The Clifton Sausage

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The Clifton Sausage

Tony Benjamin is almost moved to lyricism by the bread and butter pudding at this mecca of Great British Food without the stodge

Whether in food or friendship, heartiness is a fine, comforting thing, but there’s a fine balance to be struck to keep from seeming stodgily overwhelming. It’s a challenge that the Clifton Sausage set themselves from the outset by offering a smart, contemporary dining experience rooted in ‘British classics’ (and those eponymous stuffed skins). But thanks to their combination of high standards and unpretentious straightforwardness, they’ve effortlessly achieved that equipoise, making for a warm welcome and a confidence in good dining to follow.

Both my companion and myself have toiled uphill on bicycles to get here – we’re not exactly Village People – and thus a pint of beautifully kept Butcombe Bitter is the first port of call. We while away some time at the friendly bar before being led to our table – it’s bustling as usual, but candlelit alcoves help keep things intimate, albeit a tad tricky to read the menu. After mulling the virtues of the more familiar bangers’n’mash possibilities we decide to branch out. The day’s specials list is as long as some places’ main menu, and two starters catch the eye at once so we share a half-dozen razor clams lightly grilled and served in spicy tomato & chorizo sauce, as well as a joint of ‘South West Fries’ wild rabbit . That’s a fine parody of KFC, with chunkily satisfying coleslaw, green salad and a golden-coated hunk of lightly flavoured meat.

There’s a ‘special’ white wine suggestion: ‘The Hermit Crab’ is a briskly fruitful viognier marsanne recommended for the day’s fish dish of roast line-caught hake, and I’m persuaded of both. My friend (a man with some experience in the sausage trade) picks the Old Spot tasting plate, a meaty celebration of piggery promising roast tenderloin, sausage and crisp belly pork from Gloucester’s finest breed. As we broach the wine, the waitress notes a wobble in our table, thanks to the proper flagstone floor, but within seconds it’s chocked up and stable. That’s just part of their amiable service culture – later she tirelessly takes a foreign customer through every aspect of the menu – that ensures the comfort starts even before the food arrives.

Nonetheless there’s a leap of gladness when I see the golden hunk of roasted hake that arrives, perched on a bed of buttered kale and drizzled with dill veloute. The meat flakes from the bone easily, a crisp shell encasing a very moist centre. It’s one of my favourite fish flavours and nothing’s been lost in the oven, though a buttery undertow from the veloute has insinuated itself along the way. It comes with crisp new potatoes as well as the dark kale, and it all fits together perfectly. I’m absorbed in the food when a serious bit of crunching across the table reminds me I’m not alone. The belly pork, it seems, comes with proper crackling, snap-sharp outside and fat-succulent underneath, and the full flavour of a happy pig. That, it seems, runs through his other meat treats – fork-friendly tenderloin and juicy sausage sharing a porkiness well able to stand up to intense braised red cabbage and sweet apple & cider sauce.

There’s stuff on the dessert menu that simply can’t be passed up: sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce and ice-cream for he, orange and cinnamon bread & butter pudding with Chew Valley cream for me. The sticky toffee pudding passes muster but I’m frankly gobsmacked by the bread & butter pudding: how can you make such a flossy lightness out of such stodge? But that’s the Clifton Sausage trick, reminding us that years of heavy-handed corner-cutting gave ‘classic British’ fodder an unfairly bad name. The whole caboodle comes to £70, not counting the beer. It seems a small price to pay for such a delicious way to recover our national pride.

THE CLIFTON SAUSAGE 7 PORTLAND ST, CLIFTON VILLAGE, BRISTOL. FFI: 0117 973 1192, http://www.cliftonsausage.co.uk/

THE VERDICT