Jamaica Street Stores, Stokes Croft, Bristol

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Blackthorn _ left this review about Jamaica Street Stores

A relative recent opening just off the popular Stokes Croft strip, this was presumably some sort of warehouse or factory in a former life and still has quite an industrial feel to it. It’s more of a bar and restaurant than your traditional pub, but it appears that you are quite welcome to just stop for a drink, and a number of punters were doing just this on our Friday evening visit.

Internally it consists of one large, open plan room with very high ceilings and whitewashed brickwork at the rear. The entire front of the pub is glazed making the most of the views of the People’s Republic and there was a semi-open kitchen off to the right. The flooring was some sort of black concrete, and there was also black air-conditioning ducting on the ceiling. To the left were rows of shelves with goods for sale, although we did not inspect the nature of these. A number of iron supporting pillars added to the industrial feel, although a large tree growing out of a barrel did soften it slightly I suppose.

The food menu was predominantly of the tapas variety with options such as Venison larb san choi bao (no idea what any of that means), Egg Fried Rice with Chinese sausage, yolk and coriander or Fermented Beetroot with goat’s curd mousse, pomegranate molasses and hazelnut. These were mostly priced somewhere around the £6 - £7 mark, and the friendly waiter suggested two or three dishes per person should be adequate. Everything we tried was decent enough, but certainly not outstanding and there are far better tapas options elsewhere in Bristol.

I didn’t notice any pumps on the bar, but the menu did list Beer Cubic (priced at “4.8”) as the solitary beer option which was presumably keg rather than cask. Ciders meanwhile were Orchard Pig Reveller and Night Owl Wild Eyes. This isn’t really my sort of place, but it makes an interesting addition to this part of town and I’d happily pop in again for a drink, although it’s doubtful if I’d bother with the food again.

On 4^th March 2019 - rating: 6
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