Rebel Roti & Tubby’s Corner, The Plough: ‘A black hole of flavour’ – pop-up review

Back in the depths of Lockdown 2.0, I was searching for a housemate. I came across a cheerful young man from Trinidad, looking for somewhere to live while he was studying in Bristol.

He moved in and regaled me with tales of the Caribbean; of music, beach parties and food.

He was over the moon when he heard there was a Trinidadian food pop-up coming to his adopted city in the form of Trini Fire Kitchen at the Three Tuns in Hotwells, and as soon as they started serving we booked a slot to get a takeaway.

We had curry goat, langoustine, pholourie and the quintessential Trinidadian street food, doubles.

Everything else felt desaturated in comparison; this was new, fresh, spicy and tender. Even my housemate, who had grown up on this food, was impressed.

Everything from that first takeaway from Trini Fire Kitchen in 2021 was thoroughly enjoyable but the doubles and the curried langoustine were front runners

That was two years ago now. Trini Fire Kitchen is now Rebel Roti, and after having disappeared from the Bristol food scene for a while, they have resurfaced in a collaboration with Tubby’s Corner at the Plough in Easton.

Rebel Roti popping up at my favourite pub in the world? How could I resist?

It truly saddens me to say that the good stuff ends there.

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This review is the personal opinion of Meg Houghton-Gilmour and does not represent the views of Bristol24/7

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I can’t tell you what has happened with Rebel Roti since the last time I had their food because I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a staff change, menu alterations, the collaboration with Tubby’s Corner. Perhaps I got them on an off day or the kitchen at The Plough is substantially different.

We ordered all the small plates: cauliflower pakoras (£4.95), chana curry fries (£5.95), mini mac (£5.95), Trini doubles (£4.95) and chicken wings (£5.95). They didn’t have the Rebel Roti and chutney tray (£4.95) so they substituted it with an extra cauliflower.

The extent of our ordering had already raised eyebrows but for the sake of variety we ordered a main plate as well, the ‘Buss up shut roti chicken box’ (£9.95).

We needn’t have bothered, as they delivered the veggie box instead which was a completely unoriginal rehashing of all the small plates. A panicked pile of needing to extend the menu and offer something substantial but without wanting to cook anything else.

I mean, just look at it? I’m not a stickler for presentation – I’d rather the food taste good. This did neither.

The cauliflower pakoras were a black hole of flavour. The chutney they were served on circled the event horizon, providing a zingy coriander-fuelled sense of possibility that sadly was not enough to stop the whole dish succumbing to the gravity of absolute nothingness.

Pakora is very generous. This was boiled cauliflower that had been briefly battered and submerged in a not-quite-hot-enough fryer. Salt was a foreign concept. The ‘pakoras’ oozed water when pressed.

Solid warm cauliflower infused water. Yum.

Chana curry fries would probably be a vegan’s dream when they’re five pints in and desperate for some curry-tinted stodge. They weren’t bad. They also weren’t good.

The mini mac, which was a bowl of macaroni cheese garnished with a few sorry salad leaves, is something I was still thinking about hours later for all the wrong reasons.

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, except in this case, where you absolutely should

Obviously macaroni cheese is not a very traditional Trinidadian dish, so I can only assume Tubby’s Corner are responsible for this abomination. It’s the kind of thing I can imagine you might be served in hospital and even then you’d send it back. A sad, slightly split béchamel clung to overcooked pasta. Cheese was a distant memory.

Doubles are fried flatbreads, known as bara, topped with curried chickpeas and a spicy, citrus infused cucumber chutney. Coconut, tamarind, chilli and a Trinidadian herb called chadon beni are optional but welcome. The primary flavour in these doubles was oil. My heart sank – this is what I’d come for.

I could cope with the other dishes being disappointing, but these tasting of so little, in such contrast to the previous iterations I’ve had, crushed what little optimism I had left.

Look at the contrast between this and the first portion of doubles. The bread is flat, droopy. The chickpeas are disintegrating, the cucumber soggy.

As the best dish, the chicken wings were bowing under the pressure of carrying the rest of the meal.

A few mouthfuls into every item on the table in front of me and I gave up. My poor dining partner, however, a man particularly averse to food waste, begrudgingly fought on and emptied most of the silver bowls.

The chicken wings were the only redeeming feature

The Plough was getting busy and we were no longer feeling like our enthusiasm, which was by this point entirely absent, matched the surroundings.

We escaped via Voi to Kask on North Street. I think it’s safe to say that unless there’s any substantial changes, we probably won’t be going back to Rebel Roti & Tubby’s Corner.

So it’s goodbye for now to Trinidadian doubles until I’m able to visit the Caribbean. It was good while it lasted.

Rebel Roti & Tubby’s Corner, The Plough, 223 Easton Road, Easton, Bristol, BS5 0EG
instagram.com/rebelroti

All photos: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

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