Palomar, Bishopston, Bristol

Official site of Palomar - www.palomarfishhouse.com

Official site of Palomar - www.palomarfishhouse.com

A recent opening on the Gloucester Road strip, this pub has relocated from Colston Street where it was known as the Urban Wood. Conceptually it seems broadly similar, with an urban chic feel, a somewhat limited beer offering and a menu following the current trend for so called “dude food”. It’s a single room bar with some large opening windows at the front, and whilst this may provide some fresh air it’s not much of an outlook being on a busy and congested main road. Many pubs these days have a stripped back look, but here it’s been taken to an extreme and to my mind looks a bit of mess. The flooring is old chequered lino whilst the walls are a mixture of plaster work or bare brick where that has fallen off. The ceiling too is a hotchpotch with the cable trays and other services on display as well as a rusty old girder or two. The only feature of any note is some old thistle walls tiles that have been covered up for years and are believed to date from the time when the building was a David Greig supermarket. The beer cellar was in a caged off area just past the bar counter and there is an open kitchen at the rear. Food wise, the menu offered a decent looking selection of dishes with a number of burgers, sandwiches, risotto, fish & chips, steaks, etc., and these were mostly priced between about £8 and £12. A Mac ‘n’ Pork burger consisted on BBQ pulled pork and a fried egg, although the inclusion of macaroni in a burger seems an odd choice and I’m not entirely sure it worked. Nonetheless, at £7.50 complete with chips, it was a tasty dish and good value. A fish pie with cheesy mash was a bit more expensive at £11.95, but this too was a generous portion and tasty. There were no real ales on tap unfortunately, and the keg options, whilst somewhat unusual, looked to consist of just one choice from each of five categories, none of which were a bitter, e.g.; wheat beer, stout, craft lager, etc. My Sandford’s Devon Red cider went down very well though, although at £4.15 you could of course reasonably expect it to. There was however a good selection of bottled beers, including a whole shelf in the ‘fridge devoted to beers from Bristol.