Circo, Bath

A new addition to the Bath pub scene following hot on the heels of their Bristol opening, this is housed in the former “Hole in the Wall” restaurant just at the top of Bath’s main shopping street. The entrance is through a small door next to The Porter on the raised pavement and this leads down a flight of stone steps to ground level. It’s divided in to several different rooms, although all having a similar feel with whitewashed stone walls, some dark wood panelling and a tiled floor. On the whole it’s quite atmospheric with it’s arches, candles and a real coal fire although the downside is that the acoustics can be quite noisy. There were a few small snugs along the front of the pub, one of them just big enough to squeeze in a small table and a couple of chairs. Otherwise the seating was chunky wooden farmhouse tables and benches, plus a few high stools at the bar. The bar counter seemed rather small for the size of the pub, especially considering that it’s also a food order point, and I can see this being a bit of a bottleneck at busier times. There are also a few old cider barrels dotted around. The food offering follows their familiar pizza and pies theme, and although we didn’t eat on this occasion, we have done previously in Bristol and found them to be very good. Here the names have been tweaked to fit in with the locale and included “Great Poultry Street” and “Pump Room Piggy”, although there were also signs saying that they use Chorizo from the Bath Pig Company and I noticed that Bellringer was used in the Steak & Ale pie so it would seem that they’re doing their best to source ingredients locally. Ciders on tap were extensive and included Burrow Hill Somerset Cider, Purbeck’s Dorset Draught, Symonds Founders Reserve, Thatcher’s Copper Press, Bee Sting Pear cider and a trio from Ashridge – Devon Red, Devon Gold and Devon Blush. In addition to this there were a further fifteen boxes racked up on shelving behind the bar. For beer drinkers the options are more limited with just one pump for Abbey Ale’s Bellringer, but this appeared to have run out.