Brown & Bye, Bristol

The third and most recent opening in this pleasant corner of the harbour side opposite the SS Great Britain, it was surprisingly quiet, almost deserted in fact, on a recent Saturday afternoon visit, whilst the two others bars opposite were buzzing. This is probably due in no small part to the fact that it was in the shade, whereas the others were bathed in glorious sunshine. Inside it follows the current vogue for the industrial look with a bare breeze block wall and such like, although it seems to be taken to extremes here with a bare concrete floor that wasn’t even screeded and tables made from old cable reels – or in some cases, they just are old cable reels. It all gave the impression of being somewhat unfinished, and I really felt as though I’d walked in to the middle of a building site. That said, they had gone to the trouble of plastering and painting the ceiling in a turquoise hue and there were some old boards affixed to the wall in places. The loos followed the same theme with bare copper pipes above the sink and isolator valves half way up the wall serving as taps. The basin was mounted atop a beer barrel though, which I suppose was an interesting feature. The menu, such as it was, consisted entirely of sharing platters of one sort or another, such as deli, cheese, or the “Boat House Board”. This proved to be a selection of three cheeses and three charcuteries which you could select yourself from a blackboard, along with a few olives, salad and sourdough bread. It was ok I suppose, and the cheeses were actually pretty good, but I’m not really sure it was worth £20. There were no real ales on here, just a selection of eight taps mounted on the wall behind the bar. However, these included three lagers and a cider leaving a wheat beer (Blue Moon), a porter (Guinness Dublin) and two IPA’s – Wolf Rock and East Coast. The cider in tap was a very pleasant Thatcher’s Old Rascal, although they also had two more served from boxes racked up in a small room next to the bar – Cheddar Valley and Weston’s Family Reserve.