Cosy Club in Bristol - Food review
Posted on: 2015-02-26
Our rating:
Cosy Club is the perfect venue to unleash your hedonistic, sybaritic sensibilities, housed in a breathtaking, majestic building catering for a broad range of clientele and serving delicious, sensibly-priced, first-class food.
Stepping in to the Cosy Club on Corn Street is like stepping into another world. A world of wealth, privilege, royalty and sheer unbridled indulgence. It's a huge building, a massive space, akin to some kind of opulent museum, with Bath stone walls and columns, flock wallpaper, oil paintings adorning the walls, and a huge glass dome ceiling. Indeed it has an imposing, reverential quality to it - gentleman's club meets cathedral - which is presumably why it's been dubbed the 'cathedral of all Cosy Clubs'.
At first, the sheer size and scope of the building, its grandeur and its majesty really does take the breath away, but once you've acclimatized to its pure epicness, you realise that this is one of the most impressive, ornate and awe-inspiring restaurants in the city.
It wasn't always the case though. This old banking hall has been resident to a fair share of unimpressive, lugubrious eateries, dingy bars and, at one point, a blink-and-you'll-miss it Mexican restaurant. But now the building is in the safe, reliable hands of The Loungers group, who already have several cafes/bars dotted around the city, and who saw the unquestionable potential of the building as the latest addition - the eighth, in fact - of their Cosy Clubs.
It combines classic and luxurious with a contemporary feel, 1930s colonial charm with marble and polished wooden parquet floors, chandeliers, Art Deco cocktail chairs, vintage standard lamps and leather banquettes.
The Cosy Club is open all day and therefore shifts gears depending on the time, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner from a menu that serves up brunch, sandwiches, paninis, tapas, and more substantial, filling fare. And more substantial, filling fare was exactly what my brother and I were looking for when we popped in after a day of self-imposed gastronomic abstinence so we could truly indulge.
Mushroom bruschetta (£5.25) kicked off the starters, an impressively-sized wedge of toasted ciabatta ladled with a generous scattering of dense, rich mushrooms and a slightly sweet aged balsamic. My brother made an enthusiastic bee-line for the squid and Spanish chorizo salad (£5.95),the combination of the squid and chorizo salad beautifully fused with the meaty sausage, earthy butterbeans and the delicious, well-cooked calamari rings for a blissful mix of flavours and textures.
The Hero hamburger with chorizo, mature cheddar, fried red onions, chimichurri, chipotle mayo and marinated chilli (£9.25) was perfection between two baps, perfectly cooked and retaining its juicy, succulent flavours with thin, skin-on chips and an accompanying, refreshing salad. My brother's Thai beef salad (£9.95) was a potent blend of sweet, sour and savoury, with the fiery chilli delivering an eye-watering kick and working with the soft, soothing noodles, grated carrots and tender strips of beef.
Pudding didn't take much rumination, and my warm sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce and clotted cream ice-cream (£5.25) was absolutely divine, a heavenly confluence of soft, sweet, sticky sponge in a puddle of rich sauce with a blob of cosmically creamy ice-cream. My brother's creme brûlée (£5.50) was equally faultless, a light tap of the spoon cracking through the crunchy, sugary top to make way for the sweet creaminess beneath and accompanied by a slice of candied orange peel.
Cosy Club is the perfect venue to unleash your hedonistic, sybaritic sensibilities. Our waitress was magnificent, affable, friendly and attentive throughout and the staff in general were infectiously enthusiastic and eager to make sure we had a great time. And a great time we undubitably had, for the Cosy Club is a breathtaking, majestic building catering for a broad range of clientele and serving delicious, sensibly-priced, first-class food.
5/5
Reviewed by Jamie Caddick for 365Bristol - the leading events and entertainment website for Bristol
Article by:
Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.
