'This is a whip-smart menu of mostly small plates rammed with interesting ingredients that's hard to pigeonhole. Modern Brit with touches of Moro is my best stab'
The two local chums I ask about Bell's Diner have very different experiences to relate. "Ah," one says, misty-eyed, "that's where I stayed up till the smoky small hours as a student, necking vast quantities of red vino collapso." The other reminisces about fayn daynin': "It was all sous-vided oxtails and foraged alexanders." Me, I always thought it was vegetarian.
It transpires we're all right. Since it opened back in 1976, this little trouper – a former greengrocers in grungy Montpelier – has been all things to all Bristolians. But quietly, and with little fanfare, it recently turned into Bell's Diner & Bar Rooms (a nod, I'd say, to its new informality), and something altogether special.
Of the three small, interlinked rooms, we're led to the least prepossessing, almost through the hive-of-activity kitchen, and to a table opposite the lavs. It's singularly lacking in the scuffed, rickety charms of the other rooms, with their big windows, vintage coffee roasters and turntables ("We've got Stevie Wonder coming up next"). Our server attempts a nice bit of sleight of hand – "You've got these lovely doggie pictures to look at" – but it's not convincing anyone.
So it's down to the sheer loveliness of everything else that I'm still bathed in a warm glow about the place. I love the clever, urbane menu; I love the wine list, brimming with desirable arcana (sweet Puglian reds; amphora-fermented organic Catalonians), gently marked up and responsible for slightly denting my passion for albariño in favour of a treixadura from Ribeiro. And I particularly love beardy waiter Simon, his beaming warmth and friendliness a great hug of a welcome, his accent so rich and delicious you could spread it on toast.
The new bosses have installed Sam Sohn-Rethel, ex of fine locals Flinty Red and Manna, in the kitchen. His is a whip-smart menu of mostly small plates rammed with interesting ingredients – garlic scapes (the plant tops), Israeli couscous, pork rillons – that's hard to pigeonhole. Modern Brit with touches of Moro is my best stab. But there are rogues such as Elizabeth David's classic lamb Ste Menehould; here, the fatty lamb breast is confited in duck fat, then fried in breadcrumbs. Teetering towards overkill with the addition of tartare sauce, it's as dangerously snarfable as pork scratchings.
Rabbit, as tender as a goodbye kiss, is butched up by slabs of spicy morcilla, then soothed by fresh peas. As the blood sausage is cut, it leaches into the light broth, giving it a sexy, murky depth. Fat roasted scallops are served with lardo di Colonnata and those punchy little scapes. It all just works.
There are hiccups, sure, but they are forgivable and don't cramp the pleasures. A crémant substituted for prosecco? Yes, we do notice, and yes, it probably is nicer, but they might have mentioned it. There are chicken oysters, aka sot-l'y-laisses ("the fool leaves them"), which must have come from the world's weaseliest chickens, their chipotle yoghurt marinade not adding much by way of personality. Pannacotta lacks lascivious, milky wibble. And I'm pretty sure that the chips that come with our 12-hour-smoked pigs' cheeks – an amazing collision of soft flesh and smoky fat with a blurt of quince aïoli; one of those dishes whose oafish looks belie the beauty of their taste – are close cousins of those served at McDonald's. But after plunging a spoon into a lemon meringue pie so crisp, so perfectly lemony, so super-light, it's all forgotten.
The new custodians of Bell's Diner, Connie Coombes with right-hand-woman duties from Kate Hawkings, have a background in another Bristol restaurant legend, Rocinantes. They say they'd like to clone "the democratic Rocinantes vibe of eating as little or as much as one wants, whatever time of day, with nice drinks and jolly service". Well, they've totally pulled this off. And the food is bloody good, too.
• Bell's Diner 1-3 York Road, Montpelier, Bristol, 0117 924 0357. Open Tues-Sat, 10am-10pm. £25-30 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Value for money 9/10
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