A couple of weeks ago, my friend Kate came down from London for the weekend. Why do we always say “down from London”? I guess “sideways from London” doesn’t quite have that ring to it. However, I digress…

After a relaxing hour or two of comic shopping at Forbidden Planet, we wandered down to the Harbourside to have lunch at The Brasserie, Bordeaux Quay.

I’ve been intrigued by Bordeaux Quay since it opened in 2006. It sounded very… worthy. Collecting rainwater to flush toilets, recycling cooking oil as bio-fuel, and other save-the-planet innovations. Now, I am a big advocate of recycling, but the press releases made it sound as though it would be rather forced down diners throats. However, the food sounded interesting. Local, seasonal, menus changing according to what was available on the day. That I liked.

Bordeaux Quay is situated in the Harbourside area of Bristol. This has been redeveloped and invigorated in recent years and is now–dare I say it–trendy. The Harbourside is also home to two food festivals each year, so it does have foodie credentials. The building itself is worthy of Grand Designs with a beautiful oak staircase forming a focal point amd some light wells which reduce the need for day-time lighting.

I’ve got to say, I was impressed at how child-friendly Bordeaux Quay was. They had decent high-chairs, were happy to offer child-sized portions if required, and happily provided Lucas with a box of crayons and some menus to draw on. (Apparently there is also a buggy park and full baby-changing facilities, so handy for Yummy Mummy Lunches.)

Kate and I settled on the goats cheese, roasted pepper and spring onion tart with a garden salad and Dave opted for pork and herb sausages with mash, cabbage and red onion gravy. Lucas opted for gannetting food from all of our plates.

While we waited for our main courses we snacked on some bread and olives. Much as I hate to criticise restaurants, I do have to observe that while the bread was very good it was rather out of place to serve it with a dish of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was good, solid English bread (brown and white), close-textured which cried out for some good, salty butter…

I really liked the tart. Short, buttery, crumbly pastry with a succulent layer of roasted red peppers. The goat’s cheese wasn’t lost within the egg custard, but instead turned up as little pockets of sharp-salty goodness. The salad that accompanied it wasn’t particularly exciting, but the produce was all excellent quality. It was certainly festively colourful!

Dave said that his sausages were excellent, as was the mash, but the red onion gravy somehow managed to have no flavour. The onions weren’t caramelised at all which left the gravy looking and tasting rather wishy-washy. It’s interesting that they managed to do the hard stuff right, but fell down on the simple gravy.

Lucas made a very good lunch out of our plates–food tastes way better from our plate rather than his own–but definitely preferred the sausage and mash. He’s getting quite carnivorous as he grows up.

Luckily for Lucas, we all opted for different desserts, so he got plenty of tastes! Kate had the baked chocolate pot with langue du chat. Dave had the apricot and raspberry crumble cake with vanilla cream. And I had the strawberry trifle. Judging from the dip that the conversation took as we ate, everyone was as happy with theirs as I was.

I loved the trifle. The strawberries were so ripe and sweet, and bathed in a coulis made of their pureed brethren. They were topped with an almond sponge, some gorgeously thick custard and finally a billowy layer of whipped cream.

All in all, it was a decent lunch which was reasonably priced. I wouldn’t rush back for a second meal, but if I was in the vicinity and hungry then I’d certainly pop in. I’m still quite keen to check out the main restaurant upstairs, though.

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Jeanne has tagged me for a six things meme. I don’t think I am particularly quirky, so this will probably descend into six things you didn’t know about Ang…

1. I always, always have to clean my glasses before setting off in the car. And I always have the sun visor down, even on dull days. It just feels right that way.

2. I don’t like eggs. Well, let me clarify that. I don’t like boiled, poached, or fried eggs. Anything where you have the remotest possibility of tasting the yolk as a separate thing. Yuck. I do, however, love scrambled eggs, omelettes and anything where eggs are an ingredient rather than the star.

3. I can’t resist making shapes out of mashed potato. Luckily now that we have Lucas, I can claim I’m doing it for his amusement!

4. I rarely sit on the sofa. I usually lie down, plonk the laptop beside me and tap away happily.

5. Quirky, quirky, quirky… *drums fingers on table* I hate bad grammar and poor punctuation in signs. (I’m fully aware that there are bound to be grammatical errors in this post, and others. If you feel moved to point them out, I’ll happily correct them!) Recently, I dragged a customer service rep round all the advertising hoardings at our local supermarket to point out the errors. Alas, they’re all still there.

6. Apparently I say “oh wow!” rather a lot. I only discovered this when I noticed that Lucas was also saying “oh wow” and “wowee!!”

I have to nominate six other people, so let me see… Katie, Beth, Lorraine, Erin , Ari and Ivonne.