COR, Bedminster, Bristol: review

On April 7, 2023 by The Plate Licked Clean

Arriving in Bedminster early for my lunch at COR, I wander up and down North Street. I pass a launderette, a tattoo parlour, a boarded-up mini market: and yet someone has recently opened a bottle of Moet here, the gold foil and twist of wire on the tarmac. It’s an incongruous sight metres from the food bank opposite the restaurant, with its Rishi Sunak caricature a reminder that the political and the creative never seem far away in Bristol.

These might not be obvious neighbours for Bristol’s buzziest new opening. But Bedminster is in a state of change, with a specialist cheese shop and deli selling new Gruyère Jeune at £41/kg and £20 olive oil yards away from the record shop displaying a Socialist Worker poster.

It’s a masterclass in mixed signals. Bristol: don’t ever change.

Inside, four huge windows bring April light spilling in. I take a side-facing window seat to avoid scaring any passing children or small animals, and immediately feel at home. This already feels like a lovely place to be, with its coat stand, shelves budy with cookbooks, local beers, citrus fruit and jars of roasted red peppers.

You’d expect a heavy Spanish accent here perhaps, given chef-owner Mark Chapman’s time at Gambas, Bravas and more, but he plays more widely across the Mediterranean here at the restaurant he runs with his wife Karen.

There’s ample evidence of Italian- risotto, porcini, Parmesan,
Puntarelle, Coppa, Salame- and Spanish (prime Cantabrian anchovies, Gordal olives, croquetas). They don’t bludgeon you with the idea, so it’s almost a jolt to realise how little meat is on the menu. Fish and shellfish, sure: mussels, hake, scallops. But only one larger dish leads with meat.

Cor understands bread. Cor understands its welcoming, nurturing qualities; understands it’s better to have too much than not enough. ‘I’d prefer to do it for nothing’, Mark tells me: and while that’s obviously not possible, especially now, it tells you everything about the spirit of the place.

It’s beautifully made, and there’s plenty, too: four hefty slices, but this isn’t not for impatient scarfing. Try to keep some back, because you’ll be dredging and wiping and mopping aplenty as you go. Black garlic butter – and there’s easily twice as much as you’re used to getting- has a gentle funk.

I’m just a few minutes into lunch when I cancel my plans for the evening and ask if they can fit me in again. My server- lovely, informative, assured and charming- checks and then recommends a nearby pub for the interval.

Canelé, reinvented here as a savoury, is so delicately built you feel you should mutter an apology for cutting into its dark lacquered crust, through to a rich mushroom duxelle, the whole thing dusted with parmesan.

An impressive start, as is a bowl of Jerusalem artichokes fried until nutty and liberally doused in a silky truffled pecorino velouté. How, exactly, have they made something so simple taste so downright opulent?

The kitchen (flattered, I think, at someone coming from Cardiff for lunch: they had better get used to it) sends out an elegant little dish: canellini beans, left with just the merest bite, are swathed in a sauce both assertively acidic, and yet blanketed by cream and fat into something powerfully soothing and compelling, all under a light cassoulet panko crust dotted with caviar. It’s a thing of beauty. A heavier hand could ruin this with strident acidity. No such fear here. This is beauty in balance.

Sweet little scallops are impeccably cooked, drenched in umami-rich butter and anchored by the best use of hazelnuts I’ve come across since Antonio Simone’s sweetbreads on sourdough with beurre noisette at The Humble Onion.

Cuttlefish is billed as ‘cooked over fire’ but it has had a session sous-vide too, so what arrives is a quiet showstopper and as good an example of this underrated flesh as I’ve had. Anywhere. It’s something we should be eating more of, I think. Napped with ‘nduja and salsa verde, it is a glorious tricolore in the Bristol sunshine which drenches this room and dapples the counter: tucked away behind the finger-thick slices through the body are the tentacles, firm and meaty yet as tender as a kiss. Simple. Excellent. Simply excellent. Vividly bright juices slick the plate. Where’s that bread?

In the words of my friend Cat, it’ll have you Cooing over Cuttlefish. Full, happy, smitten, I wander off to the pub and count down to dinner.

That evening I sit up at the bar- my back thanks me- and there’s a ruggedly flavoured little chorizo croqueta, oozing under its panko crumb, sent out with my manzanilla, just as I’m about to order one.

More vegetable-centred dishes impress, from Tropea onion highlighting its sweetness in a hazelnut brown butter and thyme, all made luxurious by the addition of gorgonzola ‘dolce’ and lent texture by whole hazelnuts; to the buttery indulgence of burnt leeks with a tangy vinaigrette and a tickle of tarragon.

When meat does take the lead, it’s to impressive effect. The Basque lamb is a thing to fall in lust with. It’s irresistibly lovely, a hearty rosemary-perfumed tumble of red peppers and beans and thumb-wide chunks of lamb cooked to that point of tenderness you can only describe as ‘ridiculous’, all piled onto charred sourdough and bolstered with a glossy, pungent allioli I’d eat with breakfast cereal.

For me, a taste of family and home. For you, who knows. But you’ll wish it was.

A tiramisu is glorious. Panettone-based yet whisper-light, it does something special: it takes me back to Casamia, on the night I started this blog, and the renowned Sanchez- Iglesias version of this classic. I don’t know of any higher compliment I can pay the kitchen than that. It puts others to shame.

Whether it’s ‘cor’, cuore, or corazon, there’s heart here. Listed in The Michelin Guide, awarded a Bib Gourmand and included in The Good Food Guide within months of opening, COR has already made an impact: this is the sort of place Bristol throws up in unexpected places, and one to fall in love with.

‘Cor will be very lovely. Just fresh, varying & vibrant is the feedback I keep hearing’, one of Wales’ most respected restaurateurs messages me the day before I eat here. As usual, he’s spot on. Open from lunch til late five days a week, Cor is open for 50 hours a week: I’d recommend you make two or three of them yours.

COR, 81 North St, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 1ES

Tuesday – Saturday 12 – 10pm

Booking link

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