Meat Off, Park Street: ‘I wanted to impale myself on a skewer’ – restaurant review

We usually go to restaurants to have other people cook for us. And yet, there are entire genres of restaurants that have swindled us into believing it’s even more fun to go out to eat and cook our own dinner. In France, it’s the hot stone; in Vietnam, Korea and Japan, it’s do-it-yourself barbecue; in China, it’s a hot pot.

There is something delightful about gathering round a barbecue/hotpot/hot stone with friends or family, which explains why it is popular all over the world.

The process, chatting while you wait for your food to cook; it all feels very sociable, dare I say primitive. Perhaps it calls back to our ancestral origins of sitting around a fire and cooking together.

Meat Off on Park Street joins Mugshot and “It’s Not” Hot Pot as restaurants in Bristol where you can go if you wish to have this experience and cook your own dinner. Perhaps ‘cook’ is too generous a term; for at Meat Off the skewers are self-rotating and had supposedly already been seasoned.

We ordered garlic skewers to see if they would just be garlic on a skewer. We were right.

With the freezing fog that descended over Bristol on Tuesday and the current cost of living crisis, I was very much looking forward to sitting next to a grill and defrosting my fingers. Sadly, the excitement evaporated the second we stepped through the door.

I’m struggling to decide if I was glad or not for the large karaoke screen blaring mid-noughties music videos in the corner. It was odd and distracting but also a welcome sign of life in an otherwise atmospheric vacuum of a dining room.

There’s nothing like a bit of Emeli Sandé and Professor Green to soundtrack your self-turning skewers. Although Sandé’s Read All About It, Pt. III, with the line, “Put it in all of the papers, I’m not afraid, they can read all about it,” hit a bit too close to home for this review.

………………………………………..

Sign up for Bristol24/7’s weekly food and drink newsletter to get  news, reviews, interviews, upcoming events and more in your inbox every Thursday

………………………………………..

We ordered starters of fried chicken gyozas (£7.99) and deep fried crispy squid (£7.99) and then opted for three skewer variations for mains. Lamb (£1.99 each), pork belly (£1.39 each) and king prawn (£1.39 each) with a side of jasmine rice (£2.39).

Drinks options are beers or soft drinks, with the only non-lager available a warm can of Punk IPA (£3.99). With so many amazing breweries in Bristol and seemingly ample fridges behind the bar, this was a shame.

I was grateful to be provided with a miniature ice bucket for my can of Brewdog’s Punk IPA. We were also given cumin powder and chilli powder to season our meat with, although we were assured it had already been marinated.

In a lifetime first for me, the food at Meat Off had me genuinely questioning whether there was in fact a chef, or indeed anyone, in the kitchen. Given that the only prep to do is to cut up the meat, you would think they would go to the effort of deveining the prawns.

I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if the squid and gyozas were purchased frozen from the Asian supermarket down the road. Neither was offensive. In fact, the gyozas were quite tasty. But the squid existed in a universe where seasoning has yet to be discovered and both were in dire need of a dip.

Two words – the tomato. Need I say more?

In a blind taste test, I would have really struggled to differentiate between the pork and the lamb. Both were equally fatty and tasted only of the same cumin and chilli powder that they brought to the table.

Given the star of the show here is the meat – or at least that is what is implied by the name – I expected higher quality ingredients.

The jasmine rice was not fragrant and contained no salt or anything else that may have indicated remnants of flavour.

The presentation, along with everything else at Meat Off, needs work.

Adding to our experience was the occasional wafts of Dettol drifting over from the tables to our left. In lieu of serving customers (for this was a private dining experience for us, being the only customers on Tuesday evening), the waitress was cleaning the grills next door. Nothing like a bit of bleach to season a bland meal.

In fairness, the waitress was very sweet but it wasn’t enough to stop me wanting to impale myself on one of the skewers.

Every ounce of my being was desperate to evacuate by this point but my poor dining partner was still desperately trying to stab a clove of raw garlic with his chopstick.

We paid up and left, and I honestly was lost for words. A few weeks ago, my colleague Martin Booth went to COR and entitled his review ‘The best new Bristol restaurant of 2022’. With only a month left of the year, I am sorry to say that I think I may have found the worst.

Meat Off, 72 Park Street, BS1 5JX
@meatoffbristol

All photos: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Read next:

• Roastery and cafe opens in East Bristol
• Casa, Redcliffe: ‘A triumphant return for a Bristol favourite’ – restaurant review
• Bringing a taste of Tibet to Bristol

Listen to the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: