Rosa – restaurant review

According to legendary chef Ferran Adria, whose former restaurant El Bulli was regularly named as the world’s best, world tapas is the future of global cuisine.

A beer made by Adria in collaboration with Barcelona’s Estrella Damm is served on tap at the newly opened Rosa on Whiteladies Road, which has also taken on board the chef’s suggestion on their hardback menu – whose first page has the words “world inspired food to share”.

Sharing dishes start at £4 for bread with salt and paprika butter, and then go on an international tour via China with a steamed bao (£6), Mexico with a heritage blue corn taco (£7.50), Italy with a burrata mozzarella (£6.50) and Korea with Korean fried chicken (£6.50).

If one cuisine is a little more dominant than others, it’s Spain with options including patatas bravas (£5.50), flame grilled Galician octopus (£6.50) and a whole Galician beef rib (£25) cooked over hot coals and served on the bone with baby gem salad.

It’s a veritable culinary adventure in a new opening where it’s possible to trace the lineage of many Bristol restaurants back to a former incarnation within these four walls.

Rocinantes was a tapas bar that dominated the Bristol food scene in the late 1980s and 90s. It later became Quartier Vert, with its staff branching out to open the likes of Bordeaux Quay, a revitalised Bell’s Diner and Hart’s Bakery.

So Rosa has certainly got big shoes to fill, in a restaurant spread over two floors which was most recently The Townhouse and has been taken on by the Zazu’s Kitchen team (full disclosure: Bristol24/7 consultant publisher Dougal Templeton is a partner at Zazu’s Kitchen).

On their first Sunday lunch service, tapas were largely being overlooked in favour of roasts featuring Yorkshire puddings the size of baseball mitts, served next to sirloin (£16.95) pork belly (£16) and chicken (£15.50).

From a choice of three starters, the chicken and ham croquettes (£2) were creamy and moreish, and for mains a Catalan tomato fish stew (£14.50) needed a big spoon to fully appreciate its delights right down to the last dribble of broth: Cornish cod pan fried beautifully and accompanied by saffron potatoes, and hazelnut and parsley picada.

The Catalan tomato fish stew – proudly independent

For dessert, Rosa’s own take on churros was a posher version of the popular snack served on Spanish street corners at all hours of the day and night.

The globule of chocolate was deliciously salty and the churros crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside and coated in copious amounts of sugar. The only fault was that the churros were just a little too delicate for the chocolate, so not ideal for dipping but still a delectable dessert.

Across the other side of the table meanwhile, a scoop of chocolate ice cream was being gobbled with gusto.

Adria’s beer, Inedit, was a fine accompaniment to the food, but this being a tapas bar there is a large selection of wine mostly available by the glass or carafe starting at £4.50 and going up to the most expensive bottle, a £48 Bordeaux from Chateau Paveil de Luze.

There are also half a dozen sherries, cocktails including several made with gin from Psychopomp only a few hundred metres away on St Michael’s Hill, beer from a regularly rotating selection of Bristol breweries, and a sparkling sake which the Rosa team say is “literally the best thing in the world”.

Featuring food and drink from across the globe, Rosa is a new restaurant doing justice to its proud heritage, whose menu deserves to be explored.

Rosa, 85 Whiteladies Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 2NT

www.rosabristol.co.uk