The Rise of The Might Roma Empire (Roma Bistro)

Member Name: Emma1973

Product:	Roma Bistro
Date:	14/08/05 (545 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Close to my house! Good wine, food and prices

Disadvantages: Errr............

I am sated, the fires of my desires have been quashed, I am ecstatic with the sensational feeling of a full belly. Music is the food of love so they say, but for me, food is love! The way to this girls heart is definitely through her stomach ( and your wallet if you're rich enough!) Hence I spent the evening of St Valentines in a wonderful little Italian restaurant in the Kingswood area of Bristol. Well apparently its part of South Gloucester now, but no one ever notices that!
Roma is a fantastic little restaurant anyway, and I'll tell you more about that later. But at the moment I'm concentrating on that Valentine set menu.

Its usually quite difficult to get a table in Roma on a Saturday, so we were happily surprised to get a table at 9.00pm, it has to be said, it isn't the biggest place in the world! When we got there we could see why. Most of the tables are originally 4's but instead there are lots of 2's. Beautifully decorated with red heart balloons and decorations around the place complimenting its already attractive settings.

As soon as we stepped through the door we realised that this wasn't going to be a quiet romantic candlelit dinner. It was ablaze with artificial lights, absolutely packed with people and staff running all over the place. Our table was upstairs, almost slap bang in the middle of the room and not situated too far away from a large table of people celebrating a birthday.

We were already sat at our table by then and decided to grin and bear it. We perused the special menu and it didn't take long to choose, consisting as it was of four starters, and four main courses.


I've never had scallops, so decided to be adventurous and plumped for them in a white wine, cream and leek sauce for Starter and Alan had the Minestrone soup. Feeling thoroughly uninspired we both had the main course of Beef Medallions with a red wine sauce.
My starter came in a delightfully seashell shaped dish, but my first thought was, where were the scallops? I was expecting the whole white things you often see Ainsley Harriot chucking on a grill. Instead they were chopped up and pout into the sauce, unfortunately there was more sauce than scallop and I was reduced to using the fork like a mini sieve! But the sauce was fantastic, creamy and so delicate the taste of the scallops still came through. I enjoyed it so much that when Alan finished his soup I borrowed his spoon and slurped up the rest of the sauce. Actually it wouldn't have done too badly as a soup!

Of course thats what Alan was having! A generous bowl, it was accompanied by a toasted roll with butter. It was quite herby with chucks of onion, carrot, celery, pasta amongst others, delicious but not much else to say!

The star was definitely the main course, the three thin medallions of beef were cooked to medium perfection and were so tender they almost seemed to melt in the mouth. The sauce was rich, red wine sauce should always be rich and this definitely was, thankfully the predominant flavour was the wine and not, as so often happens the herbs in it.
Could have done a bit better on the vegetables, rather skimpy, they arrived on the plate rather than separately. The roasted potatoes were very good although I am a little fed up with the carrots and broccoli that keep appearing on my plate.

Dessert was also an absolute pleasure, which was good seeing as there was only one choice! It was a very sweet looking chocolate sponge cake, chocolate mousse, cream and strawberry syrup, all in the shape of a heart. Lovely tasting it was too, although the syrup would have been sickly had I eaten much more. Unfortunately for some diners they missed out as they ran out of the desserts later in the evening.

In all, including drinks we spent £64, that wasn't bad at all, but I felt that for what we got it was a little expensive. It certainly wasn't an exciting meal, although very nice. If this was what they served on regular occasions I would visit a lot less than I currently do.

The service was also more lacking than we had encountered in the past, I'm sure this was to do with just how busy the place was. No one checked to see if the meal was all right, and the only time they asked us if we wanted another drink was when they bought our meal. And I'm still objecting to the fact that I have to pay more for a de-caff coffee despite the fact that they are honest enough to tell me that it will be instant. We also had to ask twice for our bill and after sitting there for another 15 minutes decided to go downstairs at pay it at the till.


But this makes it sound like such an average restaurant and its really not, it can definitely be regarded as the best Italian restaurant in Bristol Its original Italian meals are fantastic, and I've never had a bad meal yet. I heartily recommend the Home Made Italian Sausage, its mixed with large chunks of vegetables, covered in cheese and baked, served with tagliatelle its fabulous. Their own Spaghetti Bolognese is heavenly, and for a great starter the garlic mushroom baked with cheese is also pretty exceptional. Their vegetarian dishes are very varied and delicious, even my usually moaning and critical sister in law managed to eat all her meal in its entirety, something I've never seen before. The prices are also reasonable, ranging from £5.95 up to £15.00 which is usually a whopping steak, kleftiko or their current special, rabbit! (not my thing at all)

Since then Roma have made a few changes, there is now a terrace where you can sit on those balmy evenings, they also have regular live jazz evenings on a Sunday. They also have a special price lunch menu.
They currently have a rival in the shape of La Passional a minutes walk down the road, but at the moment are still the reigning champions!

So I beg of you not to take the first part of my review as being indicative of the general quality of the meals and pop along for their real, traditional Italian meals!


Roma Italian Bistro
87, Regent St Kingswood
Bristol Avon
BS15 8LJ

Tel: 0117 908 3022

Summary: Very good local Italian, with a few Greek dishes as well