Bad Tony's, Bristol

Official site of Bad Tony's - www.badtonys.co.uk

Official site of Bad Tony's - www.badtonys.co.uk

Recently opened on the site of a former Indian restaurant, but originally the Bristol Stock Exchange, this is quite an impressive looking building built in the Palladian style with black granite Corinthian columns, elaborate stone masonry and the Bristol coat of arms at the top. Despite only recently opening, it was completely deserted on our recent Thursday evening visit, with nobody else in there apart from the two bar staff. He did mention that they haven’t done much in way of publicity yet as they do not have their kitchen open, so perhaps that accounts for it. Internally it doesn’t disappoint either, although the current use of exclusively red lighting perhaps makes it difficult to fully appreciate. You first come to an entrance hall with a mosaic tiled floor and stairs down to the loos which feature a tiled wall and small recessed carved stone status in the wall. The bar is off to the right, and this was smaller than I remember it, and although impressive architecturally it didn’t feel particularly welcoming with only a limited number of tables around the permitter and just an empty space in the middle. The flooring is parquet wood, whilst the carved wooden backdrop to the bar looks as though it would be more at home in a church. The doorway out to the entrance hall is particularly impressive with more black granite columns, and there is much wood panelling on the walls as well as an intricately carved plasterwork on the ceiling. The focus here seems to be more on cocktails than beer, with mezcal and tequila something of a speciality. As such, there were no real ales on tap unfortunately, although there were a few options from Good Chemistry on keg. The solitary cider meanwhile was Thatcher’s Gold.