Restaurants / Review
Ceres – restaurant review
Ceres has developed a deserved reputation for doing some of the best brunches in town since it opened in October 2016, and now the team behind the staunchly independent have made the leap to opening for dinner too. With a new chef hired and the Stokes Croft café now opening five evenings a week, the venture is not just a culinary challenge but also a way to help make ends meet, in what is becoming an increasingly hostile restaurant scene.
It’s BYOB, so after pulling up a stool made from two milk crates topped with old sackcloth at one of the equally DIY tables, there’s a quick trip to the shop next-door-but-one to pick up some refreshments. It also gives chef and owner Dan Ingram chance to print off the menu. Two women who definitely got the memo arrive with a bottle of wine and their own corkscrew, and Dan carefully polishes a couple of glasses for them.
The menu, which changes weekly and is tweaked every night depending on what’s in the cupboards, offers a choice of three starters, three mains and three deserts. Starters including a confit egg yolk with pickled enoki mushrooms (£6.50) sets the tone for an adventurous menu using local ingredients, while the braised oxtail with burnt butter mash, oyster and cavalo fiero (£16.50) cements Ceres as one of the most adventurous dining spots open in this bit of town of an evening.
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I choose the pan-fried bream with a bean purée, samphire and cherry tomatoes on the vine (£14.95) and delicious smells soon begin to waft through the door of the open kitchen. While assisting in the kitchen, Dan is also acting as front of house tonight, so the other tables are left unattended as he helps to prepare the food. It’s an ad hoc atmosphere that doesn’t quite match up with the grown-up menu, but which adds a nice personal touch when he does get chance to return to front of house and have a chat with each table.
A beautiful plate of food arrives at the table, the green pops of the samphire and courgette salad contrasting with the bright red tomatoes and pale fish. The fillet is ever so slightly undercooked right in the middle, but it has delicious light flavour complimented by the smooth white bean purée. The tomatoes add a pop of sweetness, their juice spitting out when speared with a fork, while the salty samphire tastes like the sea. A light dressing on the salad with a hint of lemon freshens everything up.
It’s a supremely balanced plate of food, showing off the skill in the kitchen that Ceres has become known for. As millennials eating avocado toast becomes a parody of itself, branching out into more adventurous menus and attracting a different crowd by opening into the evening makes perfect sense for this little independent dining spot. At least in this corner of Bristol, dinner is the new brunch.
Ceres, 32 Stokes Croft, Bristol, BS1 3QD
www.facebook.com/cerescoffee.co
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