The Old Bookshop on North Street has launched a brand new Saturday brunch menu, which sees a range of brunch plates paired with cocktails created by the Psychopomp team. The menu is available weekly from 11 am to 3 pm, and Becky Hamblin headed over to check it out…
Brunch is a bit of an institution at mine, and so it’s rare for me to be persuaded to venture out the door in search of a good meal this time of the day when I consider my own to be pretty darn good… let alone trek half way across the city, but boy, was I in for a treat!
Saturday was my first visit to The Old Bookshop – an intimate, relaxed, warm and friendly café-bar situated on North Street, Bedminster, decorated eclectically with a small area set aside for live music in the evenings.
Resident chef Alex Bluett has paired three of his fantastic brunch dishes with delicious punchy Psychopomp cocktails to really kick-start the weekend, priced at £12.50 for your brunch plus a cocktail.
Offering their take on the classic Full English, the Bookshop Fry-Up consists of locally-sourced bacon, sausage, eggs, greens, potato hash, homemade beans (with a little added cayenne for some extra welly) served with toast, large tea or coffee and your choice of cocktail for £12.50.
The smoked bacon and sausages are superb quality – the sausages so high in meat content that they literally crumbled, and eggs poached to perfection. I’m one of those rare folk who is offended by ‘traditional’ baked beans, but Alex’s homemade beans even had me salivating.
The vegetarian brunch comprises baked mushroom, fritter, eggs, greens, potato hash, homemade baked beans and toast.
I opted for Kedgeree. Everyone has their own take on this dish, and I make it fairly frequently so was keen to try a different approach. The rice was beautifully cooked, light and fluffy and delicately flavoured, with two flawless poached eggs atop and dusted in crispy kale – mmm mmm mmm! An incredibly hearty meal.
My cocktail of choice was The Salty Dog – featuring Woden gin, grapefruit, pickle juice (which we later learnt was turnip pickle juice), lemon and lemon salt. A fellow diner opted for a Bloody Mary – which he declared “the best in Bristol” and on that statement, everyone ordered one – and agreed, it really is rather good and as the menu states “it’s no ordinary Bloody Mary”… they’re not wrong! Extraordinary, more like.
Asides the brunch/cocktail pairings, the brunch menu also offers buns filled with tempting breakfasty choices, ‘Bemmys’ – a Cheddar scone topped with poached eggs and Hollandaise with your choice of ham hock, smoked salmon or garlic mushrooms, and a further selection of larger and smaller plated meals.
Brunch is served Wednesday to Saturday (£8-9), the cocktail pairings menu is only available on Saturday from 11am to 3pm (£12.50) – and I concur, it’s well worth a trip halfway across the city!
Please note: our meal was received free of charge, but this in no way impacted on our opinion. We were not obliged to write a positive review, and the venue did not see this review before it was put up on the site.