The Travel Critic

There’s one place everyone brings friends or family who are seeing Bristol for the first time: to marvel at the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It’s an obligatory pilgrimage for visitors, even if the iconic view has been marred by scaffolding for two years now. Most people head to The White Lion, the pub next door at The Avon Gorge Hotel, where Granny will gleefully wait 20 minutes for her Dubonnet and Lemonade before embarking on a half-marathon shuffle around the terrace in search of a free table. And once she sits down, the “view” is a picturesque portrait of bridge maintenance—a modern homage to endless construction.

But I’m not here to talk about The White Lion, or the fact that some contractors are playing an absolute blinder stringing out what is presumably the longest piecework project in the South West. I’m here to talk about Goram & Vincent, the restaurant perched above this nonsense, like a smug cousin, overlooking the terrace and hoping to convince you it’s a better place to be. Is it? Well…

Pre-dinner drinks in the lounge are delightful. The bar is properly plush, with window seats offering that perfect vista of the bridge—minus men in hard hats (they only seem to work about two hours a day). The cocktails are decent, the service friendly, and you begin to think, “Yes, this is what I came for.”

Then you walk through to the restaurant, with its floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the gorge like something out of a tourist board’s fever dream. Almost every table boasts a view that’s spectacular enough to distract you from the fact that, well, the food might take a while. A long while.

The menu is promising, a mix of steaks, some fish, and a few intriguing vegetarian options, including a £20 carrot dish that had me wondering if Bugs Bunny had recently taken out a mortgage. The service strikes a lovely balance between warm and efficient—no complaints there. But then… nothing happens for 30 minutes. Nothing but the view, which, to be fair, is lovely, and the decor, which is fine, and the waitress, who looks like she might actually explode from stress.

When the food finally does show up, my prawns are nice, my steak less so—overcooked, in fact. It goes back, a new one arrives with apologies, and I can’t help but think this is all a bit too familiar. There’s a core problem here: this venue has everything going for it—stunning views, well-judged service, stylish decor—but in the end, the kitchen lets the side down. Maybe I caught them on a bad night. Or maybe, just maybe, they’ve joined the ranks of the contractors down below, taking their time with the job, knowing there’s no rush because, after all, where else are you going to go?