Unusually for a restaurant, there’s no dinner menu on offer at Bayt, the new concept at Kitchen by Kask. Well, that’s not entirely true – there is a short a la carte if you ask nicely for it but owner Charlie Taylor is trying to encourage diners to try the new supper menu and most people already are.
Of course, the restaurant caters for allergies and dietaries, but the ‘come around for supper with friends’ style of Bayt (it means ‘home’ or ‘house’ in Arabic) is to get a group of mates together and sit around the table like you would if you were staying in rather than going out to eat.
Together with chef Melissa Meakins, Charlie wants the dining experience at Bayt to be just like a relaxed dinner party at home. Wine buff Charlie, who also has the Kask bar across the road, even pours the drinks for you – a small glass of wine for each of the five dishes served.
And the cost of this informal supper? Just £30 per person, with the wine being an optional and additional £25, although there’s also an extensive wine, beer and no/low drinks list if you don’t want the wine pairings.
On a damp and dank midweek evening, Bayt was packed, warm and buzzing. Very much a homely neighbourhood joint, there were local families, a couple with a baby, groups of students and one couple with two well behaved dogs tucked under the table.
Chef Melissa’s passion for the planet as well as good food means there is a sustainable and ethical slant to the produce used. This includes using only wild meat in her dishes, such as venison, duck and wild boar.
She says: “Not only do these taste incredible, the impact they have on the environment is significantly less than the likes of your regular meats such as chicken, beef and lamb which have a higher carbon footprint and quite often involve a traumatic experience for the animal. Using wild meats means we work more in harmony with the environment and give the animals the respect they deserve.”
The dishes on offer change all the time so the food we ate may well be completely different if you visit this week or next. But there wasn’t a duff dish to be had and although the presentation was as simple and rustic as food at home, the cooking was precise and the flavours full and interesting.
First out of the kitchen was a pair of mushroom and truffle arancini with a crisp, crunchy exterior and bosky, gently truffly rice filling. Then there were huge, perfectly timed scallops topped with ‘caviar’ (not the real thing but a very good ‘faux’ version), garlic butter and dill oil.
Next, a beautifully presented and colourful dish of delicately flavoured cured trout, nose-tingling wasabi mayo, pink pickled onions, watercress oil and edible flowers. And then we had the wild boar ragu tagliatelle – a robust, ballsy, slow-cooked dish with plenty of heft and accompanied by a surprisingly good Bulgarian red that demonstrated just how far wine has come in that country since the stomach-stripping reds of 20 years ago.
Actually, all the wine choices poured by Charlie as each dish appeared were spot on – he has a passion for it and it shows. And he has a generous hand when pouring – Keith Floyd would have loved it here. Best of all was the stunning Spanish white Pedro Ximenez, although the Californian Gewürztraminer worked especially well with the trout dish.
There were only two of us eating on this occasion but next time, I’d get a bunch of mates and book a larger table to try even more dishes. And a lot more wine.
Confident cooking of carefully chosen ingredients, matched by excellent wines in a fun and chilled atmosphere, Bayt really is like being welcomed into a friend’s house for supper. The food is excellent and the glasses are always topped up – it’s a proper home from home without the washing up.
Bayt at Kitchen by Kask, 36 North Street, Bristol, BS3 1HW. Tel: 07522 198081.