It could do with a few more dangling jamón legs for the full atmosphere, but it still feels real
The restaurant world was rocked by the death of Jonray Sanchez-Iglesias in 2015, aged only 32. The cancer that took him robbed us of a star, self-taught and burning with talent. He didn’t live to see to fruition plans to move and transform his family’s Michelin-starred Casamia, and to create another two, entirely different restaurants. I can’t imagine what that must feel like for Peter, his brother, partner and co-chef, but on the strength of this little Bristol tapas bar it would appear to have fired him up – fuelled not only by his own ambition, but by his late brother’s, too.
In a week during which I suffered a significant family death, I’m drawn to this small empire. The three restaurants are perched in a row along the waterside setting of Bristol’s supremely handsome former general hospital. (So maybe I did find myself in the property sales office after a few palo cortados – what of it?) Walk past the sleek new Casamia, their permanently rammed pizzeria, Pi Shop, and step over Paco Tapas’ threshold into a little slice of Andalucía: dark walls, glossy bull coat-hooks, sherry barrels, beautiful patterned tiles and entirely open kitchen. There’s a solitary, rather mournful oil painting, a refugee from the original Casamia’s pizza-and-pasta days, and a lustworthy, duck-egg-blue meat slicer. Fragrant wood smoke hangs in the air from a serious-looking grill, complete with Etxebarri-style wheels and gears above smouldering birch wood. Brown paper menus come scrawled with the day’s specials, Spanish wines, hand-picked (and excellent) sherries and the now mandatory vast gin and tonics. It could do with a few more dangling jamón legs for the full atmosphere, but it still feels real: I believe it wholeheartedly.
Related: The Cauldron, Bristol: ‘Mad: a bit. Delicious: absolutely’ – restaurant review | Marina O’Loughlin
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