Condesa, Whiteladies Road: 'The research trips have paid off'
The Season and Taste team have opened their third Mexican restaurant. But is it as good as their second?
The team behind Bristol’s newest restaurant, Condesa, have been going on research trips to Mexico to inform their new restaurant since 2007. According to a short paragraph on the back of the menu, they’ve been to Oaxaca, Tequila, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puebla and La Condesa. Then Belmont Estate, where said menu has been developed and refined.
I know opening and running restaurants is a tough and unforgiving business, but the research and development bit sounds rather dreamy doesn’t it?
Condesa is presumably named after La Condesa, an arty and trendy suburb of Mexico City, where according to Google, one can find ‘hipsters walking dogs, trendy international bistros and posh bars’. A very apt name for a new Mexican restaurant from the Season and Taste team on Whiteladies Road.
Condesa has transformed the basement that used to belong to The Burger Joint into a candle-lit, exposed brick lair of anticipation. At the back, a bar complete with shelves groaning under the weight of mezcal and tequila is already crowded with drinkers and diners. It’s an atmospheric stage for a good-looking menu, which we have the pleasure of reading a long ten minutes after we sit down.
The menu is explained to us (how would I have understood it otherwise?) and a we are recommended the tartare tostada (£8) and the hispi cabbage with chipotle butter (£9).
I always appreciate it when a member of staff tells you their favourite dishes. There’s nothing worse than asking and hearing ‘oh it’s all delicious’. That means they haven’t tried it, which means the restaurant doesn’t give a toss that their staff are serving dishes they don’t know or understand. Not here - she was spot on. The tartare tostada reminds me of the ones I ate at La Guerrerense in Mexico City; a favourite of the late Anthony Bourdain for good reason. The research trips have paid off in that dish alone.
For every restaurant in Mexico that doesn’t have a charred hispi cabbage on their menu, there is a small plates menu in the UK that does. Hispi cabbage is as ubiquitous as potholes in the UK. But this is a first class hispi cabbage, lathered in chipotle butter and shedding shards of smoked almond.
Also memorable are the fried chicken wings (£7.5) - it’s hard to beat a fried chicken wing - and the trout ceviche with grapes (£9.5). The trout has been swimming in the citrus just a little too long and doesn’t have that just-opaque quality that defines an outstanding ceviche, but the grapes are an ingenious burst of sugar and the overall composition is pleasantly piquant, especially when piled onto some of the tortilla chips that are surplus to the equally good bone marrow dish (£8).
Sour cream and potato is unlikely to ever let you down, least of all when it is smashed flat and piled with chives and tajin (£6). Delicious. However, this dish has not come from research trips to Mexico, but straight from the menu of Miznon, London. Their ‘run-over’ potato is famed and clearly word has reached Bristol.
The following dishes lead me to the conclusion that perhaps one more jaunt over the Atlantic may be beneficial. The slices of steak in the carne asado tacos (£13) are chewy and even after adding the three meritorious salsas are a little dry. Slow cook chunks of beef shin instead, surely? Drunken mezcal prawns (£12.9) are huge and beautifully supple but alarmingly sober. A lilliputian quesedilla (£5.5) and grilled skate wing (£14) are both a little underwhelming.
Judging by the speed of service, it appears that the staff are continuing to go on research trips to Mexico throughout the night. You can’t blame them for forgetting menus, drinks and our existence if they were jet-lagged, I suppose. I do somewhat resent being told another group is coming to commandeer my table in 15 minutes when I have been waiting twice that amount of time to see the dessert menu. Don’t forget to bring some Calpol; Condesa is clearly having teething problems.
There are frustratingly few good Mexican restaurants in the UK. The best, I believe, is A La Mexicana in Birmingham. I also can’t stop thinking about a lunch I had last year at Madre in Manchester. I don’t think Bristol has yet got anything that sits in league with either.
Even more frustrating is the fact that we once did. Masa and Mezcal, which locals will remember as the sadly short-lived Mexican where Nadu now resides, was from the same group but fell victim to high costs and Covid.
Condesa was the anticipated silver lining in the many, many clouds of my return back to the UK from Mexico in February. I was hoping it would be the rebirth of Masa and Mezcal; emerging miraculously over the Easter weekend to give Bristol a Mexican restaurant worthy of a devout following. Alas, I don’t think it’s quite there yet. For now, I will have to book another flight to Mexico City to visit the original La Condesa to find the flavours I seek. Research, innit.
Words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Condesa, 83 Whiteladies Road, BS8 2NT