — cocktails with live piano/singalongs.
Coffee / Bakery
Colonna Coffee — specialty coffee.
Landrace Bakery
Bakery in Bradford-on-Avon — unnamed recommendation; specifically for the “sun bun”.
Family / Kids
Thermae Bath Spa rooftop sunset session — touristy but strongly recommended.
Alice Park — excellent playground.
Holburne Museum
Egg Theatre — children’s theatre.
Little cinema next door to Egg Theatre — good rainy-day option.
American Museum — family-friendly grounds/museum.
Wolf sanctuary — outside Bath, good for children interested in animals.
Nature / Walks / Outdoors
St Catherine’s Valley — countryside walks.
Solsbury Hill — viewpoints.
Chris Rich’s Farm Shop — stop for apples.
Sally in the Woods — woodland area.
Wild goats area nearby.
Warleigh Weir — river swimming. [Note: we tried this and it was like arriving at Burning Man, you have been warned.]
Gardens/riverside near Solina — good with children.
Day Trips / Nearby Towns
Bradford-on-Avon
Pretty town worth exploring.
Good bakery (“sun bun” recommendation).
Quarryman’s Arms nearby.
Frome
Weekend market strongly recommended.
Market near station.
Saddle Goose Winery nearby.
Most repeatedly recommended overall
Landrace
Solina
Beckford Bottle Shop / Beckford Canteen
Scallop Shell
Green Street Butchers
Corkage
Elder
Thermae Bath Spa rooftop session
The Dark Horse
Colonna Coffee
